At the end with breastfeeding/dairy free, Please make me feel better about myself.

[strawberrycornetto]

I've been dairy free to keep feeding DS since September, but I just cannot do it anymore. There's no particular reason, I just can't keep doing it anymore. I feel horribly selfish, but I ate some cheese for the first time last weekend and I think that made him sick, which made me feel terrible. DH says either I have to do it or not, and I just can't anymore, and I know how hard it will be at Christmas, and I don't try myself.

He's already having two bottles out of 4 feeds nutramigen. The dietitian told me not to feel bad about this 5 weeks ago, but I've still felt too guilty. Am I doing the right thing?

I feel your pain, DD2 was very sensitive to dairy, she was 18 months before I was able to reintroduce any.

It is entirely your decision, and no one can make you feel good about yourself except you. I have coeliac disease, so I live on a "restricted" diet full-time, so I guess it wasn't too much of a shift to cut dairy out of my diet too.

Cheese was the thing I missed the most. You can get dairy free versions of most things, but cheese replacement just never worked for for me. But I found Swedish Glace was an excellent ice cream replacement, and there is plenty of dairy free chocolate around now, most of Green & Blacks dark stuff is dairy free.

Christmas is very hard, there are so many treats all around you, temptation is everywhere, and you feel so left out saying "no thanks, I can't eat that" to everything.

I hope you find some way to enjoy Christmas that doesn't leave you feeling guilty.

It's hard isn't it.... I managed to stay off the dairy really well for about 2 months, then decided to be less strict while on holiday in France (yummy cheese and desserts!) and never really managed to be strict again afterwards.

Some things will probably affect your DS more than others - eg. milk and cream. So could you try reintroducing mature cheeses like parmesan into your diet first and see if he seems OK? Then maybe mature cheddar for example? I found DD was OK like this, although I still stuck to soya milk and yogurts rather than dairy ones. It might not be the cheese you ate that made your DS sick - might have been just coincidence.

Don't be too hard on yourself though - you're doing so much for your DS, you should feel proud of yourself. And if he's doing well with the Nutramigen, maybe you could decide a date to move him over completely onto that? At least it will mean you have an end in sight.

I think if it wasn't for Christmas I would aim to keep going until he's 1 at the end of February. I have tried really hard, but DH isn't entirely supportive and he is using the cheese thing from last weekend to say I should stop. I think I have just got to the stage where my willpower has run out. I am so tired with working and looking after two children, especially with DS sick and sleeping so badly.

I am not going to start drinking milk again whatever, because I am fine with rice milk in drinks and on cereal, and I'd be worried about touching him and giving him a reaction. We were advised not to have cows milk in the house at all, but its just not practical with a 4 year old. So its cheese and cooked milk/butter in things really. I will keep thinking. Its such a tough call, I want to do my best for him, but I need to look after myself too I guess.

Don't beat yourself up about it - it really is hard. I tried with very allergic dd (also avoiding various other things) and looking back on it felt weak and ill for months - plus resentful at all the things I was missing.

And actually I wonder whether she was healthier on 100% neocate rather than bf. It certainly took all doubt out of the equation (is her skin bad because there was egg in that biscuit etc, is she sicky because there was dairy in the whatever). Denying yourself whilst bfing is very draining - one thing too far sometimes. You know what you can cope with and is sounds as if you have done really well to get this far. Give yourself a pat on the back (and a plate of cheese!)

Feeling festive, you completely sum up how I feel, especially all the second guessing about what I've eaten and how it may or may not have affected him.

I've been yoy-ing today between continuing and stopping. I did feed him tonight - I think I might stop when I finish work for Christmas, as it gives him a few more days to get better and then a week or so off work where it doesn't matter if my sleep is more disturbed if I end up making night time bottles.

awww strawberry, it's tough isnt' it? I went egg and dairy free for ds2 and it's been a year now!!
I can honestly say it has got a LOT easier, and I no longer crave any of the things I did at first. I found it particularly difficult at first resisting my fave cheeses and stuff, but you do get used to it.

it's very, very satisfying breastfeeding, and I do feel really proud of myself for carrying on so long. I am not saying this to sound smug, or in any way suggesting that you would be bad to give up, just letting you know how great it feels to carry on!!!

