to worry about people being told to cut out dairy

[noblegiraffe]

I've noticed on here recently (or maybe I've only just noticed?) that if a mother posts about a fussy baby and she's breastfeeding, it is quite common for someone to suggest the mother try cutting dairy from her diet.

Now I'd have thought that cutting out dairy should be something done carefully and with dietary advice on how to compensate for it.

If you're cutting out dairy, that means you have to cut out nice things like cheese, milk in your cereal/tea, and if you're doing it thoroughly, things like chocolate that contain milk products. This sounds tedious and not very pleasant. It may even convince a mother to give up breastfeeding.

So I would have thought that cutting out dairy isn't something that should be taken lightly.

Also, babies are quite often fussy, and they quite often grow out of it without any intervention. A mother who has cut out dairy may attribute the improvement to her restricted diet and continue on it for months despite it being completely unnecessary and making no difference at all.

It's different to when people make other suggestions on here like 'it might be reflux' because people will need to see their GP before getting a prescription, and tips like propping up the cot are harmless even if it's not reflux. People can go ahead and cut out dairy without any health professional giving it the once-over.

So, AIBU to worry about this advice being bandied about? Or do people not attempt dietary restrictions on the say so of an Internet forum and I'm worrying about nothing?

You forget that people aren't stupid. They don't do everything someone tells them.

As for expense well, supermarkets have own branded products .

And milk is not like oxygen. You can survive happily without it. It's something many people go two or three days without having and dont even realise. Yes it's in alot of products but alot of the time it's an unnecessary ingredient and is used to bulk out products which mean they are processed so its doing you a favour by not being able to be eaten anyway.

And no one ever stops seeking medical help.

You are also assuming that people don't re introduce.

Well I wouldn't consider my antenatal lot stupid either (all professionals) but they didn't reintroduce or seek medical guidance.

Just got stuck in, well I might as well carry on just in case, even though it's a massive ball ache.

So yeah...actually people ARE stupid when it comes to doing things people tell them to (and so very stupid at realising that they are only doing things because everyone else is) and even more stupid when it comes to believing their own personal experience can be used to identify successful outcomes of medicinal interventions....as this thread is rife with evidence for.

just in case anyone is still missing the point, 'it got better after I did X' is NEVER evidence that X made it better. Not even if it happened twice in a row...or three times....if you get up to 20 I might just begin to believe you....unless actual medical evidence already exists to indicate that X doesn't work. In which case there is essentially no number high enough...

Noblegiraffe, is there a personal reason you feel so strongly about this?

To the PP who said that the mothers of the babies now 'happily eating cheese' had been proved wrong....well, not necessarily. It is commonplace for babies to grow out of CMPI.

I really do not understand why this is causing such a palaver. It is simple to establish whether milk is causing the problem. Just reintroduce it and hey presto, you have a milk challenge. Obviously not if your baby has an immune-mediated allergy... Milk challenge is used in hospital settings to see whether a chold has outgrown CMPI.

I think possibly underlying this concern for giving mothers 'spurious advice' is contempt for the idea of intolerances generally, which is understandable if you have never had children with allergies or intolerances.

To clarify on the issue of prevalence rates of CMPI, our paed said there was no scientigic agreement but credible studies suggested a range of between 2 and 12% of babies.

I think part of the teason milk allergy is not more widely known is the historical influence of formula companies. A leaflet I picked up in onw of the many a&e trips with DS was about fussy feeding and was published bY SMA. And hey, guess what?!? No mention of CMPI being even an outside chance cause.

ICBINEG that is a rather patronising comment. I for one am fully conversant with the difference between correlation and causality, ta very much

I think those of you saying "go to the doctor for a diagnosis first" have NO idea what it is like! I accepted 3 different diagnosis' (reflux, toddler diarrhea and constipation) for my DDs lactose intolerance all of which were absolute fucking bollocks, presumably because GPs are general practitioners - they do not have in-depth knowledge on every medical subject. I've had other incidents recently where I've had to explain WHY I needed blood tests for a particular thing because the GP didn't happen to know anything about it, but was able to look it up and arrange what was needed once I had explained. It's not only allergies this can happen with.

If you are at the end of your tether and the GPs suggestions aren't working either there isn't actually any harm in doing a trial. Which is not just exclude X and see if your child is better, but also give them small amounts of X and see if they have any reaction. DDs dairy allergy was tested 3 times before I was confident that she had it. It's been tested a few lore times since then with the same reaction.

I was very sceptical to start with, so I wad very careful not to bias the results by telling her what I was doing and if she had no reaction to exposure I would have reintroduced no issue.

When I went to GP and explained what we had done and the results she was perfectly happy with how we had done things

2-12% of babies might have CMPI but the study upthread said that only 4 in over 1000 babies were sensitive enough to it to exhibit symptoms based on the tiny amount that gets into breast milk. That's not very many at all, and certainly not a good reason to go recommending eliminating dairy to any breastfeeding mother with a fussy baby.

"because GPs are general practitioners - they do not have in-depth knowledge on every medical subject."

This is true, and it is why all this is so problematic - there are so many issues where people have to manage their own diagnoses according to the tools available to them.

BUT it still bothers me that we are so quick to say: Women! Limit Your Eating! It might not work but Go There First!
The tone on this thread bothers me too - the incredulous, outraged dismissal of the mother's nutrition, pleasure or convenience as of even the slightest relevance.

I can assure you that if you have a baby who is sick when you eat dairy, it is no hardship to give it up.

