Swapping to cow's milk causing vomiting?

[jesstangle]

DD was breastfed until 10.5 months, at which point, with my return to work imminent, I swapped her on to formula. She made the transition absolutely fine.
She is now 12 months and we have started to introduce full fat cow's milk.
Although she has a bit of a cold at the moment, she seems to be getting very snotty and coughing a lot at night - when we give her cow's milk this appears to get much worse, and a few times now, she has vomited after her night-time bottle.
Has anyone come across this before? I was under the impression that formula was made from cow's milk, so if she had an alllergy, it would have presented itself a couple of months ago when I stopped breast feeding??

Formula has stuff removed although not sure what.

My friend's DS as a toddler could tolerate formula but not cows milk... he had formula until around 3-4 (even took to nursery for when they had milk) but now can tolerate normal milk.

FWIW my nephew had a cows milk allergy and even if SIL drank any milk (or ate anything diary) (ie whilst BFing) there was a reaction. He's now 3.5 and he's grown out of it too.

HI jesstangle - I saw your post in the allergies page.

As MumNW says, although formula is made from cow's milk, it is altered significantly during the manufacturing process. I think if your DD had an allergy to the proteins in cow's milk you would have noticed when she started taking formula (or even while you were still bf, as some does get through into your milk). Your DD might be a bit intolerant to cow's milk (which is a slightly different thing) -that would perhaps explain the vomiting.

Not sure what to say really - maybe try excluding cow's milk and see what happens? (there are plenty of other ways for your DD to get the nutrients she needs)

I should add - if you are really concerned, see a doctor and maybe try to get referred to a specialist. Allergies can develop at any time and it's certainly worth checking out.

We introduced cows milk at 12 m but as he got in a rash, I just put him back into his formula for another six months, at 18m we started on milk and as there were no rashes we though it was ok.

DS was allergic to milk but we didn't notice how bad it was until he was 2.5 years old, when we were asked to remove it completely after he tested positive"

Within 2 weeks the permanent stuffy nose was gone, so was the wheezing, the night coughing, the bloating, the eczema and the constipation. It sounds ridiculous that it took that long to find out but we were constantly rebuffed by GPs who thought the above where colds, viruses, or that it was just that DS was like that. He seemed to be convinced that because there was no projectile vomit or diahorrea then it could be milk allergy

DS is no longer allergic to milk but intolerant to it, meaning his sympthoms build up over a few days, I don't think lactose is the problem, as he has never been worse than when he was put in Pepti (a lactose free formula), but it is also true that he has never been better than when he stopped milk alltogether.

... having said that, we stopped milk altogether, at a time that DS didn't need milk so much and we could substitute the lack of calcium in the diet with other things. Please don't remove milk or formula without medical supervision, as substitutes need to be found.

Thanks so much for your responses. We've been giving her formula again for the past two nights and haven't had any vomitting and she's far less snotty... gonna try and reintroduce cow's milk in a few months, and do it very slowly!

DD was sicky / poo-y when I started giving her cows milk at 1yo. It took a few false starts and a few more months before she was ok with it. She was fine with the hideously expensive toddler milk so I used that instead.