Lactose free formula

[Lcderry]

Hi looking advice. My dd is 3months old and has been prescribed omeprazole for reflux and acid ,she's been on it now for a few weeks, her nappys have been watery and mucusy for quite awhile even before the omeprazole. After a recent visit with her health visitor she suggested a lactose intolerance and said about trying different formula. She was on sma pro so I changed her to sma lactose free, but ever since she's been spewing even more. We are only on day 3 of the new formula. Just wondering should I persist with this formula?

Lactose intolerance is quite rare in babies and a dairy allergy is much more likely. Lactose tolerance is often diagnosed in hospital. Delayed allergies have similar symptoms to an intolerance.
Lactose free milk has dairy sugars removed from the milk but the proteins are still there. Babies usually have a cow milk protein allergy so these are still in lactose free products. Dairy free formula are available on prescription and come in two varieties extensively hydrolysed formula that have broken down dairy if these still don't help there are amino acid formulas that have all the individual ingredients of cows milk separately so the ingredients list looks like my lab inventory!

Speak to your GP about a prescription formula

We’ve just been around all these houses with my LO who is almost 5 months. We’ve finally found our groove I think.

He was on Aptamil anti reflux for a few weeks but always had explosive nappies. When the vomiting died down a little I tried hipp organic (green explosive stringy nappies and sick), hipp comfort - even worse!

we put him on SMA lactose free for a month and while the vomiting eased slightly he was still having awful slimy nappies. Lactose intolerance is extremely rare so I figured it must be the proteins.

we had been fobbed off by the GP up until this point but they eventually prescribed aptamil pepti 1 (the extensively hydrolysed one). First 48 hours his nappies were actually quite normal but because it’s so thin he was vomiting awful. Then it went a bit downhill. We had 15 dirty nappies a day, no joke, it was going straight through. Added carobel thickener in but I’d struggle to get 3oz into him and had to restart night feeds again. Plus he was having 4 dirty nappies through the night and his sleep suffered.

A few people (including a family friend who is a paediatrician and happens to specialise in allergies - bonus) said to give goat milk formula a try before we looked at the totally dairy free stuff. Said the scale of mild intolerance up to allergies is huge and babies sit anywhere on that scale is huge.

The turnaround has been brilliant, it’s been 3 weeks but his nappies have been totally normal, he drinks 6-7oz a feed and his reflux, while still present is about 80% improved. We use Nannycare. It’s about £20 for 900g so the same price as SMA lactose free really. It’s full fat and creamy and my little piggy has gained 1.5lbs in under 3 weeks 😂. We saw an improvement fully in 72 hours if that helps and is something you wanted to try as a process of elimination.

Just a word of caution on the goats milk about 90% of cmpa are allergic to all mammalian milks so it's the minority that find goats milk affective. It's worth trying but with the perspective that it might not work.
I'm really pleased your little one is in the 10% @Thelazygardener

The special formulas are very thin so a thickener such gaviscon, carobel or magic mix are often required especially with the amino acid formulas