Please come and talk to me about dairy allergies.

[Oneandnomore]

My dd is almost 5. As a baby she had reflux which improved when she was weaned. She has always been very gassy and complained overt the recent few months of stomach pains. I took her to the GP who advised to cut down on her dairy intake.

I did this and there has been a big improvement, have reintroduced yogurt and cheese in bigger quantities over the past week and this, combined with her now staying school lunches so having custardy puddings has seen a return of her symptoms

Have bought some soya milk and yogurt for her, and will make a GP appt tomorrow. Does this mean that she will have this allergy for life? Also, have I done the right thing with the soya, or is there a chance she could be allergic to this also? Am also worried about her calcium intake and her weight which we struggle to maintain at times. Thanks.

It sounds to me more like an intolerance than an outright allergy. The plus side of that is that she (assuming it is an intolerance) won't be in danger of anaphylaxis. However, that is not to downgrade the problems of dealing with an intolerance which can also give unpleasant symptoms.

My first advice would be to have her allergy tested, then you are sure whether you are dealing with allergy or intolerance.

At her age, soya is most likely fine as the advice is only really to avoid in younger children (< 2 yo). However, you may want to get your GP to prescribe a calcium supplement and also keep her soya intake to only the things which are not available in other forms. By this I mean soya yoghurt, soya cream cheese and soya sour cream (tofutti sour supreme is pretty good for cooking with if your dd has a weight problem). For a milk substitute perhaps consider calcium fortified oat milk which tastes OK and oatly oat cream is a pretty good single cream substitute.

Avoiding dairy can be tough at first, but after a while you find a number of good substitutes and then it gets easier. You may find your supermarket is not well stocked for dairy-free, but hunt around in health food stores and the internet and there are lots of options out there.

HTH.

Thank you Unseen. Have an appt with GP for next Thursday, in the meantime will continue with reducing dd's dairy intake.

She tried a soya yogurt this morning and was very impressed! So that is one hurdle as she is a hardened no bits yogurt fan!

Am going shopping tomorrow, me thinks that will take twice as long due to label reading but will be worth it to see an improvement in her.