I have cut out dairy from my diet yet baby still has symptoms?

[flyingbeet]

I have cut out dairy from my diet. It's been four weeks and there is an improvement. Baby doesn't vomit as much anymore or cry as much. But she still is very fussy and irritable, we still get green mucousy poo with blood sometimes. Does anyone know what this could mean. Health visitor advised me to start hypoallergenic formula. I'm on the fence and would love to continue breastfeeding but don't want her to be in pain

Was there any improvement? What have you replaced milk with in your diet?

50% of babies with cmpa are also allergic to soya.

I had to cut soya to get a complete improvement. The soya was definitely causing green explosive poo.

You'll find it tricky, it's in everything and a lot of milk free things put soya in. Really helped get rid of the baby weight- slimmest I'd been since a teenager!

We reintroduced soya and milk and she's now fine with them

I wouldn't mess around with the hypo allergenic formulas, everyone I know whose used them has had a nightmare trying to find one that suits the baby.

I think most babies with CMPA also can't tolerate soya.

@Lifeglowup I had replaced the milk with soya based alternatives but reading through the thread it seems as if I may also have to cut that out.

@FlingThatCarrot Have you got any soy alternatives that you possibly recommend?

Oat milk all the way. It's actually quite nice, especially the barista ones. Oatly cream/custard/creme fraiche are really good substitutes too.

It's worth seeing a bf specialist if you haven't already. Sometimes they can identify feeding tweaks that can help.

Has she been checked for tongue tie by lactation consultant (not just HV?)

Oat milk is good, make sure it conatins calcium, vitamin D and idoine - oatley does but they’re not the only one. My first child have cmpa and I don’t know if my second did as I didn’t want to challenge but she definitley reacted to soya in a significant way when she was accidently challenged. Both children out grew it.

@CelticPromise @Lifeglowup Yeah I've had her checked for tongue tie and been to lactation consultant several times so I don't think there are any problems with the breastfeeding aspect.

My GP told me that I could get lactose free milk but I thought it had milk in it and is not suitable for CMPA. Does anyone know? Otherwise I don't mind getting oat milk.

It’s incredibly rare for babies to be lactose intolerant and it tends to only happen if a family member has had lactose intolerance from birth not the usually aging and lactose intolerance. It’s possible she may have temporary lactose intolerance due to the damage caused by an allergen but that wouldn’t solve the underlaying issue.

Youre right and Gp is wrong. There is no point in you having lactose free milk. If baby has cmpa it’s soya you need to stop. Oat milk is a good switch

Cut out soya too. Keep an eye on eggs and beef (10% of cmpa are allergic to beef too).
Start a food diary. My daughter has 20 allergies and it took ages to identify them as every time I took an allergen out I increased the amount of something else she happened to be allergic too so after a few good days we would be back at square 1. Everything can be an allergen my daughter has more vegetable as allergies than top 14 allergens

GP is indeed wrong... lactose free milk is normal milk with added enzymes so the sugar lactose is "cut" into smaller sugars, and thereby becomes lactose free.
CMPA is cow's milk protein allergy. Has nothing to do with the sugars in the milk, she is allergic to the milk proteins that you drink/eat and she receives via breastfeeding. And those are still present in lactose free milk...

@Superscientist That must have been so tough to find out all the allergens and then excluding them from your diet. Good on you for staying resilient. I struggle cutting out dairy sometimes 😫.

After cutting out a particular food from your diet how long does it take for symptoms to go away. I've been told it takes a whole month. So if I cut out soya I will need to wait and see. Then if it's something else too i'll need to wait another month? I don't know if that's how it works but I can't bare to wait so long to see my baby feel better. She always seems as if she is in pain.

Is your baby also on medication to help with the reflux eg ranitidine or omeprazole?

It sounds like the dairy has made a clear difference so I would keep on that path and as pp say cut out soy. Watch out for things that don’t have soy in the name but are still soya based (there is a list you can google)

Hopefully it would not take another month as improvement has already started so her gut and throat will be healing. But medication should also help in the meantime

My daughters dietician said it takes 6 weeks for everything to clear their system.
I'd cut out soya and dairy out definitely. I would also ask for something to help with the reflux in the meantime. Hang on in there. Lots of us understand how awful this is

So we generally got a feeling if something was going to be beneficial in 5-10 days. Her general demeanor improved quite quickly although it took removing all of her allergens to get her to symptom free, loose stools were the last to improve. The 4 weeks is generally the time it takes for the gut to heal but you can absolutely have significant improvements earlier.

Once I got passed the first few I would take a food out for a week then on the next good day reintroduce it and see if I then have a run of bad days. If I did I'd keep the food out and if I didn't I'd keep it in a bit longer. The food diaries were so helpful!

I breastfeed until 10 months when I was admitted to a mother and baby unit. My mental and physical health was destroyed by my pnd and my daughters allergies and reflux! She went on to an amino acid formula which is completely dairy free until 2.
My daughter has needed reflux treatment as her reflux is in addition to her allergies rather than caused by them, although the allergies do make it worse.

My daughter is fine on lactose free milk. She has cmpa

Its not in neocate. That's completely free

Neocate isn't lactose free milk (which is just where a milk enzyme has been added to dissolve the lactose). Neocate is CMPA-specific milk.

Thats what I meant. My daughters on the aptamil one. Well not now as I've cut everything out so fully breastfed

OP replace the soya milk in your diet with Oatly Barista, read ingredients on everything, watch out for soya lecithin (it's in loads of stuff) and keep going back to GP (try and see a different one who is more clued up). The level of issues you're having can't be solved without medical help but it's very difficult to get it with CMPA, it took us about 3 months to get help despite the fact I have CMPA so there was a high chance the baby would too. We got Nutramigen on prescription.

Ah yes we ended up breastfed, topped up with Nutramigen in the end for CMPA. I think the breastfeeding helped a lot but my supply was really poor due to his feeding issues and constant cluster feeding due to sicking up so much of his milk. At one point I was only managing one 2-hour feed a day but I did get back up to 70% BF in the end.

Agreeing with the people recommending Oatly brand (they also do oat based yoghurts and cream alternatives). I also really like Coconut Collaborative for their yoghurts, creams and custards - delicious!

My daughter won't take formula from me anymore as she can smell me 😅 who can blame her tho. Breastmilk is so much better. I'm glad you got it back up

Lactose free milk is dairy and contains cow milk proteins . Maybe she doesn’t have cmpa anymore? Some kids grow out of it.

Breastmilk also contains lactose so it would be pointless for the OP to cut it out in her diet.