Elimination diet advice needed

[MangoHedgehog]

Can anyone recommend an elimination diet to help me work out what is causing colic and excessive vomiting in my 3wk old DD? thank you...

Excessive vomiting needs checking out in a 3 week old, mango - presume you have done this?

Very, very unlikely that your diet is to 'blame' for vomiting; just about possible that colicky behaviour is linked to it - but in a 3 week old these symptoms could be anything. Can you describe them?

Hi Mango,

Have you ruled out other things first, like oversupply (any of this sound familiar?) ? Have you spoken to any BF supporters?

I gave up cheese first, which did ease the vom! Now am totally off dairy (im drinking rice or almond milk & im taking calcium suplements too. My little one is alot less pukey & less screamy (now 18 weeks think i have been off dairy for about a month), he doesnt like me drinking coffee either!

Hi Mango
The most likely dietary cause of colicky symptoms in a breastfed baby is dairy food. (Does your baby have reflux, either classic or silent? Up to 50% of reflux is caused/exacerbated by cows' milk protein intolerance.)

If your baby is intolerant of/allergic to cows' milk protein, s/he may also show the same symptoms with soy as the proteins are so similar (ditto goats' and sheep milk and products, sadly). So if you eliminate dairy (which you will need to do for at least a fortnight) it's best not to substitute with soy products.

My dc3 is 6 months old with various food intolerances, including allergies to cows' milk and soy. Alternatives are Oatly (oat
milk) or Rice Dream (rice milk), Pure (sunflower spread). Not found suitable yoghurt alternatives but I have got some Freedom vanilla frozen dessert to try.

I've been dairy-free for 4 months now and my boy has transformed from a congested, spotty, solemn and unresponsive baby to a cheerful, bright and 'chatty' thing with creamy milky (no pun intended) one!

Hope that helps

Well, I think diet may be involved as I cut out dairy three days ago, on the off chance it would make a difference, and her vomiting stopped pretty much straight away. The difference was amazing, really - she went from 10+ major pukes a day, some of them projectile-style, to just a couple of small possets which i wouldn't class as abnormal at all. However, what she still has are colicky trapped wind type symptoms. I don't know if this is because it's still early days and the cow's protein probably won't be completely eliminated from my system yet, or perhaps due to some other reason.

I think my let-down is fairly strong and she struggles with it a bit so I'm taking the kellymom advice and feeding on a slant so gravity slows it down a bit and also so her head is a bit upright and hopefully not taking in so much wind. Am also using Infacol and trying different wind relieving techniques i.e. tiger in the tree hold etc and trying to wind her properly too.

I'm just aware that my dairy elimination isn't very scientific and I should probably follow a proper elimination diet to make sure I have identified dairy correctly and make sure there aren't any other triggers too.

I believe it can take 3-4 Weeks for dairy to completely clear from your system, and if she is that sensitive then you need to watch out for hidden dairy in any processed food. But you should take to a doctor about the vomiting just to be sure.

Mango,
Glad you have already seen success with eliminating dairy. Sounds like you are on the right track. Allergy UK fact sheets on different food allergies/intolerances are very useful: www.allergyuk.org/downloads/factsheets/types-of-allergy/Milk%20Allergy.pdf

I would carry on as you are for the remainder of the fortnight - it may be that the trapped wind settles when dairy is completely eliminated from your milk, and if you exclude other foods or do anything different you won't know if any change in your baby's symptoms is down to going dairy-free or any new thing you try.

It may be - sadly - that you 'just' have a windy baby All 3 of mine have suffered to some extent! With dc3 (dairy allergy), the only thing I found that helped with the wind was Dentinox colic drops. He still wakes us with a dawn chorus of farts first thing!

Are you sure you are eliminating all dairy? Think cakes, biscuits, chocolate, pizzas, crisps...

Thanks Happygirl77, that link looks v useful. I'll see where we are at the end of the fortnight, and then i might experimentally eat a bit of cheese and see what happens... colic meds at the ready!