Should I switch to formula?

[flyingbeet]

My LO is 7 months. She's exclusively breastfed and loves it. She loves to comfort feed and whenever she's upset I latch her on and it's the only thing that quickly calms her down. At night while we co-sleeps she latches on and off through the night. I love the bond that we have created. However she suffers from a couple allergies. Some of them I have found and eliminated and others I still have yet to discover. Of course I'm miserable cutting so much out of my diet and feel like I could still be eating something that's bothering her. I was thinking on starting her on hypoallergenic formula. She's never drank from a bottle and I know hypoallergenic formula taste bitter so that's going to be a struggle of it's own to start giving her.

I just feel like Im not 100% sold on giving her formula. I like how she relies on me for comfort and how I can provide it through feeding her. Is that selfish of me? I think about being strong and continuing to cut out foods in my diet but I don't know if I'll be able to do it. I don't want to start her on formula and then regret it and keep going back and forth with formula and breastfeeding.

It can be hard to get an older baby on to the formula. It does taste foul and it's thin which can trigger reflux.

We managed to get my daughter from breastfeeding to alfamino formula at 11 months though. She had a bottle aversion and couldn't look at a bottle. Getting her over this was harder than getting her to accept the formula! We had started trying to get her on formula at 8 months and had been using it in food to get her used to the taste of it. In the end I went into hospital and she had to go home to dad. She didn't feed for 26h and then was formula fed until 2!

She has 20 food allergies and I was on a very limit diet and had treatment resistant depression and was in a pretty desperate place by the time I got her on to formula. If I had been able to get combifeeding to work when she was more like 8 months I think it would have been a different situation. I lost 16% body weight breastfeeding and was very underweight too.

I would ask the GP for a tub alfamino or neocate these are amino acid formulas and are dairy and soya free. My daughter needed alfamino as neocate has coconut in which my daughter was allergic too. Try then odd bottle, try the formula in some food to see how they are with the taste and you can go from there.

Following this because my I have a strong suspicion my 5mo has a dairy allergy. Excessive vomiting and faltering growth until I gave up dairy, when the vomiting pretty much stopped. I'm also wondering about soy because when I eat vegan choc with soya in it she starts vomiting again. I'm miserable not eating dairy, it's really affecting my life! I've always struggled to keep weight on and I think I'm going to struggle to get enough calories in, which obviously won't help her weight gain either I guess.

Is the hypo allergenic formula horrible then? She does happily drink from a bottle but we've been giving lactose free formula once a day (to help with her weight) and noticing a lot of vomiting again - I now know that could be because it's CMPA rather than lactose intolerance.
Anyway sorry to hijack your thread but just to say I have exactly the same dilemma and not sure what to do either. And I'm v nervous about weaning.

Also,

If it was lactose intolerance removing dairy from your diet wouldn't help as all mammalian milks, including human breastmilk contain lactose. Breastfeed babies with lactose intolerance typically get very poorly.
They taste foul but once adjusted they can take it. They often recommend mixing it with expressed milk or small amount of regular formula to get used to the taste. When we were trying to get by daughter on to the formula the bottle aversion was harder to get around than the taste of the formula. Once she was taking it from a bottle that was it she took it happily. You can add things like vanilla to help with the taste if there is an adjustment period.

My dietician recommended lots of hidden fats to help my weight loss. At the worst I was free from dairy, soya, eggs, all nightshades (tomatoes etc) all legumes, coconut, beef fish turkey and pea protein. I started predominantly vegetarian but had to start eating meat as pretty much all vegetarian food was off the menu.

@Superscientist thank you, that's so interesting and helpful. She's definitely not unwell at all so it can't be lactose intolerance. She also has no other symptoms (eczema, pain etc) apart from the vomiting, but we have a paeds appointment next week because she's dropped 2 centiles so I'm hoping they can give more guidance. The vomiting has stopped now I've stopped dairy and soy so I'm thinking it must be an allergy. I was hoping not because I read the percentage of breastfed babies with CMPA is less than 1%, but I guess we must be v unlucky... I also have an older child with a severe nut allergy so it will be a very restricted diet household.

Anyway, thanks so much for your advice - I'll discuss with the doctor what's best to do in terms of formula or not. At least she happily takes a bottle, I suppose we could give the hypo allergenic stuff a go.

Ask for neocate or alfamino. They are completely dairy and soya free.
I was fobbed off at 4.5 months that it was unlikely to be allergies and if it was it would be much easier for me to remove food. I think if I could have got combifeeding to work it would have made the world of difference to my mental and physical health.

@Superscientist I've got althera formula. It's dairy and soy free but I am going to look into it more before giving it to my DD. I don't think it's an amino acid formula. I am trying to get her used to drinking from a bottle. I'm giving her water and I'm thinking of giving her expressed milk. I hope she takes it well. That's a good idea, to mix the formula with food. I will be giving it a try!

I'm continuing to find allergies. Yesterday i gave her food containing garlic and she projectile vomited and it made her stomach very bloated. This is the second time it's happened. I don't know how long I can go like this, cutting things from my diet. She heavily relies on breastfeeding to go to sleep too so I'm going to have to tackle feeding and sleeping together.

