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Original poster

ds2 (11m)seems to have a dairy/lactose intollerance. Advice please.

31 replies

princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 12:11

Hello

The HV and I think that ds2 has a problem with Dairy or Lactose. (what is the difference please?)

He is 11m and breast fed. He has had the odd bits of cheese and dairylea type cheese in the past and seemed ok. But the few times he's had yoghurts (maybe 4 in his life since 6m) he's been very sick in the night.
A couple of weeks ago he started having wheetabix for breakfast with cows milk on. I was quite pleased as he'd not eaten anything much atall for breakfast before. Apart from little bits of toast or crumpets or dry cereal etc.

But his nappies went very wet and watery. Like sprout water. Yellow or green. Very leaky and with no substance to them.
Plus he went off all other foods. Had no appetite. I thought it could be teeth as that might explain the nappies and lack of eating.
He lost about a pound in weight in a month.

Anyway since friday he has had no dairy. And his poos are brown again and he has started eating meals!

Is this all a coincidence?

Ds1 (7 years) has never been very into dairy products and has trouble with his poos too. (can be explosive)

tia

OP posts:
Original poster
princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 12:58

bump

OP posts:
wandawings · 04/10/2010 13:17

NO! Not a coincidence!! Sounds like my little one. Have you been tot he docs yet? They don't always take it seriously as they say that it is normally grown out of. We are under the dietician now but am still waiting for official testing to confirm. My LO is 15 months now.

wandawings · 04/10/2010 13:19

BTW - lactose is the sugar found in dairy products. Sometimes it is the lactose that causes the problems and you can get the lactose free products. Other times it can be the protein that is the prob in dairy.

couldtryharder · 04/10/2010 13:20

My son (bottle fed) was diagnosed as having a lactose intollerance when he was 4 months old as he had mucus and then blood in his poo. He had special formula for a long time, but as he got towards one, we started him on the odd yoghurt and a bit of cheese and then waited to see if things were ok and then tried again. Very soon after he was one he was totally fine with dairy and has been ever since. He is 3 now.

I don't know if I can answer your questions, but it might just be that the lactose is agravating his tummy at the moment so best to stay away from it for a bit until he's a bit older and his gut is stronger.

Hopefully he'll grow out of it, but I'd ask the doctor for his/her opinion and if you're not satisfied ask to see a pediatrician. I'm not knocking HV's but imho they are not medically qualified enough to offer more than an opinion.

bosch · 04/10/2010 13:23

My ds1 developed milk intolerance/allergy when I introduced cows milk too abruptly when he was one (prev bf). He had awful diarrhoea (sp?), like you describe, and nappy rash like I've never seen.

Dr advised us to remove milk etc from his diet and he was on soya milk for about four months. When it was completely cleared up, we started (on gp advice) to gradually introduce milk again.

Do go see your Dr, your ds may have a true allergy. I have nephew and neice who developed allergy while being bf - sil had to cut out milk/products from her diet, if your ds has not had such a reaction, cross fingers this is a temporary response.

And I understand the advice is never to move to soya without drs advice.

Original poster
princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 13:27

Thank you for your replies :) Means a lot.

The HV said that if he was the same in a monthHmm to gp to see a gp. But I am thinking I may go sooner. I want to know what to give him to replace the dairy. Even though he was only having small amounts he was having some . (butter, milk on breakfast, cheese on pizza etc)
But don't want to buy dairy free stuff if it's nothing to do with that iykwim.

Would my gp refer me to a dietition then?

He seemed ok with pizza but then with the milk on his cereal everyday thats when the poo changed. Plus the loss of appetite. Plus the huge amount of sick after a yoghurt.
I kind of felt I was imagining it or coming to the wrong conclusions in my own head!

OP posts:
thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 13:33

it won't be lactose

if it was lactose he wouldnb't be able to tolerate breastmilk either!

far more likely to be a cow's milk protein intolerance

i would go to the GP if I were you. tho from what I found out when I had ds2 (cmp intolerance) they don't realy have any way of testing for intolerances. allergies yes, intolerances no- mainly diagnosed on parental advice.

i would cut out the dairy completely for a month and see how he goes. then re-introduce a small amount and see what happens.

but do visit GP

Original poster
princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 13:46

TIS please can you tell me more about the lactose/breastmilk thing? :) I know nothing about this. Plus I'd like to be armed with the knowlegde incase the GP trys to fob me off.

And you all think it's not 'just teeth'? Cutting teeth can't make him sick everytime he has yoghurt though can it?! The sick is usually about 6 hours after the yoghurt. Plus the wieght loss and poos ...