I found out after a while that I could have the odd danish pastry here and there with no ill effects (although if I had one for a few days running it kind of built up) and I used toi begin to look forward to going out and hacving my coffee with soya milk and just a little "treat"

my personal feeling was that my milk was absolutely the best thing for him, and that I couldn;t not give it to him just because it meant I would miss out, iyswim? when you look back on it it's such a short time in their lives (and yours)

My DS is about the same age as yours, and I have to leave him for the whole day about 3 times a month... I feed him when I get back, and he copes absolutely fine.

Obviously you would like to feed him for longer, but you've done brilliantly to feed him for this long.

Is goats cheese an option? I know some people who are allergic to cows products are ok with goats and there are lots of nice cheeses (plus milk and butter).

I was going to say exactly that Pannacotta re the goats cheese.

My ds is intolerent to dairy, but I am lucky that he doesn't react when I eat it.

All the goats stuff is pretty widely available I have found, and some of the supermarkets do sheeps milk products too.

I even noticed that Pizza Hut now do a goats cheese pizza!!

It might be worth a try and would be a win win situation for you and your ds if he was able to tolerate it and you could carry on feeding him.

Think that Goats producst are also healthier as well as being easier to digest, so good for you too...
Waitrose and Sainsburys have good ranges of goats products.

My DS1 was "moderately allergic" to dairy and soya and I was told by a paediatrician to cut out dairy and soya from my diet.

I was panicking - especially as DH is a vegetarian. The dietician was great. She said that you can't really avoid soya (not your problem I know) and re milk said "sometimes managing the diet is worse than managing the allergy." Which I thought was a wonderfully understanding comment.

I cut dairy and soya down in my diet, but not out. Soya for the reason above, but milk because I just couldn't, and goats milk tasted like goat-flavoured snot, and because with the allergens removed from DS1's diet alone, his skin improved so much it was like a miracle.

It seemed [to me?] that the dairy I ate didn't get passed to him.

Later it turned out that his milk allergy had got worse & become life threatening, I do wonder if it was because I was still eating it . . . but he could eat something with a trace of milk in it and get hives but this never happened after a breastfeed, so I doubt it, but perhaps I am in denial...

The next two DCs were strictly egg and dairy free and I bf exclusively, but I still had dairy and they are fine. But I get the feeling they would have been fine whatever.

Sorry this is not much help (bit pissed but had to reply).

I do sympathise. Will check in again tomorrow and hopefully post when sober.

depends whether he is sensitive to lactose or to the milk proteins.

if it's the former then goats cheese may be ok as it has lower levels of lactose. if the latter then it'll probably make no differece as the proteins are v. similar.

i read somewhere that a large proportion, can't remember the percentage, of children who are intolerant to cows milk will also react to goats

worth a try thouh

Sadly, it was goats cheese I ate last weekend, so I don't think it will help. His problem is the milk protein not the lactose.

LOL Baloonslayer, sounds like you are having a good Sunday!!

My DS is also allergic to soya, but not as badly as milk and I seem to be ok with that.

Well I am no nearer deciding, other than that I am not stopping today. Thank you for making me feel better though, it is tough but its nice to know I am not alone.

With regards to lactose and protiens, a baby that is lactose intolerant would react to breastmilk, and cutting dairy out of your diet won't make any difference. Lactose intolerance and cows milk protien intolerance/allergy have similar symptoms, but are totally different. I know you know this Strawberrycornetto, I'm just saying this so that others understand the difference.

Why not take each day one at a time? Avoiding dairy does get easier, and as your DS gets older he will become less sensitive and you will be able to eat cheese etc as and when initially and then regularly and so on and life will get easier. If you take off the pressure of feeling that you are going to be doing this indefinately then maybe it will be easier. Give yourself permission to stop when ever you decide to, rather than thinking you must carry on, and then each day may not feel like a sentence because you know you can stop when ever you feel the time is right.

Hang in there, you'll be ok.

I'm also df for ds4, 8 months. I can tolerate some but not loasd myself. I should also be nm a gf diet for him; so far he is developing fine but if his development takes a certain turn I will have to go down that route: dreading it.

