Mystery allergy/intolerance in 14m/o - endless diarrhoea/antibiotics

[hermionegranger]

I'd be so grateful for your thoughts on this and whether i'm overreacting.

My lovely 14 month old has had loose stools her whole life. We weaned from 6 months and she now eats a varied diet with three full meals a day. She never expresses any discomfort and loves her food but she has never done a solid poo.

She can do up to 3 or 4 very loose stools each day, and there's normally a lot of it. By loose I mean a thick liquid consistency like a milkshake, occasionally quite watery, and often containing undigested food.
In have taken her to the Dr a number of times and they put it down to her digestive system maturing or the endless viruses coming home with her from nursery.

However her nursery have now starting asking about it as their policy (understandably) is 3 loose stools and you have to go home as they class that as a tummy bug.

We've tried dairy free/wheat free and there has been no change. There was also no change before and after she stopped breastfeeding at 12 months. She now has baby oat milk for the little amount of milk she drinks each day and that's made no difference either.

What's really made me question it is that she was prescribed antibiotics last week due to an infection and since starting on the antibiotics her poos are now normal and solid and we're having just one a day. It can't be a coincidence as it's absolutely the only thing in her routine and diet that's changed.

Could antibiotics change her poo? What could this mean? And should I persist in taking her to the Dr and trying to get her tested for intolerances? After being dismissed so many times in the early days I am nervous about not being taken seriously although I would love for her to have poos like this all the time, it can't be nice for her at all with the way it normally is and honestly it's been a relief not to have to battle her for huge nappy clean up and outfit changes 3+ x a day.

Did you remove soya at the same time as dairy? 50% of children are allergic to both.

Unfortunately there are no tests for delayed food allergies or food intolerances. You can do them but they are prone to false positives and false negatives so the results are meaningless and you might find that you remove a food that is safe and keep in a food that is not. The only thing you can do is make lots of detailed food diaries and then controlled reintroduction so. Take a food out for 3-6 weeks and then do a test where they have a lot of of food to see if symptoms return. It can take 3 days to see the impact of a reaction so you need consider that when doing the food allergies. If there are multiple allergies it can be hard to get to a baseline my daughter has a lot of allergies and I just had to work with what a good day for loose stools looked like.

From a nursery perspective I would try to do it alongside medical advice. As my daughter has loose stools as an allergy symptom and also had a toddler diarrhoea diagnosis as she has loose stools even with all of her allergens out of her diet. Both of her nurseries have given her extra consideration and don't send her home when she has had 3+ loose poos. Sometimes they go too far and not call when I wished they did. Once with our old nursery she went through 4 changes of clothes and had about 6 poos in total due to a new allergen. I would have wanted to have been phoned in that situation. If there are multiple allergies read up on allergens that go together and food groups. My daughter is allergic to dairy and soya as I said 50% are also allergic to and beef with 10% other children with allergies. She's allergic to all alliums and all nightshades (tomatoes and aubergines) except potatoes. Also keep an eye on what foods you introduce to avoid a different allergy. We took out dairy and soya first and initially had an improvement but by week 3 we were back to square one. Going through the food diary we discovered and increase in tomatoes and coconut and yep she is allergic to both of them!

If the antibiotics helped then I'd be asking your gp to send away a stool sample to have it checked for infections and inflammation.
We had a similar issue with our child and it turned out to be a sensitivity to high fructose fruits. We cut them out and within days his stools where perfect again

I’m so glad things are better for her. Gut health is such a mystery eh?

My son had really bad reflux caused by allergies as a baby. During my deep dive to try to solve that I ended up learning quite a lot of random things about the gut. My hunch would be that he gut had been colonised by a not great bacteria (like an overgrowth of Candida) and the antibiotic has targeted that as well as whatever else it’s treating.

The reason I think that is it’s more usual to get loose poos while on antibiotics because they often take out some of the good bacteria. So usually you have to do work to repair the gut after antibiotics.

so personally if I were you, I would see what happens with it post-antibiotics. It might be that they solved the problem! If it goes backwards again, I’d do what the poster above says and go to the GP and insist on a stool test to look at her gut health.

Hopefully, though, you might have fixed the problem!

Hi, I know this is an old post but did you ever get to the bottom of the solid poos while on antibiotics as my son is the exact same. Thanks

Hi! No, I didn't and she's not been on antibiotics since so i've not been able to re-test the theory.
She was eventually referred to a paediatrician at the hospital who diagnosed her with toddler diarrhoea (did stool samples, and I had months of food diaries to show them). She's on a low-fibre diet (no oats, wholewheat, limited fruit and no juice, no beans or pulses), which makes a marginal difference.

I hope you find answers for your boy!