First CMPA, then soya allergy, now something else?

[EagleRay]

DD has just turned 2 and suffered from very loose poo and many other symptoms from the age 12 months approx. We finally got an appointment with a dietician last September and CMPA was given as a possible diagnosis based on symptoms.

We started her on a restricted diet and although she improved for a while, it then became apparent she was allergic to soya too. After eliminating that, things were ok up until recently she started having loose poos again. I'm wondering if she's reacting to something else now but have no idea where to start!

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? I think we're due a follow-up appointment soon but wondered if there were any 'classic' foods which might be the culprit (in the same way that soya allergy often follows CMPA)

I'm afraid i don't know if there are any other 'classic' ones that follow milk and soy, but i know a lot of kids with milk and soy allergies who are also allergic to egg and/or nuts (either peanuts, which are a legume (like soy), or other tree based nuts).

My two children are both milk, soy and egg intolerant. Maybe you could try going egg-free for a few weeks to see if that helps...?

Also - sorry, I don't mean to teach you to suck eggs, but are you being careful about all traces of milk/soy? Some children react to even small amounts.

Thanks for your replies - my feeling is that eggs may have got thrown into the mix now and v interesting that you both mention the milk/soya/egg allergy combo. Annoyingly, eggs and nuts are two of her favourite foods too!

She's at nursery 3 days per week and they're really good about ensuring her diet is restricted and we try to be careful too, but DP has been slightly cynical from the beginning about the allergies as one of our concerns was that she's very short and I think he hoped that once her diet was restricted she would just shoot up but of course that hasn't happened.

One of the other concerns was constant ear infections and she did go for quite a few months recently without having one (we were told it could be linked to the allergies), but then she got one a couple of weeks ago.

Hmmm... I think we will have to go for a week at least without eggs and then isolate the nuts as well and see if it makes a difference. Feel a bit more confident about doing this now so thanks for your input

you may get a better idea about whether the eggs are a problem if you exclude them for a bit longer - even 2 weeks would be good.

I know how hard it is - eggs were my fallback option at dinner-time. If he hadn't eaten well all day I knew I could give my eldest an egg and be happy he'd had some fat and protein. Don't have that option anymore, sadly.

That's the problem - they're a great fallback especially as I'm vegetarian and so don't normally cook meat, although can just about cope with heating up some meatballs or fish fingers!

EagleRay, I was pescatarian until DS2. He's allergic to not only the dairy, eggs, soy, nuts that make up so much of a veggie diet, but also legumes (so all the lentils, chickpeas, peas, beans etc), gourds (so lots of veggies out, like squash and courgette), the peppers (as in red/yellow/green), corn and wheat. I gave up in the end. I started him on the plain waitrose roasted chickens with baby led weaning, and he's been a happy meat eater ever since.... (it was a nightmare when i was breastfeeding, though.... i had to have his diet too :-/).

But i digress. I guess you know the ear infection / allergy link, yes ? .... My DS2 was always really short (like the 7th percentile, which is odd given DP is 6'3" and DS1 is on the 75th percentile), plus he kept getting ear infections (caused by swelling of the eustachian tubes (which is better than throat and anaphylaxis at least!) which means they don't drain properly, which leads to infection). Long story short, the last thing we identified was wheat / gluten, and removed that from his diet (took about 18 months to identify it, though). He stopped the ear infections (hasn't had any since, except when eating corn), and he grew 2cm in the 2 months after we gave up wheat. He's now around the 50th centile for height... He also sleeps through the night, which he never ever did until then. I'm not saying it's wheat for your child, just saying that sometimes the signs aren't as obvious as you might think.... i had a brief period when i consciously fed DS2 MORE wheat than i normally did (we were trying the celiac test), and he went absolutely mental for a week or two. Never noticed it before in the 'occasional biscuit' type quantities we'd been having previously.

Good god MayfairMummy - that sounds really tough

Could I ask exactly what your DS's allergy symptoms were? We had been told about the allergy/ear thing before, but the explanations around why that would happen had been vague, and it was actually a mum at DD's nursery who mentioned it first (her coeliac DD had had loads), despite loads of trips to the GP.

The height issue sounds similar to us - I noticed quite a while ago that she was very short, but was constantly being told 'don't worry she'll catch up' or 'stop comparing her to other children' and then next thing I knew she's having blood tests to rule out any chromosomal issues (I'm average height, DP is 6'3" like yours and DD was measuring at the very bottom of the percentile chart, or rather wasn't even on it!)

