Toddler diarrhoea - what worked for you?

[sunflowerandivy]

13 month old diagnosed with toddler diarrhoea. If this happened to you, what helped please? We are currently having 5-10 sloppy poos a day. This has been going on for over a month. It affects everything and she has 2 poos a night currently. Please help with advice - thank you

have you seen a doctor or anything? My 2 year old had this for months which we passed off as teething. Turns out it was a lactose intolerance. We’ve switched him to lacto free milk and cut most dairy out and within a day they became solid. Id seek medical advice (from someone else if you already have) and maybe try dairy free for a weekend, I wouldn’t do anything long term without consulting a doctor though.
our doctor told us it’s quite common for them to be sensitive to it and often only temporary and said to try slowly adding it back in in a few months.

Lactose intolerance following a bad bug. Went lactose free for about 6 months and then re-introduced slowly with no problems.

For us it was reducing milk that made the difference.

First thing I would try is going dairy free as a form of cmpa can develop after illness which usually self resolves over time but sometimes needs staged reintroduction using the milk ladder

Hiya, I have seen a GP. Wasn't mentioned at all. I'll go dairy free this weekend. No harm in trying is there?

Ds is just finishing an antibiotics course for an ear infection and has suddenly peaked a lactose intolerance too. I wouldn't have thought it was this if I hadn't read pp's. I've been doubting my instincts for 2 days!

Another one who worked out it was lactose intolerance. Kept baked dairy in his diet but cut milk, cheese etc, that helped

Ashton and Parsons Cooling Powders, they are cheaper at Home Bargains if you have a branch near you, the powders are also good for teething, it's just extract of camomile in them.

My DCs was caused by a sensitivity to fructose. We reduced fruit and some veg intake and it improved. You can google a list of the highest fructose foods.

My son was diagnosed with toddler diarrhoea when he was 18months last year. It lasted about 4 weeks or so.

His trigger was weetbix strangely - it went straight through him and gave him horrible nappy rash. The poos were extremely bitty and watery. We've not given him weetabix since, and he's just moved to a new room at nursery and we forgot to tell the new staff not to give him weetabix... low and behold the horrible nappies are back after having weetbix yesterday, and I had a 5 poo day today with him, the same horrible consistency, giving him a sore bum 🤦‍♀️

Thanks for the reply. I'm still breastfeeding and there's a lot of lactose in breast milk. I'm not sure how I'm going to test this theory without giving up breastfeeding.

It's cow's milk that causes the problem, breastfeeding shouldn't be an issue. You need to give up milk in your diet too. Give it more than a weekend as you may not see instant results.

Another one to say try cutting out dairy. If breastfeeding, you need to cut out dairy too. It took until DS2 was 1.5 before we worked it out. He's now completed stage 1 of the milk ladder but the sloppy poo is back of we try step 2

Thanks all for the information. How long did it take to settle after removing dairy, please?

Another one who had to cut out cows milk/dairy from DD's diet. Her 'toddler diarrhoea' turned out to be milk intolerance. She's very much not a toddler now but still can't handle milk/cheese/yoghurt.

Agree with others, try dairy free but you'll unlikely see a difference in just a weekend, if her gut is damaged it takes longer to repair. Probiotics might help too.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm in this dairy free world now. Luckily so many good alternatives.
Will look at probiotics too! Kind of comforting to know that I'm not alone and that there are solutions but in for the long term trying to manage this condition.

I'm back! I commented above... we're now potty training and he's nailed the wees, but struggling with poos. They are so runny, he's basically only got a few seconds between realising he needs go go and it running out of him. It's also a sloppy mess for us to clean up any accidents. He's done so well tbjs weekend but what's concerning me is nursery - if he poos these sloppy poos which run down his leg and on to the floor, are nursery going to tolerate that for H&S reasons? I honestly wouldn't blame them if not.

I've not tried adjusting his diet due to the GP saying its not an intolerance, but reading comments above I'm wondering if we should cut out milk? He was diagnosed a year ago when it was proper diarrhoea which lasted a few weeks (and overly fibrous food triggers it e.g. weetabix so we avoid that) but outside of a flare up, it's just super runny (curry sauce type runny, not watery)

Should I try cutting out milk? Do I need to do all diary or has anyone seen any positive results from just switching to a dairy free milk?

@pebbles3004 we had to cut out all dairy initially for a good few months and then gradually started reintroducing it. DD is now ok with cooked/baked foods with milk and with lactose free cheese but still can't handle yoghurt, ice cream, normal cheese or 'raw' milk.

When my DS was about 18 months he had this, for him it was triggered by a tummy bug. Nurse at our practice said a tummy bug can kill off the good bacteria in the guts, leading to a temporary inability to digest milk proteins, which causes the diarrhoea.

She suggested we try cutting out dairy completely for a week, then try reintroducing slowly. She also recommended Yakult/probiotic type drinks, though didn’t have much success getting DS to drink any.

We cut out dairy but DS at that point was used to having a bottle of cows milk at bedtime and was very sad without it. So I tried him with lactose free cows milk and this was fine for him.

He was quite quickly able to tolerate normal cheese, butter etc again and apparently they don’t have much lactose. But we kept on with the lactose free milk for about a year, then found he was ok with regular cows milk again.

Would definitely recommend you trying lactose free milk, it tastes a bit like UHT/long life milk but a lot more recognisable than plant milks, to a child who is used to cows milk.

Apple juice was the cause for us. Used as natural sweetener in some meals. DS had dairy allergy so had to sometimes provide back up meals for him at nursery. Many of these meals had apple juice in.

Thanks all. He's actually OK with soy milk as my husband drinks it so he has it when stealing bits of his dad's cereal etc so used to the taste. However I'm worried about fat intake as I imagine the majority of his fat is coming from milk/yogurt/cheese etc - and I know increased fat intake can help with toddler diarrhoea. So I might try some lactose free cows milk for higher fat content.

I'll also try reduce all dairy for a while and build the rest back up while continuing to cut out milk.

I think this was us too… strawbs we’re the worst

We reduced fruit intake, cut out juice (although this was limited anyway), reduced high fibre foods and switched to oat milk.

Seemed to help things be firmer and less smelly.

I didn't get an official diagnosis but my little one had loose poos out of nowhere for 2 weeks, no other symptoms and from Google I guessed it was toddler diarrhoea.

I changed his diet according to an NHS thing I found online about it. So I cut out high fibre foods e.g. Weetabix and porridge I subbed for rice Krispies. White bread not brown bread. Then I stopped any sugar (he'd been having a little bit of jam on toast sometimes and the odd biscuit). And stopped giving him grapes. Plenty of fats so he had lots of yoghurt and cheese etc. His bowels literally improved within 24 hours and within a couple of days he was back to normal. I reintroduced everything gradually over the following week once he was normal and he's now totally fine on his normal diet. If I realised how easy it was going to be to fix I'd have made those changes a week earlier haha.