It sounds like you went through a tough journey 😢. Thank you for sharing your advice. It's so lonely when other mum's around you aren't going through the same thing and doctors aren't being very supportive.

@ThisSharpNavyRaven I know it's so hard cutting out stuff from our diet! Milk and soy are in nearly everything and I'm a big dessert person😭. Initially I thought it couldn't be CMPA because it's not common. I've been back and forth with the doctors and all of them told me it's not and what my baby was experiencing is 'normal.' Her stomach got so inflamed she started to get bloody stools so I took things into my own hands and cut out dairy. I saw a significant improvement although it took around 4 weeks for her to feel better and 3 months for her stools to have no blood. She was still having loose stools and I could tell something was still affecting her but I kept denying it and thought I was overthinking because other allergies aren't as common and surely my baby isn't that unlucky. I finally spoke to the dietician and she said 'It's probably not egg, it could be soy". She told me to cut out soy and then booked an appointment 6 months later leaving it to myself. Thankfully I was able to get another appointment in a month. I hope it goes well. I've found a lot more allergies since then. Guess what, it was egg allergy🥲

Weaning was daunting to think about. I didn't know how I would know if what I was feeding her was affecting her or if it was something I ate. However weaning her has been helpful. I didn't introduce anything new to my diet and gave my baby the same food for 3 days to see if she would have a reaction. Before weaning I kept a food dairy to see any patterns. I noticed she would feel poorly on days I would be eating eggs or having apple. I wanted to test it out when weaning and I was right, her symptoms became worse. So now I have cut both of those from my diet and she is doing so much better.

It's definitely hard but I do believe there is light at the end of the tunnel. I have progressed a lot and it's become a bit more manageable. I think switching to formula will help so much because I'll be able to eat what I want without worrying it'll affect baby. Plus the more foods I test the more I'll know what to avoid.

@flyingbeet yes you are right that isn't an amino acid formula it is dairy based that's partially broken down. They might be ok with it but babies that react through breastfeeding often react. I would probably start with just an Oz in a bottle of expressed milk.

My daughter reacts to alliums and can't have any onions or garlic! You might want to be careful with onions too. Learning about food groups really helped me identify more allergens. She can only have potatoes from the nightshade family but it's only a couple of legumes she can't have so it's not an exact science but it did help.

Honestly, the breastmilk despite the challenge of her symptoms is 1000% better for her. Your strong instinct on continuing is because it's exactly what she needs. Could your GP refer you for an alergy test? My breastfed baby actually slept and breastfed the entire way through all the tiny pin pricks apart from the last two, the staff were amazed!

If you need a reminder on why you don't want to switch baby to a highly processed food, have a read of this https://human-milk.com/pages/whats-in-breastmilk

I appreciate your sentiments @Anne511 but this is what got me admitted to a psychiatric ward! Very underweight, unable to function with a baby that still cried for the majority of the time because we hadn't been able identify all of her allergies

My daughter was categorical better on formula because despite only having about 10-15 foods in my diet she was still reacting to foods in my diet. Trying to juggle her diet and my diet once weaning was impossible. She didn't start eating until we identified all of her allergens at 13 months. She had stopped gaining weight and weight was falling off me and my mood was getting lower and lower and the bond with my baby vanished. It took 18 months of therapy to recover it.

My daughter has delayed allergies so the tests would show nothing. I have friends who's babies anaphylactic allergies didn't show up skin pricks until 4!

Breastmilk is amazing and if you can get elimination diets to work even breastfeeding allergy babies can be readily possible but some times for mum and baby breastfeeding is not in their best interests or solely breastfeeding isn't in their best interests, I think if I could have got my daughter to take a bottle of formula once a day it would have released the pressure and allowed me to breastfeed for longer and most likely avoid the admission to the mother and baby unit. Some times the choice between formula and breastfeeding doesn't solely come down the pros and cons of what is in the milks but a holistic look at the whole situation

@Superscientist whole-heartedly agree. I can see myself going down the route you sadly found yourself on without some help from formula. Despite cutting out dairy and soy my daughter is still not gaining weight and I just feel I don't have the time in terms of her growth to mess around with various elimination diets. A couple more months of 'failure to thrive' and I'm worried I'll have a very poorly baby on my hands. If I know I can rely on a couple of bottles of formula which doesn't make her sick whilst I tweak my diet to find what suits her I will feel a lot better. Sorry you had to go through all of that and you sharing your experience is definitely helpful in helping other people like me who are at risk of it.

I'm not sure responses like that are particularly helpful @Anne511 , it's coming across as condescending and patronising on a post in which we are all asking for help in a situation where breastfeeding is not working for the health of our babies. As @Superscientist a skin prick test will not show anything in many cases.

For anyone worrying about the impact of formula on the future health of their children, my eldest never had a drop of anything other than breast milk and has severe, life threatening allergies only diagnosed age 4 along with a terrible immune system which means any small virus knocks him awfully - often involving hospitalisation. My middle child who had a mix of formula and breast milk from birth is strong as an ox, never ever gets anything worse than a runny nose and has absolutely no allergies or intolerances. I'm not attributing this to anything other than luck (though of course we are investigating the causes of my eldest's health problems) but it certainly shows that a purely breast fed baby does not necessarily mean better health in childhood. ,@ann