Lactose intolerant baby! HELP!

[Parki2002]

Hi my little boy is 4 weeks old and since birth has struggled keeping his bottles down and had awful diaohrea well it was more like water on the end! A week a go our doctor finally gave him infant gaviscon and set off 2 stool samples to check for lactose intolerance and a infection! He told me to buy some lactose free milk and see if that helped the diaohrea. The gaviscon has completely stopped the sickness and the infasoy milk has made the diaohrea better but it's still quiet loose and illuminous in colour! The results have come back no infection but he is lactose intolerant. The doctor had told me to keep him on infasoy! But I have read a few bad things about soya milk in babies so young! I was wondering if anybody had any advice! Thanks sorry its long winded!

Are they sure it's just lactose? Some babies r allergic to the milk protein which is still present in lacto free milk. The trouble with that is that 40% of babies allergic to milk are also allergic to soya. You might be better asking for a hypoallergenic formula, neonate nutramigen pepti junior or aptamil pepti.

If you aren't breastfeeding (and it sounds like you aren't, no judging neither did I with my lactose intolerant one) then you can ask to be prescribed special formula. I would suggest that your GP isn't that clued up on this as a number of babies (I think 1 in10) are also intolerant of soya if they have trouble with lactose. We had nutramigen but things may have moved on a lot in 10 years. I think the best diagnosis is to strip his diet completely of lactose/soya and then see how he is. Hold tight, it's not all bad and you get used to the changes really quickly then they often grow out of it.

Your doctor should give you a prescription for nutramigen-go back and ask. I do feel I should point out the poo is awful with it though and it smells disgusting however, my DS was much healthier on it...

I'm impressed that your GP did anything. I was told by my HV to try every formula on the market and if that didn't help she would refer me. At 12 weeks I discovered sma lf which was our solution. Screaming stopped, smiling started and nappies weren't explosive and green. And at 12.5 weeks I went back to work having had a truly s* maternity leave. I found the formula helplines good - I used to know the lactose content of everything on the market having talked to the paediatric nutritionalists. Maybe worth talking it over with one of them for ideas to take to GP ?

Thanks I did ask about perscription milk and he said all lactose free milk is the same wether you buy it or not and I would have to buy normal milk anyway! I'm going to go to baby clinic tomorrow to get him weighed and I will ask my HV about it I'm sure they can prescribe LF milk! With regards to stripping diet down he's only 4 weeks old so I can't really as he has to have some form of milk! Thanks for everybody's advice! X

I don't know how much lactose free is but nutramigen (that DS has) when I looked was £15 for a tin half the size of dairy formula-we got through a tin every 2-3 days. Ask the HV, I don't know if they can prescribe but they can put pressure on your GP...

They hypoallergenic milks are only available on prescription and they r not the same as lacto free. Your gp is wrong.

DS had SMA lactose free milk which helped a lot though he still did have problems it was prescribed, the sma LF tins are more expensive you get a tin with less than half the normal amount for £5.70 when the normal tin is £9ish. Make sure you give the formula a couple of weeks to work.

Hang in there DS was bad until he was weaned i've no idea why weaning helped but it seemed too, also at 6mo i started introducing cows milk into his diet through his food and now at 13mo he's on cows milk all the time and can eat anything.

Hi there, I'm a GP and yes soya milk is not advisable in baby boys as there is a link with soya milk and male infertility. SMA LF formula would be fine which is available to buy in Boots. My dd2 (4 1/2 months) is lactose intolerant following a bout of norovirus 2 months ago. The SMA LF really upset her and I had to put her back on the Aptamil she'd had prior, which unfortunately doesn't come in a LF. I've been adding Colief drops to her Aptamil, which can also help in lactose intolerance as it works by breaking down the lactose. It doesn't completely eliminate all the lactose but some babies find it is sufficient, and dd has managed with it without my needing to get nutramigen prescribed for her. She has still had quite loose motions but nothing like the 10 times a day green runny explosions she was having previously! The past few days I haven't added the Colief to every bottle and she seems to have managed ok without the diarrhoea getting bad again - lactose intolerance only usually lasts a few weeks so they tend to grow out of it quite quickly.

Lactose intolerance is very very rare. It might be intolerance to the protein (lactose is a sugar).

I would push for a referral to a paediatrician ASAP as your GP sounds misinformed.