To think my son has an allergy?

[chilledteacher]

Posting in AIBU for traffic, might not be the best place.

My 4'month old is EBF. He has always been a bit sick after feeding (normal posseting) but this seems to be increasing in volume (most of a feed). It stinks. He also has very loose poos which seem a bit mucus like (and smell a bit fishy) and he wakes up at night like he's in pain- drawing his legs up to his tummy. I've noticed a slight wheeze in the past 24 hours.
In himself he doesn't seem ill so I was wondering if this sounds like an allergy to dairy in my diet?
I will be making him a GP appointment in the morning (and hopefully will get him seen this side of Christmas- don't think I can blag an urgent appointment for it) but was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this?

It's possible. I think the only way you'll know for sure is to cut out dairy from your diet & see if he improves.

Also, if you've noticed a wheeze I'd push for an urgent appointment. My Dr will always see under 4s the same day, I imagine (hope) most operate the same way.

Get him checked for lactose intolerance, it’s not an allergy. My kids both had the exact same symptoms you describe, the fishy poo being the biggest give away.
Try cutting dairy out of your diet and see if it helps? If not you may be better off putting him onto a non-dairy formula (at your doctors recommendation obviously)

Hope your little one gets better soon

Sorry I didn’t mean it couldn’t be an allergy, but an intolerance is much more likely and also preferable. Allergies can be so dangerous, intolerances are manageable and not life threatening

Its actually more likely to be a reaction to cows milk protein rather than lactose which is the sugar in all milks.

Cutting dairy out of your diet would not help with lactose intolerance as breast milk is full of lactose anyway and changing your diet would not affect it. Cutting dairy would help if it was cows milk protein allergy

More likely to be cows milk protein intolerance. Be prepared for a fight - prescription formula is £30 a tin approximately

Cut dairy and see if it helps. The test for lactose intolerance is a reducing sugars and done on a stool sample. DD's nappies stank and made me heave, looked like chopped, cooked spinach. I cut diary and it helped but obviously didn't totally eradicate the issue til she went onto just dairy free milk at about 10 months.

If it's a cow's milk protein allergy then there's no need to prepare for a fight - presumably you'd just cut dairy from your diet and continue to breastfeed? Much more palatable to the baby than milk-free formula, which tastes appalling.

I think it's urgent enough for your GP to see him before Xmas as he seems to be in pain and the fact that you have mentioned a wheeze. If not, could your health visitor maybe advise you.

Hope he's ok, poor baby.

A wheezing 4 month old absolutely warrants an emergency appointment op.

If he's ebf then intolerances are actually very rare - don't rush to cut things out. Definitely see the go ASAP though, a wheezing 4 month old should be seen to. Some of mine have got like this with low level colds, the extra phlegm makes them more possety and get into their poo too.

If he's ebf then intolerances are actually very rare - don't rush to cut things out.

Unfortunately this is not true. The rise of allergies is astronomical.

OP my baby was the same and he has a severe dairy allergy (I found out for sure when I was weaning). I exclusively breast fed and had to cut out milk and eggs out of my diet because he was so allergic.

He had green, muscousy, acidic smelling dirty nappies as well. Stomach ache, reflux etc.

Lactose intolerance is very very uncommon in children. Cows milk protein allergy is more likely.

Different allergies present differently. Some allergies aren't life threatening.

Hard to say for sure. The kicker here is that it's very common for viruses to go through the respiratory and GI tracts both in a child. (This is why you sometimes see loose poo with a cold, and why you can see vomiting and diarrhea with flu in kids, though it's rare in adults.) If the abdominal pain and loose stools are recent it could well be a virus. If there's a wheeze I would definitely have him checked out.

Hard to say whether it's an allergy, intolerance, or simple infection at this time.

Thanks all. I'll phone the GP tomorrow and if I get no joy, will contact HV as well. Shouldn't be a need for a fight, I plan to keep EBF'ing and will happily cut things from my diet to make him better, just want to know what I'm working with before I start weaning in 2 months. :)

Sorry I didn't see ebf

@TruckLoadofSubtleGlitter - DS2 had to see a specialist gastroenterologist as a baby, and he was the first to tell us this. Total cmpa prevalence is something like 3% of babies, and that is primarily among formula fed babies who have early exposure to cows milk proteins. Double blind testing puts it at something like 1% of ebf babies.

