Milk ladder

[Gingerthecat]

Hi all

first time posting on allergies and intolerances

bit of back round DS is 18months
diagnosed CMPA very young just a few weeks old he had a mix of ige and non ige symptoms he was put on alfamino and done absolutely great , he was skin pick tested at 8mo and that’s when we discovered he also has an egg allergy ( he’s still totally egg free ) anyway some time went on and just before the new year we were given the dairy ladder to try.

started on half a biscuit for 10 days ( done a little longer than a week due to the house hold coming down with a cold ) he was absolutely fine with half a biscuit for 10 days.

he’s now been on a whole biscuit for about 6days and again no tummy ache no uncomfortable excessive wind nothing , until today he done X2 poos in the space of half hour smelt horrible and was a nappy full of mush ( not diarrhoea ) but smelly mush , I can post pictures if needs be . he still seems absolutely fine in him self sleeping fine , ate all his dinner playing fine etc no pain with it but one of the poos had a tiny string of mucous.

my problem is I don’t know if I should continue with a whole biscuit or cut it back down to half or just stop all together!

just to add he LOVES fruit like absolutely loves it and yesterday he ate a mixed fruit bowl of a whole easy peeler orange, whole pear cut up and hand full of blueberries for lunch he also had a half a banana with his breakfast , could that cause mushy sour smelling poo?

gosh long post sorry I’m rambling I just don’t know what to do and I don’t hear from his dietician until half way through march .

Been there. Done that. Symptom spotting is awful. I stopped so many times in that exact situation and really wish I hadn't. In my experience if he has been tolerating it for 6 days it is likely something else. I would keep going. Or go back to half for a few days until everything regulates and then go back up to a whole biscuit.

It could be the fruit, it could be teething, it could be the start of a cold or virus. Don't be disheartened.

@Whentwobecomesthree

Its awful isn’t I felt he was doing brilliantly until these two awful poos today and freaked me out a bit BUT as you mentioned teething I do remember a couple months ago ( When he was completely dairy free ) he was cutting some teeth and done some AWFUL smelling up the back mushy kinda poos :/ , perhaps i will just cut down to half a biscuit for a while again as he seem to tolerate that perfectly see how things go then up it again . Part of me think it’s all the fruit he eats ahhh it’s so confusing

With ambiguous symptoms I hold on the current level of dairy for an extra week or so before moving up. In this situation I would hold on a full biscuit. If being extra cautious I would drop to half a biscuit for 2-3 days and then go back up to a full biscuit to see if you get a slight improvement followed by worsening off symptoms

@Superscientist

i did cut down , but unfortunately now fully stopped all together due to thick mucus in the nappies after posting this post.

To be honest, at every step up my daughter's stools had that acidic smell and then her body seemed to adjust. After a few weeks of no symptoms I'd then step up again.

I did the milk ladder extremely slowly as I felt like it would improve our chances of success and I also didn't want her system to be constantly under attack. We took 4.5 years to get to the penultimate step (cream/UHT milk etc.) and haven't bothered with the last step yet.

I'm sorry!

We do a slow version of the already very slow north west milk ladder.

We started with a piece of biscuit the size of a grain of sand once in 2 weeks. It was meant to be 1 week but she had her flu vaccine afterwards so we got back to baseline. We then did a week at once a week. Another week of every 4 days another week of every 3 days. She reacted when we went to every other day. Still just a piece the size of a grain of rice. This was at 3y3m at 15 months with our first attempt she failed on the first piece the size of a grain of rice.

She has a lot of allergies and we have got passed 1 or 2 pieces for any foods around the size of a grain of rice but we are starting to move in the right direction at a very glacial pace! I would go so slowly. If I had even done our very slow ladder as directed we would have failed on day 2 and not noticed the process of getting up to being able to tolerate a miniscule amounts 1-2 times a week. It gave me the motivation to test other things unfortunately they were also fails but maybe next time....

@Superscientist I did do our ladder fairly slow done each step for about 2 weeks rather than a week and I also gave slightly less amount than the ladder said.

hes day 3 of no dairy and still having horrible nappies any idea how long it take for the dairy to leave the system and the gut to settle?

he’s in absolutely no pain what so ever ( thank god ) and no other symptoms just foul nappies no more musus either just explosive up the back type nappies.

when can I start the ladder again 3months my ladder says? I think il go even slower next time.

@INeedNewShoes

I stopped due mucus in the nappies after I posted this post :(

but il definitely go slower next time we try even though I was going slightly slower than our ladder suggested.

If it takes our reaction 5 days to build up we have symptoms for a further 5 days and the another 5 days to get back to normal. If it's a 3 day build up 3 days of further symptoms and 3-5 days to back t ok fully normal!

I do 12 months for a day 1 fail and 6 months for an early fail and plan to 3 months if I get part way up a step before failing. I'm very cautious but also with 20 allergies it's a timings thing as I have many things to be testing.

Do have a look at the north west ladder and compare it to yours. It's the slowest one I have come across. Good luck and I hope they recover soon.

@Superscientist

ok we passed the “first” bit of step one so half a biscuit he passed that with ease but when I upped it too whole biscuit and sometimes it wasn’t even a whole one really and I done it for longer than the ladder said is when he started having bad nappies. Hopefully he’ll settle soon!

20 allergies must be so difficult , I’d be super curious too :( I find it difficult with two allergies , not knowing what’s a symptom, finding things to cook etc x

il definitely take a look at that ladder for sure thank you!

It was tough at first! She reacted to my breastmilk so we had a fair list of foods before we started weaning. We mostly work with whole foods as it's almost impossible to buy packet foods. even things like sausages can be tricky. Aside from that we work with what we can have. She's allergic to fish, beef, soya fed poultry, soya and pea protein so we mostly use pork and chick peas/pulses for protein. We can't use garlic, onions, chilli, paprika and other similar things so we use a lot for mustard, cumin and coriander for flavourings. Sweet potatoes instead of tomatoes. We have to stretch what is conventional but have found a tasty way of eating. I made us a typical spag BOL the other day and my daughter the equivalent with mustard and sweet potato instead of garlic and tomatoes and my partner said he preferred hers!

She doesn't have severe reactions thankfully but is very sensitive and we have to be careful with any new foods but we muddle along!

In that case I would probably give it 3-4 months depending on when it fits in with life. My motto is "you can always speed up later". Its a lot hard to try to slow the pace down that up the pace if you get a bit of confidence and get a feeling it's going ok.