Dairy free diets - when will we see the effects?

[rachie103]

Hi all. I’m in week 4 of being dairy free (bar a few slip ups) & week 2 of being soy free - LO (12 weeks) has suspected CMPA allergy. Just wondering what people’s experience is of the improvements they saw in their LO’s feeding when they changed their diet? Have seen a real improvement in the past week, but seem to have good days - where she settles & takes good feeds, and then bad ones still, where she is uncomfortable, windy, cries & struggles to settle to a sustained feed despite clearly wanting to. I just wondered if this is the same as others have experienced? Makes me doubt whether it really is CMPA that has been the problem (though lots of improvements in other symptoms suggests it is). Am aware it could take up to 6 weeks for all dairy to be out of my & get systems - just seems odd that the feeding experience would vary so significantly day to day. Any thoughts/ wisdom welcome!

Hi,
Both my kids were born with CMPA
Personally with all my children breastfeeding was very difficult and I had to bottle feed too. My GP used to subscribe special type of milk till the liitle one hits his/her firat year.

As for how many weeks it takes for the dairy free to kick in I suppose its 6 to 8 weeks as per the dietitian we worked with once.

I would suggest to start yourself and your child on probiotics it really helps to control the symptoms and promotes the healthy bacteria in both your guts.

Pls consult with your GP mine referred us to pediatrician dietician who helped us enormously to pass this difficult stage.

Good luck

I failed to breastfeed and went on to bottlefeed Nutramigen around 8 weeks. It was wonderful, she started putting on weight, the excema that was covering her from head to toe disappeared and actually smiled. I felt terribly guilty for not breastfeeding, especially when other people seem to find it so easy, but ultimately the best thing for my baby was to have a bottle. Please don't feel guilty if you put your baby on prescription milk, it took me a long time to come to terms with it. Breastfeeding is great but its possible to have a happy and healthy baby on a bottle too. I subsequently found out in addition to CMP and soya, she reacted to the deadly nightshade family (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes), eggs, nuts, ham, beef (fed on milk pellets) and wheat. So I don't think I could have cut everything out and produced good milk. She a teenager now and still allergic to milk but so am I, but she can eat everything else. I think giving her immune system a break by feeding formula made her able to cope with the other foods later. I hope you find what's best for both of you. Good luck and congratulations.

I gave up dairy when my LO was about 8 weeks. I think it took about a month before I noticed a difference.

I found breastfeeding easy so I just gave up dairy and soya. I got a few mums telling me to just give a bottle of special stuff but seemed silly when it was going so well and all I needed to do was change my diet!

When she was about 15 months I think I reintroduced a few things into my diet (it's a while ago- she's 12 now). I fed her until she was nearly 3 (only 1 feed a day at the end) and by then I was back on a normal diet. I found she moderated the amount of dairy she could eat as she got older and even now she'll have weeks when she'll have less so she is definitely not as intolerant as she was but has to limit what she eats

@rachie103 hi! How did you get on? Did you eventually find the answer? Same thing here some days sleeps very well no issues then some days very gassy I’m starting to doubt it’s dairy.

I'm not the op but ...We saw a dramatic change in my daughter within a week but not with the classical symptoms. She had a development delay as a consequence of being so miserable from the allergies and reflux. This improved within a week and in two weeks she went from scoring very poorly on her 4 month assessment to scoring quite averagely on her 5 month assessment

If you are getting mixed results I would start a food diary. It probably isn't extra allergies but incase it is you already have the diaries to look at. My daughter did really well until 3 weeks without dairy and soya and she went right back to the beginning. I went through my food diaries to see what had changed and what has changed was we had left my in-laws and our diets were completely different. I eliminated coconut tomato and egg and she went back to being better. She has a stupid number of allergies and it was a lot of back and throw with the food diaries. I'm so glad I had started them before I needed to look at them!