You've dopne well and fed him for a good while, focus on that

some kids with casein intol are OK on goats though: ds3 is fine but definitely not lf. lf formula had awful effects.

IIRC jimjams son on te cf/gf diet also was ok on goats milk

I went through something like this a couple of months ago. Feeling deeply guilty about making ds2 ill because I kept eating the wrong things (dairy-free, among other things), and thinking I'd better give up breastfeeding him rather than make him ill through my lack of self-control.

I had a session of hypnosis, and the difference has been wonderful. I don't struggle to keep to the dietary restrictions, I don't have guilty feelings over it, and I know that when I choose to stop bfing it will be a proper decision, not a guilt-and-frustration-driven decision. I wonder whether you might consider that? At the very least, it may help you make the decision one way or another without getting too upset.

I still walk past the cheese counter very quickly, eyes front!

greenmonkies, what you're referring to is congenital lactose intolerance whree the body lacks ebnough lactase to process the lactose.

it is very, very rare though and baby would probabvly be FTT from very early on.

it can also be causef by galactosemia, but this is tested for in the heel-prick test so would have been picked up early normally.

there are some kinds of lactose intolerance (ie, secondary intolerance following d&v bug etc) where breatfeeding is perfectly possible

My DD also is very allergic, so am sympathetic to feeling like you can't go on with such restricted diets.

Just a thought- could you plan to have a dairy (and everything else) binge for a couple of weeks and do 'pumping and dumping' a couple of times a day during that time so that you carry on producing milk? Then when you have seen how your DS gets on with just the formula you could choose to go back to the dairy free breastfeeding if you wanted...?

It would be hard work to keep expressing but at least you would still have the choice....

Doesn't milk protein stay in the body for about four weeks though? I'm sure I've been told that. I don't think it would be as simple as just dumping the milk for a day or two after having dairy.

I do sympathise, it really sucks, I was dairy-free while bf for a year myself (my dd was then tested and had outgrown her allergy). Is the issue partly that the small amounts of dairy coming through your milk might resensitise against dairy and make it less likely that your ds will outgrow the allergy? If so it would probably be better to go with the formula rather than carrying on bf but going back to eating dairy again. I know how hard it is but there are some nice dairy-free things out there - have you found them? Things like Fry's chocolate cream (that used to be dairy free anyway) and the nice soya ice cream whose name I forget... can your ds have soya? The silver lining I also found was that it did help me to lose weight and also the bliss of finally being able to eat dairy again was so wonderful when it did arrive that it made up for the long time without!

the ice cream is called swedish glace.

IME reactions to casein vary- I know if i have any then I only react for a day (although that may be with some in my system, or perhaps- TMI- the severe diarrhoea clears it out?). DS3 OTOH is far more serious: give him a bowl of cerreal with wrong milk (won't have any bar goats in the house now) and he won't talk today and may be incontinent.

Yes, Thisisyesterday, it really bugs me when people confuse thetwo, even my HV wrote that DD2 was lactose intolerant in her notes and I had to correct her and explain the difference. I do wonder how many babies are put onto LF/Soy formula because of this misunderstanding.

According to DS1's statement of special educational needs (a legal doc) he is caffeine intolerant !.

I don't know if you are aware of the GF / CF autism diets, but two of mine are autistic and also casein free so its logical to follow those- the idea is that some (a small proportion) of autistic kids have leaky gits, some of the proteins escape and damage the brain. Anyway this is relevant to the last post becuiase I have as I saoid 2 asd kids: ds1 was prescribed a soy formula, has the asd fairly mildly. DS3 otoh was prescribed a formula I know now is only suitable for LF kids, enfamil. I strongly suspect that is what caused his much more severe rbain damage, though I cn never prove it.

greenmonkies, absolutely agree, I suspect it's very much over-prescribed.
and, as per a few threads I have seen recently, formula feeders who are given a LF formula to use are finding that it makes no trouble but that GP's are not willing to prescribe different formulas.
madness.

sneezon makes good point too actually, there are some super yummy dairy free things out there.
fry's peppermint creams are still dairy free, I discovered this only recently

if you have the time/inclination to bake and stuff at home it's super easy to make dairy-free goodies