Dairy / Gluten Intolerance. Any advice / experience appreciated

[phillipsiebg]

Hi there,

Our daughter is nearly 10 months. On and off throughout her little life she’s had bouts of diarrhea. But it’s becoming more frequent as of late.

The doctors have been practically useless and have said that a dietician wouldn’t see her due to her age.

Originally we thought she had a gluten intolerance. She was bloated, farted a lot and was having loose stool. However she has also been picking up bugs from nursery, so this could have been a coincidence.

Lately we’ve been swaying more toward a dairy intolerance. She’s had loose stall for almost a week now, coincidentally ill at the same time too. She hasn’t been eating gluten, but still having loose stool. She had a cheesy pasta the other night and had loose mucus based stool.

Today she’s had an absolute explosion, the poo/watery stool came all the way up to her nipples. The last few days her poo has been a pale yellow colour.

One doc said she has a viral infection, another has said it’s going on too long for it to be an infection and more likely an intolerance.

she also has a rash on her tummy which we’ve been given cream for. They’re saying a fungal rash, but I’ve seen numerous search results online where kids have had similar rashes with dairy intolerances.

Basically we’re just lost and don’t know what to do. Should we switch to a dairy / lactose free formula to trial things?

Any advice would be appreciated!

Have they taken a blood test for coeliacs?
If they won't refer you to a dietician and the GP are less than bothered then yeah I'd take matters into your own hands and start trialling things. Lactose/dairy free can take anything from 4 days to 4wks to show improvement, gluten free if you're coeliac can take anything from 0-12 months depending on the damage done to the gut. If it's just an intolerance to gluten rather than actual coeliacs which is an autoimmune disease then the improvement should be a lot quicker.

Is she bf or ff?

Depending on how desperate you are I would either exclude dairy or gluten for 6 weeks. If you’re desperate do both at the same time.

If ff you will need specialist formula, join the cmpa facebook group. If excluding dairy then I would also exclude soya milk to as over half of babies with cmpa are also allergic to soya protein. Lactose is the sugar in mammal milk and it’s very rare for babies to be allergic to it, much more likely to be cmpa so don’t give her lactose free dairy products.

"transient lactase deficiency" is quite common in little ones after tummy bugs - they run low on the enzyme that digests lactose (a sugar in all milk including breastmilk). Trial on lactose free milk for 2-4 weeks and then reintroduce. It is an intolerance not an allergy.

Is she growing reasonably well? This makes serious gut inflammation or non-absorbing much less likely. The symptoms you describe are quite non-specific so hard to interpret.

There is no specific test for dairy allergy that's useful in this age group so if you want to go down that route then you would need to exclude dairy (and products with similar allergens eg soy or 2-4 weeks).

Runny stools often settle down mysteriously on their own as milk intake decrease and solids dominate the diet.

Op says her baby has had issues since birth.

Hi, yes she’s growing well and actually weighs just slightly above average for her age.

We will try her on a lactose free formula for a few weeks. I’m assuming then we also need to exclude other dairy products like cheese etc?

If you really want certainty on whether your trial is working then yes, though hard cheeses are pretty low in lactose anyway.