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thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 13:54

well lactose is a sugar thats found in all milks, including breastmilk. babies with a lactose intolerance generally fail to thrive and are very poorly

now, you can get a secondary lactose intolerance after being ill with things like gastroenteritis, but again... your milk would be making him poorly as it contains lactose

cows' milk protein intolerance is far more common and would match with your son's symptoms. it is, as the name suggest, an intolerance to the proteins in the milk

dairy can stay in the body for up to 2 weeks after you cut it out though, hence me saying to try and give him none for a month so that you can truly gauge any reaction he has when you reintroduce it
we did this 2 or 3 times with ds2 and he had the same reaction every time- lots of crying, terrible nappies, sickness

plenty of dairy substitutes out there though. we use:

oatly fortified oat milk- used to replace milk in everything. more heat stable than soya (which isn't recommended for boys anyway)

vitalite dairy free spread. sainsburys sell it. most supermarkets do their own brand dairy-free marg now anyway too, or there is one called Pure sunflower spread

cheese- mainly vile! tofutti do an ok-ish spreadable "cheese" holland and barratt sell it

Original poster
princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 14:28

Thanks for that :)

So will I have to try him with it again to see what happens? :(

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thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 16:05

i would yes, that way you;ll know. don't give him too much though, just a couple of teaspoons of yoghurt, or a small cube of cheese or something

Original poster
princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 16:49

Thats the thing he was ok with cheese on pizza, spread in sandwitches. It's just when we started the milk on cereal and yoghurt.

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thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 17:29

sometimes it's ok the more processed it is, if it's just a mild intolerance.
so you can get bad symptoms from milk itself. but yoghurt/cheese etc not so bad

Original poster
princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 17:34

Yoghurt is a bad reaction. Very sick a few hours after eating. Milk gave him the bad nappies.

OP posts:
thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 17:40

it's strange isn't it.
ds2 is improving now and can tolerate small amounts of yoghurt, but definitely not cheese and definitely not plain milk

Original poster
princessProudmel · 04/10/2010 17:47

Very confusing! Seems ok with small amounts of cheese, spread and soft cheese. Not yog or milk.

Dr will just waffle about eliminating things etc. wont they?

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thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 17:49

i have to admit that i didn't even bother going to the GP about ds2, because it seemed so obvious what the problem was

he is almost 3 now and i have my very first appointment to discuss it, simply becasue he hasn't put on much weight since i stopped breastfeeding him! lol

so yeh, i don't think there is much they can actually do, but they may offer allergy testing which i would take if i were you and they may want to rule anything else out i guess...
but it's on the record then, and you may get an appt for a dietician etc which could be helpful

Igglybuff · 04/10/2010 20:08

DS is cows milk intolerant - he reacted through my BM so had to drop dairy from my diet. Since weaning, I've tried yoghurt - makes him sick. Cooked milk or cheese makes him windy so much less of a reaction but I still avoid. Not tried raw milk.

He's also intolerant to soya.

Interestingly, since stopping dairy myself, I've had the odd hot chocolate with cows milk and it gave me a bad tummy ache whereas before I was fine. So I think there's some merit in the idea of introducing dairy slowly.

If I were you, I'd try the things that your DS is reacting less too every few weeks to get him used to it.

As he's still BF he'll be getting plenty of calcium and fat etc so not a huge rush to introduce cows milk.

Also he could grow out of it by the time he's 18-24 months (am hoping that is the case for my DS!)

HTH x

thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 20:13

igglybuff, same here! dairy really makes me feel ill now. which is kind of a shame, but also quite nice becauase i lost a LOT of weight giving up dairy (nd egg, which he is intolerant too) as I am also vegetarian, so i guess at least i can keep my weight down lol

Igglybuff · 04/10/2010 20:22

I lost loads of weight too. However I soon put it back on - not entirely sure how Hmm

thisisyesterday when your DS stopped BF, what did you give instead of dairy? I'm stuck as no soya. We're still BF and plan to til he's 2, but I'm 6 weeks pregnant and worried he'll self wean if my milk changes! My GP is useless and referred me to a drop in dietician clinic which is only twice a month and not easily accessible for me!

Heathcliffscathy · 04/10/2010 20:25

try goats milk products.. waitrose do fresh goats milk as well as butter and cheese.

ds1 was lactose intolerant (got eczema if he had any) but fine with goats and grew out of it

Igglybuff · 04/10/2010 20:31

I'm a bit nervous to try goats milk as I thought it was similar to cows milk. Also as DS reacts badly to soya too. I'll give it a try though and see what happens n

thisisyesterday · 04/10/2010 20:33

yeah the proteins in goat's milk are very similar to cow's, which is why they don't give goat's milk formula etc any more

ds2 can't tolerate goat's cheese. but can now eat very small amounts of buffalo mozarella

buffalo milk is supposed to be closer to human milk (not as close as donkey milk tho, but that's kinda hard to get hold of Wink)
waitrose do sell buffalo milk but it's very, very strong tasting

Igglybuff · 04/10/2010 20:36

Lol at donkey milk. I bet waitrose would source it if asked. I'll look out for buffalo stuff though.

Sorry PPM completely hijacking your thread here Blush

Original poster
princessProudmel · 05/10/2010 14:05

Lol at donkey milk!!! No worries about Hijak Iggly :)
(could the weight gain be to do with the 6 week old baby?? ;) lol)

What about rice or oat milk? I've heard about that recently. Is that any good TIS?

Dh bought that 'pure' spread yesterday so we'll try that instead of butter/spread.

Not in any rush to switch to cows milk, certainly no plans to stop bf. I was just adding diary to his diet in the 'normal' way. But it wasn't until he'd had it every day for a few weeks that I worked out the problem. Plus I discovered the weight loss :(

He is also very chesty/wheezy sounding (had bronchiolitis as a newborn) so am wondering if the dairy makes him even more chesty iykwim. Or is that an old wives tale? LOL

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