CMPA , to put baby back on cows milk?? Gp advice?? Help!!

[Theirmumxx]

Hi guys,

Bit of background first. My baby is 8 weeks old. At 2 weeks old, after 10 days of him being rashy, screaming during and after feeds, having mucousy nappies, horrendous nappy rash, hoarse voice and being really unsettled the health visitor referred him to a dietician for CMPA and asked our GP to prescribe formula for CMPA until he was seen. After around a week most of his symptoms subsided and he was a much happier baby. He was sick a lot on the new milk which I think was down to it being so thin. I mentioned this to health visitor and he is also now prescribed Carobel. He is now such a happy settled baby. This week has been amazing I feel like we finally have him sorted!

I rang to order more of his formula last week as I still haven’t received my dieticians appt. The dr said he didn’t want to prescribe anymore til he had seen him for a review. I had a telephone consultation where he said he wanted to see baby face to face next Tuesday. I asked what would come of the review and he said they usually like to put the babies back on the formula they were on that gave them symptoms to see if the symptoms return!! This seems really cruel to me. He’s had 7 weeks of being unsettled, things changing with his formula and now they want to put him back on the other formula. He said it’s to confirm it’s CMPA because if the symptoms come back he will know.

has anyone any experience of this??

my plan is to really dig my heels in and say that I’m not happy with that and I want him to stay on the formula at least until he’s seen the dietician. If he’s happier on this milk I don’t understand why they would change him. It’s really upsetting me the thought that he might have to go back to all the symptoms he had before 😭

I'm so sorry to hear you're going through this. My DD has CMPA and we had the same thing. Essentially it's the only way they diagnose it. The problem with continuing on that formula rather than checking is that there's a slight chance it was coincidental. And if you were to keep them on that formula, then wean dairy free etc, you'll end up trying to reintroduce dairy and little one may not tolerate it, even if the initial issue was never actually dairy. Also dairy is of course a great source of nutrients for little ones, so going onto a dairy free diet without good reason is never advised.

Most GPs are sympathetic to how difficult this is and will often make sure you've got back up formula to switch to straight away if any issues occur. Of course you can absolutely push to be seen by the dietician first but every dietician I've dealt with has asked whether I'd done the milk challenge almost immediately so it's likely they'd ask the same.

Though it's never nice, things don't tend to be as bad as they were before as milk proteins build up in the system. So a bit of their normal formula will be quite different to 5 weeks of it. My DD reacted straight away but it wasn't as awful as I expected. She then went back onto the amino acid formula and symptoms resolved almost immediately.

Good luck!