Milk intolerance symptoms??

[mummymimi]

I am just wondering if mums with experience of milk intolerance could tell me what the symptoms of cows milk intolerance are and whether there are different levels of intolerance?

My DD (now 16mths) is lactose intolerant. She is also intolerant to soya and oats.

Her symptoms were that she was incredibly constipated, screaming & straining to poo all day and got so bad she had baby version of piles

Or she can be the other way (depends what she has eaten) where the poo just pours out of her (sorry TMI) going through nappies, clothes etc.

She can also get slight excema on arms/legs.

She was also very unhappy so probably had tummy ache too

Do you think your LO is intolerant to milk?

My ds1 (now 2.8) gets very loose stools and will sob and scream all night with tummy ache. DS2 (5 months) is still exclusively breast fed and if I have dairy he is sick and screams all day

But they both tolerate butter, which is apparently common in people with a milder intolerance. So there are definitely levels.

milk intolerant - sick when given formula,
patches of exzcema,
night mare to wean
diarrhoea

I think he could be. He is very fussy, unsettled( I think because he has a tummy ache), suffers with alot of wind and he also has liquid poo that leaks from his nappy 2-3 times a day. He is 7 months old and he is my fourth baby and he is different to the others.

My GP thinks its reflux and prescibed meds but these have made little difference. I just keep thinking he will grow out of it, but I am not seeing any improvment. I am going back to the GP on Monday and I will mention milk intolerance as my gut feeling is that something is not right with him.

I am also finding weaning him very difficult.

Is he breast fed or does he have formula?

He is formula fed, on Cow and Gate.

Is he BF or FF?

My DD was ok with FF (ish) but only got really bad when weaned.

is he bf or ff?

sounds similar to my ds, but my ds is my first so i don't know any different. My family think i'm over reacting and keep telling me to give him formula even though he vomits it up! he wakes up alot in the night too obviously in discomfort

doctors didn't do anything as it isn't that severe, but i gave up dairy myself for six months and he was loads better.

he didn't really eat any solid food until about 10 months. i give him flax seed oil to make up for lack of essential fats and also bifidabacterium infantis powder, which i think has really helped.

did try him on soya formula for a bit, but he mainly refused a bottle and i was worried about the sugar content but he was fine on this.
i give him soya yoghurts now though.

Symptoms were similar for both of mine - very frequent poos, screaming in pain round the clock, nappy rash, lots of vomiting (not just straight after a feed).

I gave him a little yogurt the other day and he seemed even more upset than he usually is. I sometimes think I am being paranoid, but my husband and mum all agree that something is not quite right. I find talking to the Drs so difficult, my HV has already suggested that I am neurotic.

You certainly have nothing to lose by keeping all dairy (except the formula) out of his diet until you have had him tested. It sounds like you might have to insist.

He doesn't vomit much, all his problems seem to be at the bottom half. Although he has very dry skin, all of my other children suffered with excema, DS2 severly. He also has a red rash close to his anus that will not completely clear up, it improves slighty and then gets sore again.

Yogurt was the trigger for us too

DD started screaming and straining and I twigged that I thought it was the yogurt.

Which cow & gate is he on?

DD was ok(ish) on no.1 because the priobiotics (sp) helped her poo I think, but would not tolerate any other FF.

TheProvinicalLady - I think I am going to have to insist too, I find that as soon as I enter the drs surgery I turn into a jibbering wreak and cannot be assertive at all.

In order for doc/hospital to test for intolerance he will have to be having some dairy anyway so you will have to keep the FF till then.

They will test by doing a stool sample.

simpson - he is on no.1, I did change from aptimal when he was 4ish months and he did improve slightly.

Would it help if you wrote everything down before going into see GP in case you forget anything?

I would deffo go dairy free (apart from FF) and see if there is an improvement.

My DD also developed intolerance to soya after dairy as I went abit OTT with the soya yogurts

So I would go slow on them too as it is quite common for soya intolerance to develop if exposed to it too much iyswim.

I will write everything down so I don't forget anything, also I have asked DH to have the morning off work on monday so he can come too.

Good luck

Let us know how you get on...

Hopefully you will get a referral to pead who will do stool sample test

I have been where you are, its horrid...

Testing often doesn't work for an intolerance btw, so the only way to find out for sure is to remove dairy (including the formula) from his diet and see whether he improves. (and theoretically you should then re-introduce dairy to see if symptoms return, but it's generally bloody obvious so why would you want to cause pain again?!)

You can buy hypoallergenic formula (GP's generally won't prescribe without a paed referral first) from a pharmacy, but it is much more expensive than other formula (don't give soy formula to an under 2 yr old). If you want to do this, ask for Nutramigen 2 (nutramigen 1 is for under 6 months, and 2 for over 6 months).

I was debating whether to buy some special formula to see if he improved but as I can't afford to buy it regularly (DH is a builder and times are hard) I would need it to be prescribed, although saying that if I saw improvements I would try my hardest to fund it for him.

Thanks simpson I will let you know how it goes.

I would only suggest buying enough for a fortnight, as that would just be long enough to see if it made a difference (takes a couple of weeks to clear dairy totally from system). Then if it does make a big diff you have far more weight to your argument for getting your GP to prescribe.

Great idea, I think what I will do is see the GP on Monday and tell them that I want to eliminate dairy from his diet as a way of diagnoising, if they prescibe it then great, but if not I will buy it and then go back to them with the results. Thanks all

Now I am confused, I have been on the nutramigen website and have now discovered that lactose intolerance and milk intolerance are different and that there are 2 different formulas to help with the different conditions.

My DS symptons suggest lactose intolerance, but I cannot be sure.