My pleasure was in seeing my baby stop suffering. My life became much more conveniant when I didn't spend half of it trailing round doctors with my sick baby and the other half dealing with mountains of laundry. It was also pretty convenient to be able to get some sleep and rest from worrying about my underweight failing to thrive baby.

I ate really well when I was breastfeeding and I actually think it is a bit offensive to all the women on this thread who gave up dairy to suggest that they were not nourishing themselves properly.

Dairy is not the be all and end all of nutrition and the average pint of supermarket milk of piece of cheese is a highly industrial food - and comes from the cow equivalent of the battery chicken.

But the whole point made by many on this thread is that cutting out dairy does not necessarily equate to poor nutrition, loss of pleasure, or massive inconvenience. It can be a bit tricky sometimes but I can hand on heart say that it's far, far, preferable to living with a CMPI baby that's reacting to milk proteins. Now that`s going to lead to all three of the outomes you foresee.

I cannot see how this is a feminist issue. I tell you what is disempowering - not being able to leave the house because you're at risk of being covered in waves of acidy sick before you get to the end of the road!

WRT the 2-12% of babies stats.... very few babies in this country are EBF for very long at all. I think on very many of the threads where CMPI is mooted the baby is having supplemental formula.

I don't see incredulous, outraged dismissal anywhere on this thread. I just see people wiyh babies who have suffered, people who have consequently suffered themselves, hoping to save other mums and babies from a similar experience.

Op you make it sound like dairy is something no one can live without, it's actually very simple. The very fact that this would be such an issue for you makes me think that you must eat a diet very heavy in dairy.
Maybe you should try to eat a more balanced diet.

This is crazy. No one is saying:

"if you are bfing, and eating dairy while you are do so is definitely making your baby ill, you must carry on doing it anyway."

No is even saying:

"if you are bfing, and eating dairy while you are do so might be making your baby ill, you must carry on doing it anyway, and make no effort to find out whether this is the case."

i am saying:

I am tired of hearing "cut this out" "cut that out" directed at women as a universal panacea

Then don't, it's your choice.

I think possibly underlying this concern for giving mothers 'spurious advice' is contempt for the idea of intolerances generally, which is understandable if you have never had children with allergies or intolerances.

I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head there Ragusa. I encounter this contempt fairly regularly. The attitude soon changes when you produce an epipen though.

I bet that my DS is not recorded as showing evidence of allergy symptoms while being breast fed, because my GP refused to believe it was possible.

It's really not that difficult to go dairy free, we eat out every week. Yes it is a bit more of a pain, but even my local corner shop has dairy free margarine and soya and rice milk now. You don't have to go to specialist shops, there is a wide variety of dairy free substitutes available in the supermarkets now.

Hah, now I must have a problem with my diet! It's getting ridiculous. Some people are vegetarian, that doesn't mean I'd find it easy to give up meat. I like meat! I like cheese too. And the stuff in my cupboard that contains milk or casein or whey powder or sour cream or butter or....

That doesn't make me a bad person.

Who said you're a bad person?

There is a definite sense of superiority coming from certain dairy-free elements on this thread.

And there's a definite sense of an in-superiority complex from one person in particular

Really? It has been suggested that I didn't give up dairy because I found it all too difficult, then you suggest that if I don't want to give it up then I mustn't eat a balanced diet. Then we have the posters suggesting that a diet with milk in is unhealthy and milk is full of pus.

People are allowed to give their opinions and stories about what worked for them. That's the greatness of a site like this.
Grown women can then decide whether to follow the advice or not. If it makes a difference for them, then great. If not, then what has been lost?

For some women and their children the difference is amazing and may never have been achieved just by going to the doctors and hearing 'oh it's colic' or 'well, they will grow out of it'.

I really fail to see what the problem is.

Is "in-superiority" something like inferiority?

If you go on a thread about fussy babies, people will also swear blind that any number of colic cures helped..including many that medical science has found definitively not to perform beyond placebo...

But hey - ragusa isn't that stupid...so presumably we must infer no one else on here is either...so why the cast iron determination that infacol works...or gripe water...or homeopathy...or Reikki...or applied kinesiology...

What an enigma! I do SO hope someone can explain this puzzle.....

ICB

You worry me sometimes. You seem to be on a one person campaign to debunk absolutely everything all the time. How miserable your life must be if you never have any hope that anything can help your child. You got lucky with your child. That they managed to bread feed exclusively had no dietary requirements and somehow made it to nursery before figuring out the difference between girls and boys and whatever else.

I wonder , if you will be this smug and this scepticle and live with such hopelessness if you ever have a child that just doesn't fit your plans.

Be careful what you criticise because one day you might find yourself in similar positions and needing advice.

Breast feed - not bread feed.

For the last bloody time, true CMPI/ CMPA does not result in 'a fussy baby'. It can be life-threatening. I think I am done here: it's all got a bit silly.

Heh - shows what you know...I was all over these boards asking for advice when DD had colic and I was contemplating suicide from the depths of PND.

If that is a perfect parenting experience then fuck me but I wouldn't want a bad one.

But actually that is why I am against all the pseudo advice. If I had followed the crap advice I would never have resolved DD's colic issues. If I had followed the other crap advice on PND I might not be here annoying you now.

Happily I have a science degree that enabled me to pick out the statistical wheat from the chaff with relative easy....

But just because some people have the tools to understand how RCT's work doesn't mean everyone does - as MN provides daily evidence of. For this reason anyone with a conscience should be doing what they can to limit the flow of misinformation based on that good old heady mixture of anecdote and old wives tale.