Has anyone ever breastfed a baby with eczema and allergies

[Hope54321]

How did breastfeeding impact your baby’s skin?

Did you feel the need to continue with breastfeeding longer than you expected due to multiple allergies, especially cow’s milk.

What did you give as alternative when you weaned baby off breast milk?

I’m asking because I’m breastfeeding and my baby has eczema and also is allergic to and intolerant to many foods.

Yes, still breastfeeding DD 11.5 months old. She has eczema and egg/peanut/banana allergies.

She's fine with cows milk though afaik.

Breastfeeding is a comfort to her when she's itchy and tired if it's a bad night but if I slip up and have something with egg in it seems to affect her massively. Although not necessarily egg as an ingredient more if I had an egg Mayo sarnie I've seen a big issue with her itching so have had to cut lots out.

@GalaxyGirl24

Yes, still breastfeeding DD 11.5 months old. She has eczema and egg/peanut/banana allergies.

She's fine with cows milk though afaik.

Breastfeeding is a comfort to her when she's itchy and tired if it's a bad night but if I slip up and have something with egg in it seems to affect her massively. Although not necessarily egg as an ingredient more if I had an egg Mayo sarnie I've seen a big issue with her itching so have had to cut lots out.

Do you notice your LO itching more during breastfeeding feeding or right after breastfeeding? I seem to notice this with my LO. I feel like everything I eat affects him.

DD2 has CMPA, soya and coconut allergies. Yes, I ended up ebf rather than combi feeding due to allergies. I think the pandemic had a bigger issue on me continuing to breast feeding.

I’m still bf her at 2 yrs old but only 2 feeds a day so she also has Oatley barista. Although now she is at stage 10 of the 12 stage milk ladder. I can’t get her to drink cow milk so I suspect she will stay her for a while.

Yes. I breasted my DS until he was 2 due to multiple allergies to milk, eggs, nuts, sesame and soya. I had to give up all these things otherwise he would react. Unfortunately some of them took longer to identify than others so he was very unsettled at night until he was about 18 months.

I tried with prescribed formula when he was 6 months old but he reacted to several of them and wouldn't take the one that he didn't react to. Hence feeding for so long.

We moved him onto oat milk once I stopped feeding him.

He's always been quite an itchy child but eczema improved massively once we'd identified all his allergies.

I breastfed dd till 2 years 3 months: allergies to egg and dairy, some eczema but not terribly bad - the odd flare up. I was on a full exclusion diet till she was a bit over one, from diagnosis at four months, as she reacted to allergens in my milk, then I followed the egg and dairy ladders (separately) until she could tolerate it in my milk.At that post, we started her on the dairy ladder, but it took over a year to get to the top of it and she remains at nearly three near the bottom rung of the egg ladder. I was only doing a feed in the morning and evening, and she was also getting oat milk - oatly barista, as that was what the dietitian recommended.

I found it so, so incredibly helpful to keep feeding at keeping the pressure off on the allergens. The dietitian was clear that latest research suggested the earliest exposure to allergens she could tolerate was the best way to reduce the risk of future anaphylactic reaction. So, even when I was literally on step two of the dairy ladder, it meant she had some tiny exposure through my milk, which was helping to some degree. It removed a degree of stress on us I think.

I would say it may have kept me feeding longer than I would have to some extent, more strengthened my resolve, but I didn't feel a mad urge to stop either: I night-weaned at about 10/11 months and did limit to morning and evening. If it wasn't for the pandemic I probably would have had to do work travel that may have cut it short earlier. She still had the egg allergies when I stopped feeding but a) I wanted to conceive and felt it was having an effect and b) I was over it at that point. I started to gradually reduce feeds at 2, and over about 3 months we just entirely gently stopped.

My breastfeeding journey was really positive especially with regards to the allergies and its one of the things I'm annoyed they don't tell you: I knew we had a family history with milk and I took probiotics in pregnancy (which did nothing!) but hadn't realised breastfeeding would be protective and then helpful as she transitioned out of it until we were literally post-diagnosis.

Both DH and I have strong personal and family histories of atopic conditions and food allergies so I fully expected at least some allergies in our children and I was right! DD has fairly mild eczema and asthma, DS1 had CMPA and awful eczema and asthma as a child though he's much better now and DS2 got the whole lot - eczema, asthma and multiple food allergies.
I found that excluding their allergens, especially cows milk from my diet whilst breastfeeding did help their skin quite a lot, but I still needed to be diligent with applying emollients regularly. Things like changing to hard flooring and using hypoallergenic bedding helped too. Its easy to get iver focused on food and forget about environmental allergies. DS2 is extremely sensitive to pollen and house dust mite so taking steps to minimise exposure to them was as important as his diet really.

I breastfed them all til they self weaned at between 3.5 and 5 years of age. I don't know whether the allergies made that much difference as I would have been happy to do that anyway, but I suppose it did give me an incentive to carry on as it seemed a lot easier than dealing with hypoallergenic formulas etc.

I've never really given much by the way of dairy alternatives. By the time my children had stopped breastfeeding they didn't really need milk in their diet and we don't consume a lot of dairy anyway. My DS is ok with soya and use a bit of soya or oat milk in cooking sometimes, and he has soya yoghurts. I tend to make meals that are naturally dairy free rather than use dairy alternatives and nobody in the family ever milk of any kind as a drink anyway.

Remember that most babies who are allergic to cows mill grow out of it by the time they are school age so you may not have to deal with these issues permanently. Have you seen a dietician? They can be very helpful in these circumstances so if you haven't seen anyone, definitely ask your doctor to arrange a referral. I hope things improve for you and your DC soon.

(Mostly) Breastfeeding my DD with eczema at almost 9 months. DH gives her a bottle of formula in the evening. We use a formula based on goats milk since she reacted to the cows milk one. We also only bathe her once a week. Her skin is doing much better now that we do that.

I'd like to add that I quite enjoy breastfeeding her so have no plans to stop. This has nothing to do with her eczema, more that she's a more content baby and so easily soothable by breastfeeding.

I did, for 2y 4m. DD has egg and cows milk allergies. I had to eliminate both of those from my diet while I breastfed her.

Now she just has soy milk as a drink and with cereal etc. It's the cheapest in our country, it's fortified with calcium and vitamin D, and for a plant milk it's high in protein and calories. It's also easily available in shops and cafes etc.

Her skin did improve once her allergies were identified but things like sunscreen, getting sweaty will still cause patches of eczema. It is such a pain.