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Allergies and intolerances

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elimination diet, where to start?

3 replies

claggles02 · 09/10/2012 10:33

Hi, my DS (12 weeks) has frequent green stools sometimes with blood and is very gassy. He is a big boy and gains weight no problem and otherwise is healthy. My doctor wants me to stop BF and give him nutramigen but I want to continue to BF and eliminate foods myself to see if that helps him first. I highly suspect cow milk as was intolerant to it myself as a baby so have been off it for a while and am omitting soya also. Is there a basic meal plan that I should start with and then reintroduce food groups? I know can take a while to get dairy out of system and I slipped up last week by mistake... also have heard his symptoms may be due to overactive letdown and fore milk / hind milk imbalance, I block feed anyway as have oversupply but wondering if anyone has experience with bloody stools with that? just trying to do the best for my DS as really dont want to stop BF him and he refuses bottles also so would be hell for him for a while. thanks

OP posts:
OHforDUCKScake · 09/10/2012 14:09

DO NOT STOP BF.

That is the worst advice your doctor should give.

My son was exactly the same at thr same age, start with dairy its the most common one. Give it 2-3 weeks to see an effect.

You are helping your baby SO much by bf, dont stop because a clueless GP suggested it. Bm is the best thing for him and more so if he has potential allergies or intolerances.

NotAnotherPackedLunch · 09/10/2012 21:19

I would second OHforDucks advice and continue to BF and ask to be referred onto someone more familiar with this problem. My DS didn't improve on my cutting out dairy and soya so wheat, gluten, eggs, nuts, shellfish and others followed. It took about 6 weeks of the complete extreme exclusion diet for DS to start to improve. Getting the diet established was hard, but it became routine after a bit. Good luck.

greenbananas · 10/10/2012 06:39

I can see it from your GPs point of view - but this advice is out of date and is not best practice. The NICE guidelines say that mums who are breastfeeding children with allergies should be given information about exclusion diets. Breastfeeding is best for allergic babies, even though the formula companies are the ones providing most information to GPs about allergies at the moment.

The most common allergens are the ones listed by packedlunch above, with dairy and eggs being by far the most common in babies. You will struggle to eliminate all of these at once so might be best to start with dairy and eggs. Like packedlunch, I followed an extreme exclusion diet for a long time, and it worked for us - but it turned out that my baby was also reacting to other things (bananas, onions, lentils, tomatoes, apricots, all sorts of seemingly random foods!)

Keep a food diary, with details of absolutely everything you eat, including what flavour jam you are using on your toast etc. This will help you to trace any patterns of symptoms back to their source weeks later. Try not to eat the same things every day - for example, if you are suspicious of wheat, live on rice instead for a bit and then consult your diary to see if there has been any improvement.

Overactive letdown / too much foremilk might account for green poos to some extent, but does not explain the blood in stools, so you and your doctor are right to be concerned.

I would see a different GP if possible, and ask for a referral to a paediatrician with some specialism in allergies and intolerances.

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