Hello,
Need some help/advice, please. My 10-week-old (breastfed) baby was hospitalised 2 weeks ago due to vomiting bile. She had had a one-off formula feed not long before this happened, but we didn’t connect this to the vomiting at the time. She was in for 36 hours, x-rayed for a bowel obstruction, tested for stomach infections, etc., then discharged with no diagnosis or treatment. The vomiting occurred again this morning, the same extreme bright yellow bile that was coming up repeatedly over several hours and made her floppy and lethargic. I didn’t take her into hospital this time, partly because we had a bad experience last time (long story short, the hospital is in special measures), but mainly because I’m now pretty certain it’s a cow’s milk allergy, as she’d had a drink of formula again directly before this episode. She’s recently started omeprazole for reflux as she is generally uncomfortable and fussy, especially in evenings, crying in pain during and after feeding, making choking/ gagging noises, straining body, coughing, wheezing etc.
Does anyone have experience with this and can they offer general advice? I’m supposed to be back to work in a week so I planned to introduce mixed feeding. I’d rather not express due to time constraints but hypoallergenic/non-dairy formula is completely unknown territory to me. I have no idea whether it needs a prescription or can be bought online (not in the supermarket, I don’t think?), whether there are related dietary issues, and/or how much this matters if she’s still being breastfed most of the time? Is it a risk to go down this route without consulting a doctor and how useful are GPs in this situation, anyway? It’s a battle to see one at all at my surgery, even via phone consultation, so I don’t want to go through that if I’m going to get advice at the end that I could have found out myself. My sense is that GPs are unlikely to be particularly up-to-date on this kind of thing anyway, unless you’re very lucky, and a referral to a specialist could take weeks/months....