Mucus and blood in nappies

[Akathe]

DS is 5 months old, he’s EBF and has had blood and mucus on and off in his nappies since 12 weeks. We’ve been back and forth from doctors and it’s been a nightmare.

they’ve done bloods and all came back normal. I eliminated dairy and soya for a month with no change to symptoms at all, dietitian said CMPA is unlikely. He’s a happy baby, gains weight well. No bouts of excessive crying but his nappies are not ok.

because he is generally a happy baby, doctors don’t seem bothered.

I don’t know if anyone else has any other suggestions as I’m at a complete loss now?? 😔 I’ve attached a picture of his most recent nappy so you can see how much mucus we’re dealing with.

Have you kept a food diary of what you are eating to comapre?

Was there any improvement on dairy and soya free? What did you replace the dairy and soya in your diet with? Did you do total elimation and check all food packets carefully.

That looks like an allergy reaction to me (I have two children who had allergies as babies)

I kept a food diary and honestly we got to the point where I was just eating chicken, rice, peas and banana with black tea only because I was desperate to see a difference but obviously that’s not sustainable for me.

there was no improvement at all with the elimination and then no change when I reintroduced everything back in. I substituted dairy for oat milk.

im more than happy to do another elimination diet but the gp or hv haven’t really offered any support with that. 😔

Also Sorry to anyone who views this post and wasn’t expecting the nappy picture. I thought I’d posted it as sensitive 😔

It can take 6 weeks for dairy to leave the system... I'd go back to the GP and ask for a referral to a dietician. If you're happy to do an elimination diet, go completely dairy free (check everything!) and see how it goes for longer. If you're struggling then you can ask for dairy free formula from your GP to trial. My GP is useless at allergies but my oldest has multiple allergies and he was the same - happy enough, gaining weight but mucousy nappies. My babies allergy presented completely differently.

Thank you so much for your reply.

did your babies allergies continue into their weaning aswell? I’m worried that we have no idea what is causing it and weaning is just around the corner. I think I’ll just need to push harder with the gp to see if we can get someone to listen 😔

Yes, DS (my oldest) was dairy then it escalated into wheat, soya and fish as he got older. DD is only 7 months and we've only found dairy so far and she's eaten some of pretty much anything. You'll be surprised how easy it is to wean dairy free. Lots of pouches are dairy free and you can substitute dairy in homecooked food really easily.
Google the NICE guidelines for allergies - that will give you some info to be armed with. That's what I did when I got a GP who didn't know what to do.

thats all really helpful, Thank you so much! X

My DS had this. Started df and sf because of known allergies in the family but he continued with bloody green nappies. I did a ted and found it was oats and eggs. We've been able to reintroduce soya and oats now he's at school but eggs are a big issue.

That’s really interesting We suspected oats but there hasn’t seemed to be a pattern with anything in the food diary. The worst days he’s had recently have been the following day after I’ve had oats or sweetcorn randomly which is why we had suspicions.

how long after eating something with oats would it take for your baby to have a reaction?

My daughter had maybe 5 episodes of blood in her nappy from birth to around 6 months and lots of mucusy nappies, also EBF. There was never any other symptoms of an allergy, wasn’t sick or uncomfortable. I spoke with the health visitor who didn’t seem concerned and she’s now 13 months and this just sorted itself out once she started weaning. She eats dairy and I never eliminated dairy when breastfeeding and we’ve had no problems. A lot of her nappies looked like your pic above but because that was her only symptom I never eliminated anything and she has no allergies.

This looks quite similar to me DS nappies at that age. It took us until he was 10 months to work out the allergy, and because me doing dairy free didn’t help, we were originally told unlikely to be an allergy and to just ignore because he was happy and gained weight well.

On weaning he’s actually highly allergic to peas (comes out in a rash everywhere, and in an IgE blood test had a strong positive). Also positive to wheat, so two things you wouldn’t immediately think of. He is having a skin prick test in a month to check for more things, as his blood test also showed positive for peanuts even though he didn’t ever seem to react.

Worth giving the oats a go at eliminating, as doctors always seem to default to dairy and soya!

It's up to 72 hours for a reaction. This is why non-ige allergies are so tricky to pinpoint because you need to keep all suspected allergens out and track back 3-4 days on your diary each time you get it.

My DS had it pretty consistently which told me it was something I was eating every day or at least 3-4 times per week.

That’s a really positive outcome. I really hope we have something similar. Unfortunately he’s had quite a few nappies with blood now so I’m thinking there is something that’s causing the inflammation there. it started shortly after his 12 week jabs so initially doctors thought it was something to do with that. But we’re now much further along and no improvement.

thank you for sharing your positive story though, gives a little glimmer of hope for us 🤞🏻

Similar situation. Eldest DD's nappies were always like this. We didn't get a diagnosis til weaning. She's in school now and still allergic to egg and cow's milk.

Oh wow. Peas are so unassuming. I’d think that they were a fairly safe food. That’s interesting. It’s an absolute minefield and when his nappies are so sporadic it’s really hard to try and pinpoint the cause. It breaks my heart thinking that it could be me causing this.

