Please talk me through the alternatives to soya formula - advice before I hassle a doctor!!

[SamJohnsMum]

I am going to the doctors on Monday afternoon with DS who has a dairy allergy and is currently BF. I am looking for alternatives as I try to wean him off the boob and, as I've discussed on other threads, I'm not really happy with soya formula. Other formulas (expensive, available only on prescription) have been mentioned - something like nutrimen??!

Please can people with experience of these tell what they are and what I can ask for? Thanks x

I think what you're asking about are highly hydrolysed milk formulas. I'm not sure of the brand names. See here. There's info on soya formula here and before anyone suggests it, Goats' milk infant formulas and follow-on formulas based on goats' milk protein have not been approved for use in Europe (see first link).

This may also be of interest.

Hunting around a bit as I was intrigued, could the brand you mention be nutramigen? The other one that seems to be mentioned a lot is neocate (I think that one's a free amino acid one). There may well be others (pepti junior? like nutramigen?).

There are a few different hypoallergenic formulas. Cow and Gate Pepti is probably the most palatable but this contains hydrolysed whey (one of the major cows milk proteins) and in cases of severe allergy can still cause a substantial reaction (if the bit of the protein which causes the reaction is still in tact), then there is Nutramigen which is based on hydrolysed casein and tastes foul, then there is Neocate and Nutramigen AA (a new product) which are both man-made mixtures and are more kind of nutrient solutions than real milk (they are a mixture of amino acids, vitamins and fatty acids). From experience of these neocate tastes better than Nutramigen AA (which tastes a bit like regular nutramigen) but neocate also tastes horrible. These are usually only prescribed in the case of severe allery or multiple allergy because they are expensive (I think around £30 for a 400g tub). I got the doctor to prescribe me a tub of each of them in the first instance and tried them all out in order to see which got the best response (or more accurately the least bad response!) and I now use neocate to mix into ds2's food but he still won't drink it... Also try to get a referal to a dietician who can advise on a healthy dairy-free diet. I wouldn't be tempted to go down the goat/sheep formula route as 95% of children with cows milk allergy are also allergic to goat/sheep milk too (or can quickly become sensitised to them).

my 8 week old was put on nanny goat formula last week by the paed as he was on various others inc nutramigen and neocate and he couldnt tolerate either. same with ds1. in fact ds1 still cant eat soya (even in bread) abd still has delamere. very healthy weigh and height. ds2 feeds alot better on goats and suits him aswell. i doubt a gp would ever suggest goats milk but IF your LO had severe enough allergy and if it was the only milk they could take, you'd do it. i never regret it.

see what gp says then try to see dietician/pead

DD had cows milk allergy although not very severe.
We had a bit of a struggle persuading GP to prescribe other formulas: He said not enough knowledge but I wonder if expense came into it. We had to see a dietician first but that was actually a good thing. Then I'm afraid she absolutely refused the hypoallergenic formula we tried (Nutramigen) and I'm not surprised because it smelt minging to me too! We had various suggestions such as mixing with ebm and even putting milkshake powder in it but no way would she have it. Apparently it is not uncommon with bf babies who try it later in life (DD was 9mo).

I'm not sure of your situation as I haven't seen other threads but might it be an option to just carry on bf?
I wanted to use formula because I was going back to work and couldn't express at work. In the end I actually just carried on bf am and pm (and at night I'm afraid) and expressed in the evenings enough for one feed. When she was a year old and I got bored of expressing she had some soya milk formula which she happily took. Like you I was worried about this esp teeth but she had it in a cup and cleaned her teeth afterwards and she's had no problems.