Can future food allergies show up in breastfeeding?

[YummyMam]

My 9 week old EBF DD clearly does not like me eating cheese, particularly soft cheese, and has shown this by sicking up most of her feed after I eat any. As annoying as it is to have to lay off the brie and goats cheese for another few months (as if during pregnancy wasn't bad enough), the thing that worries me is that she may turn out to have a dairy intolerance. Has anyone got any experience of this? I really started to worry when she sicked up quite a bit of her mid morning feed when all I had had to eat was cereal (with milk obviously). Am I worrying about nothing or is this an early sign of a dairy intolerance?

DS developed eczema at 8 weeks, now 8 months and he's finally had a blood test (RAST) to tell me he's allergic to loads of things - including dairy. He was breast fed until 6 months and there was no great change in his skin when he moved onto normal formula, and again no change when we began weaning. Anyway my point is that I firmly believe that your breast milk is affected by your diet. DS was consuming all the things he's allergic to via me. Medical opinion seems to vary on this point and your health visitor and doctor will probably insist breast is best and it cannot do any harm. That may be true but I should have put myself on a diet and removed dairy etc. from my diet so as to remove it from his.

Having said all this I don't think there's any reason to think you are doing her any harm. If she gives an instant response by being sick then alter your diet accordingly and your milk will be just lovely. I'm not sure you can prevent an intolerance although I think they can have a level of tolerance and it's best to to exceed it.

A friend's ds is very dairy intolerant (the most horrendous excema as a baby that I have ever seen). She ended up stopping breastfeeding him and weaning him onto soya formula because she found it impossible to exclude enough dairy from her own diet...

My DD was admitted to hospital 5 weeks ago with blood mixed in with her poo. The consultant told me the following day what I had finally worked out for myself over the previous 4 months - she had a dairy intolerance. She would vomit if I had cheese, she had terrible, painful wind at both ends, and seemed constipated but passed runny stools.

Apparently, babies can have a cow milk protein intolerance (NOT LACTOSE INTOLERANCE). Cow milk proteins pass into the bloodstream, into the breast milk, and so into the babies system. If you think you might have this problem, cut all dairy out of your diet (soya milk, sunflower or soya marge etc is doable when it's for your LO) and wait and see. It takes 3 weeks to get it out of your milk, and a further 3 weeks to get it out of your babies body but BOY is it worth it! My DD is unrecognisable, so happy and relaxed, sleeping through from 7-6, it's amazing.

I should point out that we haven't even had the results back from the hospital confirming this was the problem. I don't need it. I knew there was something wrong and couldn't get the doctors to listen originally, and now it's fixed!

Kellymom.com has something about this too.

It is possible, IME.

Although, often with a cows milk protein allergy, there isnt an allergy to goats or sheeps milk. Are you sure she has the same reaction with goats cheese?

Perhaps if you exclude all cows milk products but continue with goats and sheeps cheeses it may be different?

My ds reacts when I have any dairy (including goat and sheep) or soya. I have been told by the pediatric gastroenterologist that he will probably grow out of it if I'm really scrupulous about excluding this (or put him on hydrolised formula).

The way I was told to run it is to exclude all dairy, beef and soya for 3 months, then do a trial. If ds reacted (he did ) then exclude it for a further 6 months. And so on until he does not react.

Most children grow out of it by age 3 (though I don't think I will be bf for that long if he continues to react).

Yes - my nephew used to break out in a rash within 20mins of feeding if my sister had been eating almonds, and by age 2 was diagnosed as anaphylactic to other tree-nuts.