CMPA - 7 week old

[Asja]

Hi all

my first thead so hopefully I have posted correctly. Just looking to see if anyone has had similar with their baby. As I’m getting increasingly worried. This is my 2nd baby and honestly took for granted how well my first fed/gained weight and never having to change formulas etc.

My daughter is 7 weeks she was very unsettled from around 2-3 weeks which was initially put down to ‘colic’ so we switched to comfort milk which seemed to help a bit however 3 weeks later she was refusing bottles arching her back crying in pain when we were trying to feed and dropped a down from 50th to 25th centile. She would only take 60ml max, the health visitor suggested 2 hourly feeds due to the volume she was taking and weight concerns, we were already feeding on demand or 3 hourly. When we started this on the comfort milk she was screaming in pain and refusing milk even more she also came out in a rash and was sick clear liquid. Her poop had always been green and she was only going 2-3 days at a time.

it was then suggested she may have CMPA so she was prescribed nutrigen milk & omeprazole for possible silent reflux it took a few days however she was gradually increasing milk volumes taking around 100ml 3 hourly and seemed in a lot less pain. However she has been having very watery poops and her rash was still there and she’s still quite congested. I had the health visitor again today and her weight has stayed the same in 7 days dropping her now too the 9th centile. She also looked at the photo of her poop and says it looks oily and therefore may still be an allergy there of soya?

im feeling really disheartened as the health visitor isn’t happy with her weight and dropping centile so has said we need referred to a doctor. Her feeding was going much better the past week and had really thought the milk was making a difference and thought the allergy may just be taking time to come out her body with the rash ongoing. She feels due to there possibly still being an allergy she isn’t getting enough nutrients she only poops once daily and rarely sick. I feel like a bad mum and have been really trying to get the milk into her sometimes feeding 2 hourly if I feel she’s needing however she really doesn’t seem a hungry baby as refuses milk a lot (no longer crying) just not interested.

The health visitor has now prescribed SMA Alfamino… I’m just concerned at the changing of milks and worried if there could be something further wrong. She is also due her vaccinations next week which I am wondering if I should delay as I know they gave my son diarreah after and unwell. I worry with change of milks again then her vaccinations on top may set her back again.

sorry bit of a long one just wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation and if SMA alfamino helped? Can the prescription milk mean a slower weight gain if it’s missing some nutrients from the normal baby milk? And could this mean longer term her allergies may be more severe?

any help or works of encouragement would really help just now as I’m one stressed out mum. Thank you. Xx

This sounds the same as my DD at the start, exactly the same process, nutramigen and then alfamino, since she started alfamino we saw a huge difference so much better after just a few days, nutramigen didn’t agree with her at all, our process was longer than yours, we didn’t get everything sorted until she was 3 months

Alfamino and nutramigen are different types of "dairy free" formulas.
I would be giving alfamino a trial. There are two different types of hypoallergenic formula, extensively hydrolysed and amino acid.
The extensively hydrolysed formulas are dairy based but the dairy protein has been broken down. Imagine getting a page of a newspaper and cutting it up randomly. You might be able to pick up a piece of paper and realise what the article was about but maybe not. For some babies this is enough for them to not recognise the milk as milk and they settle. For others they can still recognise it as dairy and still being symptomatic. The amino acid formulas are completely dairy free but have all the individual components of dairy. To keep the analogy going it's like you have printed out every word from the page of separate pieces of paper.
If there is no or only partial improvements with an extensively hydrolysed formula the next step would be an amino acid formula. Nutramigen is an extensively hydrolysed formulas and alfamino is an amino acid formula. All baby formulas dairy and hypoallergenic all have to the necessary nutrition and formula for babies under 12 months is tightly regulated. It is more likely that they are still reacting to the dairy proteins in the milk.
They might have reflux in addition to the cmpa, my daughter has so she required reflux treatments alongside me removing allergens from my diet, followed by alfamino on prescription.

There are two aspects of allergies sensitivity and severity. My daughter has 20 food allergies and she is very sensitive to even tiny amounts of her allergens in her diet and hasn't outgrown any aged nearly 5. However, she doesn't have severe symptoms. Sensitivity and severity do not necessarily correlate

My son had cmpa as a baby, and I remember it taking a while for the symptoms to go completely. I was breast feeding, but he was prescribed nutramigen which he’d have a bottle of in the evenings. Iirc, it can take a month or so (maybe 2) for symptoms to clear.

Luckily, they can grow out of it. My son had grown out of it completely at 10 months old, we found out accidentally when I gave him something with milk in as I forgot to check the label. I then tried him on normal formula as his nutramigen hadn’t arrived in the post (and at this point I’d stopped bfing) and he was completely fine with it. He’s not allergic to anything now.

I hope alfamino works well! It is so hard to have a baby with cmpa, especially since it takes so long for the symptoms to clear.