Milk ladder help?

[AmberM223]

My little one is now 19m - he’s been dairy free from 8 weeks due to bad excema and bowel issues.
His eczema has never got better despite being dairy free so that obvs had nothing to do with it.
Im now wanting to start the milk ladder, they say they have to be 1000% well in themselves, no cough/ cold (which is hard in itself when he’s at nursery!!) and no excema - which will be NEVER. He has a dermatologist and we just can’t get it under control.
But i have been very keen to start so i have this week, as i feel deep down he doesn’t have an ‘allergy’ at all.
His excema currently is not horrific, and i have it controlled to a degree - using our steroid cream so i felt like i should just do it, as there would never be a ‘good’ time.

I just would like any help/ advise/ tips from people who have done the ladder??

Would it be normal for a change in his bowels in the sense of colour/ texture?? They do seem a little lighter in colour this week, but still very hard (he’s always constipated)

He has developed a slight cough? is this an ‘allergy’ sign?

Its impossible to be completely well but you need to be able to be sure that if there are any signs of a reaction you know it is due to the milk and not something else

My daughter had toddler diarrhoea and we had to still keep trying her with foods but we had to wait just long enough to know what her current normal was. What I would do is monitor them for a week get a good idea of what his eczema is like and current bowel habits. Then take the plunge on a good day. Go slow you can always pick up the pace. My daughter is very sensitive and is on the slowest ladder and we still went slower. Her ladder starts at a grain of rice piece of biscuit 3 times a week and we aimed for once a week but she had a very loose stools followed by the flu jabs so we waited 3 weeks before piece 1 and 2 and then went to once a week, twice a week and then she failed when we got to every other day.

For very mild colds I will still do the ladder but worse than that I wait. I don't want her to have a cold and to react as well. She gets very short tempered and emotional in the days after a reaction so we try not to compound that too much.

My daughter is nearly 4 and we have only done the milk ladder twice. At 17 months she failed on one crumb and we did it again at 3y3m and we got to eat crumb every other day. So slow progress.

She has other allergies too and we are currently waiting to retest coconut and egg. She failed both but there's ambiguity. She was sick after having coconut but 4 days later a sickness bug spread through the family so the sickness after the coconut could have been early signs of that so we have to retest for it to be a conclusive fail. She failed egg this week but a salad was accidentally prepared with another of her allergens in on the same day she had the egg pancake. We are fairly confident that she didn't get exposed but it was briefly on her plate whilst she was eating so that's another retest.

If they fly through the ladder it matters less that there is other stuff going on by if there is other stuff going on and you fail you then have to go back and test again so you don't necessarily make progress any quicker