CMPA

[IndiaL]

Hello,
My daughter has a cows milk protein allergy and we have started on the milk ladder. She became really uncomfortable with her stomach and this stopped her from eating and drinking all together. We were at the point of syringing water into her mouth. Dieticians say try again after a week but I dont want to get to that point again as shes only 15 months. I wondered if instead of the Malted milk biscuit it would be worth trying just giving her a teaspoon of Yoghurt every day. I know its higher up the ladder but I've thought perhaps if she has loose stalls rather than constipation this may be easier for her to deal with. We also had an incident when she was younger whereby my mum accidentally gave her half a baby pouch that had Yoghurt in it and she had no adverse affects. Bare in mind she was covered in a rash and displaying all the symptoms of CPMA before I went dairy free when breastfeeding. Weird one with the accidental Yoghurt - i know. My partner thinks its silly to try the yog every day as he says its more highly concentrated with the milk so just a silly idea which I do understand but then if she didn't react before....does anyone have any knowledge of having trouble lower down the ladder but then not as much trouble higher up?

We have decided maybe wait 6 months or until she can verbalise how she is feeling but im conscious not to leave the process too long as well.

Any advice would massively appreciated x

You can manage one offs usually better than something smaller every day.

If you are coping ok with the dairy free diet there's nothing wrong with waiting between trials. My daughter is nearly 5 and has only done the milk ladder twice. The first time at 17 months she screamed for 2 days after a piece of malted biscuit the size of a grain of rice and the second time at aged 3 she failed after getting to a piece the size of a grain of rice every other day having started with once every 2 weeks.

She has a lot of allergies so we have trialed other foods in the intervening time all with similar very early fails. Unless I'm skeptical about whether a reaction was a reaction and not something else I wait 6-12+ months. We did the egg ladder last summer twice in 3 months she failed the first time one the second piece. A few weeks later she was accidentally given a cake at nursery with egg and had no reaction so we tried the ladder again and became so moody and argumentative it was unreal. We had to stop as she was so unbearable and then she went back to normal.

Which ladder are you doing, we do the north west milk ladder which is one of the slowest as it takes weeks to build up to the 1/4 biscuit that most ladders start with. I'd give it a break, I wouldn't guarantee that in 6 months their communication would be sufficient to adequately describe the feeling of a reaction. My almost 5 year old struggles to verbalise the tummy ache of a reaction of other issues she has going on. She just continues as she is and is so incredibly adept at masking that's she's in pain. She also has a ridiculously high pain threshold.
I really wouldn't skip steps on the ladder, loose stools can cause as much discomfort as constipation but might not be as obvious. I probably wouldn't try again within the next 3 months and go slower when I did

I was told with both of mine if the reacted to any the ladder then to go back to the previous point they could tolerate so for you that would be none. And then try the next step in 6 months.

My oldest child could only tolerate malted milk biscuit for years and I thought she may never be able have milk. Then one time we tried the next step and she was fine and we went through a new step of 12 step every week.