It scares me to think she may not be growing due to food issues and DP is extremely anxious about the lack of growth but she seems otherwise healthy and does eat well. Her weight is around the 50th percentil and she doesn't look overweight but clearly that's quite high if you work it out as a BMI.

I think we need to spend a few days figuring out what she could eat and where all the potential allergens are then try excluding more things. Just need to sell the idea to DP first!

EagleRay, we found different foods caused somewhat different reactions. I knew something was wrong in the very early days (by about 2 weeks), but kept getting told that I was wrong; that breastmilk can't carry the allergens (load of bollocks, that!), that he couldn't have allergies because he was too chubby (despite being so short, he was on about 90th percentile for weight - talk about BMI issues! Again, totally wrong).

I did baby led weaning when it was time, and I found that the food he tended to avoid ended up giving him a reaction if i 'hid' it in something.... vomiting, diarrhea and eczema are our most common ones, but some like wheat and corn we didn't have those signs. In fact, i didn't realise we were still looking for an allergen when i discovered the wheat. We travelled to Aus and didn't end up eating anything with wheat for a month because we just didn't come across anything that didn't have other allergens in it. DS2 slept through the night for the first time ever. I put it down to jetlag at the time. Roll on several months and the recurrent ear infections (literally about every 3 weeks they'd both go - just enough time to heal, get infected, burst the eardrum, repeat). I'd been trying everything, and somewhere i read a list of foods that can increase the rate of infection (no allergy link mentioned, just googling). The only things we were still eating on the list were red grapes (very infrequent anyway) and wheat. Took out both of those and voila, no ear infections, sleeping through the night. Reintroduced wheat for the celiac test (at greater quantities than before); no sleeping through the night (i should point out that it used to require me sitting up for about 2 to 4 hours with him each night; he had to be upright or he was in pain), plus he started having major tantrums for no reason, that he'd never had before, and the eardrums again. I can now see a lot of behavioural issues when he eats his allergies (possibly just being in pain? not really sure; there are links showing increased ADSD signs with food allergies).

Whilst many people with eczema babies just 'treat' the eczema (creams, etc), i've found that if i remove all the allergens from his diet, his skin is absolutely beautiful. He's started at nursery now, and whilst he doesn't consume anything there that he's allergic to, there are things around (the other kids drink milk, there is dust, etc), and his eczema is back, though fairly mild.

If you haven't been doing a food diary, i highly recommend it. sometimes it will show a link to something you really didn't expect (especially as it can take days for the signs to show up).

good luck!

PS. Only found out about the ear / allergy link AFTER i cut it out. noone ever mentioned it to me despite hospital visits etc.

PPS. Best to cut out a LOT of things, get a really basic diet, get rid of all symptoms, then slowly introduce new things and look for a reaction. Imagine weaning all over again! You're probably getting practiced at reading labels, but there are a lot of 'hidden' foods. Modified starch can for example be based on soy, wheat, corn, etc and isn't necessarily 'labelled' for an allergy child. The may contains often don't contain, but will completely throw you if they do (and they do sometimes, trust me), while i still can't remember ALL the names for peanuts, and most parents i know couldn't identify all the milk ingredients, etc. If you're really trying to catch all the things, go back to home cooking for a while, if you can manage.

DS is almost three and has been diagnose with CMP & soy allergies from six weeks old. I realised about six months ago he was allergic to eggs too His reaction is not as bad but still gives him tummy ache and horrible poo. Shame really was he loves eggs. He can tolerate baked egg in cakes though.

Not sure if your DD has reflux with her allergies but this can cause ear infections. DS has awful reflux and I wonder if the eggs were a part of that.

Hi - a small update... DD had a rather dicky tummy all last week in that she was pooing 4/5 times a day. Things haven't been great for a while, but last week was really bad. Was talking to DP about what we should do regarding excluding foods (after having read the replies on this thread) and then on Friday things seemed to be settling down a lot and so I thought maybe it was down to a minor bug.

Then on friday evening she had an omelette for dinner (I don't think she'd had an egg all week) and on Saturday the poo was horrendous. She'd started having horrific poo before she'd even woken up in the morning and basically just had diarrhoea all day. Today, there's been 3 so not quite as bad, but it's pale and watery with undigested food.

Sorry for graphic descriptions, but I did wonder when the egg was being eaten what would happen as my instincts are telling me this might be our culprit.

So, no eggs from now on and am hoping things will settle down again. And I will get in touch with the dietician at the hospital as well as DP getting v anxious that we haven't had much guidance over the whole thing.

I think we will end up cutting everything to a very basic diet then trying reintroducing things but need to double check that the nursery she goes to can do this too!