Warning - baby poo - normal?

[Londonrungirl]

I suspect allergies in my EBF 12 week old. He has a range of symptoms / eczema, unsettled/cry-y, silent reflux, mucus nappies.

I’ve just started cutting out dairy and his nappies are worse than ever. Like curry sauce and some black specs (blood?). He’s does also have a cold so I’m just wondering what people thing of these? Also attached what his nappies are normally like where there are just a few mucus strings.

thanks!!

You need to remove every trace of dairy and avoid large amounts of soya if possible. Soya flour and lectins are ok at first but no soya milk, yoghurt or meat replacements as half of babies are allergic to both. It can take 6 weeks for the gut to heal and see improvements. If you have a partial or no improvement after 4-6 weeks you might have to remove soya completely too. My daughter is more sensitive to soya than she is to dairy and can't have soya fed poultry.

Start a food and symptom diary as there might be other allergens and it's better to not need the food diaries than having to wait another few weeks to get the information if you do need one.

Teething and colds can cause similar looking nappies and I couldn't tell the difference between my daughters allergy, teething cold or stress poos. Basically everything irritates her gut and she gets disgusting poos.

Make sure you are getting enough calcium and iodine. A lot of oat milks have iodine in and my dietician recommended a 700+mg supplement of calcium

Thank you! Sorry I should have mentioned I’m doing soy too. But that’s interesting about maybe not needing to do all soy.

Does it overall look like an allergy to you? I guess I’m just worried about how I will tell if there’s a difference. I know there’s the idea of reintroducing it after the elimination to confirm but it’s always been such a general smattering of symptoms and irritability it can be hard to pinpoint. But maybe it will become clear.

Also if he ends up being allergic to other things couldn’t you end up ruling diary out because you don’t see any improvement and it’s just because there’s something additional you haven’t identified? interesting to hear what you’re saying about colds / teething also as it could be something like that causing the worsening. He’s got a cold and is dribbling tonnes too.

thanks 🙏

Ps did you get any support from medical professionals with the food diaries to figure out next steps? I’ve not had any support and I’m finding it hard to find links and also conscious not to eliminate more than I need as worried about milk supply etc. And yes thanks I’m taking calcium but will check the dosage

All the mucus would indicate inflammation in the gut so I would say it looks like allergy poo!

I had zero support. My GP told me absolutely no allergies but I later figured that this was because she didn't know the difference between lactose intolerance and cmpa. Once we were in a good place she commended me on figuring it out by myself. Her paediatrician said unlikely to be allergies but worth trying and the dietician on the first appointment told me it was all in my head and to put all the foods back into my diet. The one supporting voice was my HV who was brilliant and saved me more than once just by being a listening ear. She persuaded the dietician to see me in person and since then she has been supportive.

About half of babies react to both. I would usually say take out both fully and test both separately but removing out all soya can be a bit much for some people to do in one go. If you take pregnacare vitamins be warned they contain soya

It was tricky with my daughter as all the foods I replaced dairy and soya with she also reacted to as well and when I go back through the early food diaries I was eating 2 or 3 allergens every meal! There were also clear improvements in other way though. Such as she didn't smile or turn to sounds until 18weeks... A week after removing dairy and soya. In 3 weeks she went from being behind to on target with her development! We had periods of calm in the midst of all the crying. It was a long process to identify all 20 allergens but this is far from typical. Most babies with multiple allergies are looking at dairy soya eggs and wheat rather than the extensive list my daughter has.

My job involves looking for patterns in data so in that respect going through the food diaries was part of the day job but it did still drive me to despair! Reactions can appear between 2 and 72h but our quickest was more like 20 minutes and this was beef (about 10% of cmpa babies react to all cow) but her symptoms got steadily worse and worse over 24h.

Yes I would be looking at allergies. Its hard not to find the balance of not removing everything. It can take 3-6 weeks for symptoms to improve but I generally had an inclining that we were going in the right direction around 2 weeks. Try not to vary your diet too much day to day. I found eating the same ingredients a few days in a row reduced some of the scatter of noise. Look into food groups too. We discovered this the hard way after replacing tomatoes with peppers and found she was allergic to all nightshades except potatoes, so I removed the full group for the 3-5 days and then tried the other items in the groups one by one. With legumes I found she tolerated most of them so it's not always the case that the full group needs to go.

I ended up very underweight and on a very limited diet and still had brilliant supply as long as the diet you do have is nutritionally balance and you get any missing nutrients through supplements you should do ok.

ok this is so so useful thank you!

Will organise my diary a bit better (it’s just notes in my phone).

And great idea about eating the same stuff I think i will batch cook a load and then have stuff for supper a few nights a week.

Your job sounds useful for your quite complicated case! Hopefully we don’t have quite as many allergens but I will see.