The paediatrician said he was concerned that almost every mother he'd seen with an unsettled baby or one with stomach issues had (like me) at some point stopped dairy. Milk being seen as such an issue is putting lots of us at risk of osteoporosis later in life, and unnecessarily restricting a lot of children's diets.

Doesn't mean it's impossible for it to be cmpa but barring bloody stools etc it's still quite unlikely.

DS2 had to see a specialist gastroenterologist as a baby, and he was the first to tell us this.

Funnily enough so did we. We also see one of the top allergy specialists in the country (Dr Fox).
And it's a fact that since 1997 admissions for anaphylaxis have risen by 600%.

So it's not rare.

At all.

Doesn't mean it's impossible for it to be cmpa but barring bloody stools etc it's still quite unlikely.

I agree with you about self-diagnosis of allergy and allergy prevalence, but whether cmpa is likely or not probably depends a lot more on family history of allergic illness.

Babies with cmpa do not necessarily have blood in their stools. My DD was severely allergic to milk as a baby/young child. Never had bloody stools.

Incidentally my DD was highly allergic to the whey protein fraction, which meant that she also reacted to breast milk (regardless of my own diet; I was strictly milk-free while breastfeeding both my children because we have a very strong family history of allergy).

Also: wheezing in a 4 month old needs a doctor's opinion.

It could be related to the reflux, it could be a sign of allergy, or it could mean your baby has a low level viral infection. All of these need medical advice.

Double blind testing puts it at something like 1% of ebf babies.

And not all of those will react to CMPA in their mother's diet. We had no idea DS had CMPA until he was weaned at 6 months and his lip swelled up the first time he ate cheese. EBF until that point, but there was a family history of atopic disease including several family members with CMPA in infancy as we discovered later.

Don’t confuse lactose intolerance with dairy allergy as they are completely different things which a lot of people aren’t aware of.

And there is no such thing as an ‘intolerance’ these days, it is solely classed as an allergy. Just because the baby doesn’t have an anaphylactic reaction does not mean they aren’t allergic to it. Look up IgE and non-IgE reactions as that is how the allergy is assessed.

My son was EBF and was diagnosed with CMPA when he was
9 weeks old due to really bad skin and pain after feeds. I cut out dairy and within a month he was a completely different baby.

On a few occasions I trialled having dairy (which is standard procedure in order to confirm the allergy) and both times my son reacted awfully within hours after a breast feed.

He is now 16 months, still breast fed, and still can’t tolerate my having full milk in my diet. I can have other forms of dairy now, melted cheese, chocolate etc, but yogurts and cows milk are an absolute no-go.

When he has a reaction to dairy his nappies are vile! Very loose and strong smelling, very acidic.

Your baby’s symptoms definitely sound symptomatic of CMPA so even if the GP brushes you off (a lot of them think breast fed babies can’t be allergic for some reason) just remove dairy from your diet anyway and see what happens. As an aside, soya is a very similar protein to that found in cow’s milk so it is usually advised to remove that too.

Removing dairy and soya can be very hard at first but when you see an improvement (hopefully) in your baby then it makes it all worth it.

If you do remove dairy the general rule is that after 6 weeks have a dairy binge (I had a massive chocolate milkshake and lots of chocolate) and see what happens - if your baby’s symptoms return then it confirms the allergy.

If that is the case then go back to the GP and ask to be referred to an Allergy Team. You will also need a referral to a Dietician but your HV can do that.

Good luck OP

Mine has CMPA and would have 5 loose nappies every morning, scream when I fed her, and had really bad skin on her face. At 8 months she can now tolerate cakes and biscuits in my diet (hurrah!) but not milk or cheese. I won't try her direct within it for a few months yet.

Sometimes it can occur after jabs. Has he had his 16 week jabs recently?

just remove dairy from your diet anyway and see what happens.

Bear in mind though that a failure to improve when you remove dairy from your own diet doesn't exclude an allergy.

I avoided milk products through both pregnancies, DD had reflux/ loose stools/ very bad eczema all the way through breastfeeding. All these improved overnight when she went onto soya formula age 1. She had a confirmed cows milk allergy but it turned out she was allergic to breast milk too. When she was a toddler she once drank some expressed breast milk intended for her baby brother, and had a massive reaction :/