I hope the skin prick comes back clear for you 🤞🏻

My daughter has 20 nonIGE food allergies and it took so long to identify them! At first it looked like there was no pattern but going back through those early diaries I was eating foods she was allergic to 2 or 3 times a meal!

Absolutely anything can be an allergen. I know a little boy that was IGE to rice! My daughter is allergic to onions, garlic and pea protein which were an absolute pain to identify. The alpro oat milks have pea protein in and she reacts if she has them but she's fine with oatly which doesn't. We kept a really detailed diary for everything possible and found that within a few hours she would be harder to breastfeed and wanted more cuddles. Shortening our time from from 3 days to 20 minutes for our quickest reaction was a real game changer!
Cross reactivity helped too. 10% of cmpa babies react to beef - this was our 20 minute reaction. My daughter is allergic to all nightshades except potatoes and all alliums but is ok with most legumes and is only allergic to soya and pea protein. She so allergic to soya that she can't have soya fed poultry directly. I don't recall testing through breastmilk. We only identified this as she reacted to turkey but not chicken and we usually bought high welfare chicken.

Just wanted to add my tuppence worth.

I’ve two children with food allergies (mix of ige and non-ige).

To me, that’s 100% an allergy nappy and tbh takes me back to darker times. 🥺

As someone else has said, dairy can take several weeks to leave your system. I was recommended to cut it out for 4 weeks before reintroducing. In our case, the difference was fortunately pretty clear cut both times.

My son has a lot of ige food allergies and we definitely felt keeping a diary was the best way to try keep on track of any emerging patterns.

It’s a really tough slog but once you figure out what the heck the issues are/issue is… although it’s still difficult, it’s much easier. If your child has an non-ige allergy (Ie the type of allergy thag affects your skin/guts) a blood test will
not show anything up.

My experience of being an allergy parent has shown me the lack of allergy understanding of many GPs/ health visitors and I have really had to advocate for my children through my own research. I was naive with my first but now with the second I’m much more clued up. I’ve had my health visitor give me dangerous advice which I knew was absolutely wrong and I fought tooth and nail to get my daughter onto the formula I knew she needed.

There’s a really good allergy doctor on Facebook called “allergy support with dr Helen allergy”.
I’d recommend checking out her page as she does respond to questions (for free).

Just wanted to chime in here and say I feel your pea pain (hence the username burger sans pea). My son is ige peas and it’s an absolute nightmare. Hardest allergy to avoid by far, and we avoid A LOT.

@Burgerssanspea honestly it’s so so hard. Frustratingly they only tested him for peas and not pea protein, BUT seeing the post above by @Superscientist I am now almost certain it’s pea protein he’s allergic to. When we were trialling cutting dairy I gave him both Oatly yoghurt and Alpro growing up oat milk. He reacted to the milk but not the yoghurt, and when I mentioned to the paediatrician she said oh it’s probably just the oats, and to avoid those. But I eat porridge for breakfast every day and breastfeed him and he’s absolutely fine. Didn’t ever occur to me that Alpro oat milk might have pea protein in it but it now completely explains why he reacted to that and not Oatly Greek yoghurt.
Honestly @Burgerssanspea I had no idea how many foods contained pea protein, and also can’t believe they don’t have to list it in bold as an allergen on packaging. I read a recent article that it’s overtaken sesame as an allergen in the Uk, but still no stricter rules. How old is your little one if you don’t mind me asking please? I am so hopeful he might grow out of this one day

Cmpa or more likely cows milk sensitivity. Please contact your HV and look at the infant feeding team guidance on weaning. Milk ladder etc. I was told mine wasn't but it was, she almost 2,5 years old now and I was right! Mother knows best

Pea protein was on our maybe list and mostly avoided after switching from soya based plant based sausages to pea protein based ones. She was happy on the oatly oat milk and we tried her with a carton of the alpro growing up oat milk when it was on offer and she reacted.
I think we also had a reaction to fava bean protein (broad beans) when she was having a vegan marg with it in. She hasn't had reactions when its one off foods and is fine with the oggs vegan cakes which has it in so we think that's a build up reaction. We were avoiding that marg but not fava bean protein itself and not had reactions. They have since added coconut oil to the marg so its no longer suitable for my daughter.

She is completely fine with peas. Our dietician was slightly perplexed by this but I think it's increasingly common. If we went back to the 50s my daughter would have a lot less allergies as quite a few of the foods she reacts to just shouldn't be in foods and the easiest way to avoid them is through using whole foods. It's been eye opening in to processed foods!

My little boy is 3.5. Unfortunately he has swelling and widespread hives with pea so we avoid like the absolute plague , which, as you know, is exceptionally tough. We are fine with eating in but going out involves a lot of forward planning. He ended up in hospital after having ice cream with pea protein in it - he swelled up like a balloon. People can’t believe it when I rhyme off all the things pea is in, there’s almost nothing exempt.

I remain hopeful that pea will become on of the “chosen few” … 🤞 that would make the biggest difference to us.

our allergist told us it would be unlikely he’d outgrow peas/lentils/chickpeas, but there’s light at the end of our milk, egg and soya tunnels which is honestly changing our life, slowly but surely!

There’s a good legume allergy forum on Facebook too, I’ve found so much help on these support groups. “Legume allergy support group”.