I've posted in recent months about the difficulties I've had breast feeding my son. In particular that I seemed to be feeding him all the time, he never seemed satisfied, he had many many poo-y nappies each day which increasingly became green and frothy, he had excessive wind and was very troubled by it...and I'd noticed that my milk was very watery without much fat apparent when it separated on cooling. I'd wondered about foremilk/ hindmilk imbalance amongst other things.
Today I read an article in the British Medical Journal discussing excessive crying in babies and it referred to something called Functional Lactose Overload, the description of which summed up all the problems we had.
I just wanted to share it here as it's something I'd never heard of and it might ring true for other people who are having similar problems.
Here's an excerpt:
Functional lactose overload
As a breast feed progresses and the volume of milk consumed by the baby decreases, the proportion of lipid in the feed rises. This creamier milk slows the baby?s gut transit time and stimulates cholecystokinin to produce satiety. Functional lactose overload occurs when the breast feeds do not contain enough fat, resulting in rapid milk transit through the intestine. Undigested lactose then ferments in the colon, and the baby may have poor satiety, explosive or frothy stools, a tympanic abdomen, crying, and the desire to feed very often.23 A randomised controlled trial of 77 infants at 5 weeks of age showed that those with colic had lower plasma cholecystokinin concentrations.24 A randomised controlled trial of 302 breastfeeding mother-baby pairs that compared different breastfeeding techniques also found that functional lactose overload was significantly associated with infant crying.25
Link to full article:
www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7772