Growing up oat milk rabbit hole

[PurplePfeiffer]

My LO is 16 months old. He doesn't tolerate cows milk as it makes him horribly constipated so we switched him to growing up oat milk. So far, so good. Problem is that I've gone done a rabbit hole in regards to industrial seed oils which are in the milk to replace essential fats. What do I do? I'm tempted to just give him organic oat milk which has virtually zero fat. He does tolerate full fat milk in his breakfast and eats greek yogurt daily. I'm wondering if it's enough. He also takes vitamin supplements.

Any thoughts?

Have you tried him on goats milk instead?

Organic milk won’t be forfeited with calcium. He doesn’t need milk as long as he is getting 350 mg of calcium from
other sources.

How do you know it’s the milk making him constipated?

I’d stop the UPF “milk”.
Add butter, cheeses, Greek yogurt to his diet, and as suggested by PP try different full fat milk and yogurt like sheep, goat, buffalo…

When you say "tolerate" do you mean the FF milk in cereal doesn't seem to contribute to the constipation?

You could just dilute the FF milk with water, I suppose, or use semi.

One of my DC had constipation about this age, the problem was low fluid intake full stop.

If he’s tolerating full fat milk in his cereal then milk is unlikely to be the cause of his constipation.

I know it sounds silly, but when he was drinking FF cows milk (he still wakes twice in the night and has milk before his nap and bed so 4 times in a day) his stools were rock solid with blood, he has a fissure, screaming in pain etc. Stopped the cows milk, switched him to oat 'milk' and his stools are fine. Maybe it was the amount of cows milk he was having (which is still really excessive IMO). He water drinks well and even when he doesn't drink much water now, his stools are still fine.

I didn't consider goats milk. I will try and work out in grams how much fat he is getting - I think it should be a decent amount.

If you think he is allergic to cow milk then you need to remove it completely from his diet to allow his gut to follow heal. Your GP needs to refer him to paediatric dietitian.

And if you do cut out cows milk don’t replace it with goats milk. The protein is very similar so little one is likely to react to goats milk.

as previous posters have said you need to eradicate the potential allergen for 6 weeks then start a milk ladder to see which step your son reacts to. So long as he’s getting dairy from other sources - other milks such as oat milk (that’s fortified), dairy free yogurt etc. he will be getting the calcium he needs. Bread has calcium in it as well although it’s not a very high amount.

As pp have said, if there’s an allergy you need to cut it out completely. If he keeps having it despite an allergy his digestive system will get inflamed and while the odds of growing out of the allergy are good, inflammation would delay that.

I understand the concern re UPF but they really need enough calcium and even more, enough iodine for brain development. The dietitian at the hospital recommended either Oatly barista or whole for these reasons.

I'm a little confused. Some posts have said if he tolerates milk for breakfast, yogurt etc then it's unlikely to be an allergy? If it was CPMA, would he react to all dairy derived from cows then?

The only we thing we noticed was extreme constipation, nothing else. I brought goats milk yesterday :/

Oh gosh. If there was an allergy, I'm assuming that it would still manifest now? I'm brought goats milk yesterday :/

Could this be CPMA? No other symptoms other than constipation when drinking cows milk. He was drinking around 640mls per day. Tolerates warmed milk in porridge, greek yogurt, cheese etc.

I’m a bit worried about some contradictions on here. OP I think you should go to your GP or back to the dietician for clarification.

Me too. I will do, thank you.

Not necessarily - some children can tolerate cows milk so far up the milk ladder but then react at the next step so you have to go back a step, stay there for X amount of weeks then try again. If your little one has cows milk for breakfast and no reaction it’s unlikely to be that. But it may be that if he’s drinking lots of milk it’s just too much and he suffers.

There’s two types of allergies IGE and non-IGE, so with IGE that’s an instant reaction, think hives type leading up to anaphylaxis. Non-IGE is still an allergy but delayed response so constipation, diarrhoea, skin complaints, stomach cramps etc. If he’s referred for allergies to a consultant they will do a skin prick test and non-ige allergies won’t show a response with it being delayed. This means it won’t really help you, best option is to cut suspected food groups out for 6 weeks then reintroduce using food ladders. Still ask for a referral though as they may also refer you on to a dietician which will help with making sure he has his nutritional needs met through different foods.

I have a non-ige dairy allergy and if I have too much milk, such as a latte and then cheese in one day I pay the price the following day (love cheese though so it’s hard to give up!).

Before you see the doctor it would be worth keeping a food diary of what he eats and when he reacts with constipation. There’s quite a few allergens so may not necessarily be cows milk?

Good luck with it, allergies are a minefield but there’s lots of support for them.

Hi, iv stumbled on your post in the same dilemma as yours. I’ve heard too many bad things about oat milk recently and my one year old is on growing up oat. I was considering swapping to goats and wondering where you got to? Mine also gets constipation and slight eczema from cows milk.