Should I avoid BLW (cmpi baby)

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DS2 is coming up to 6 months and I've always assumed he'll be blw like his older brother. But we're beginning to suspect he's cmpi after toing and froing for the last 3 months with regard to his reflux and refusal to feed.

we haven;t had an official diagnosis but I recently ate a slice of bread and butter after having been (mostly) dairy free for a month. That night was hideous. Did the same thing the next day and we had a similar night. Things have been improving since then, so I'm fairly convinced.

The problem is that I don't know if he's allergic or intolerant, so I'm afraid of trying him on anything dairy in solids. Also if he is allergic I'd be worried that he's allergic to other things. DH has multiple allergies and severe eczema but most of his allergies are not food related. I haven't got a referral to a paed yet which is unlikely to come through before he is 6 months.

Not sure what to do. Not sure I can face doing the whole puree/nothing new for 4 days allergy thing.

help!

BLW just means you let them self feed.

Which IMO was better for my reflux babies.

I controlled what was on their plate, they controlled how they ate it.

The best and easiest thing was sticking to unprocessed meat and two veg types meals. No acidic foods. It was tough but easier in some ways as no pressure to get them eating everything.

I agree, blw is not easier or harder re cmpi. You need that referral though in order to feel confident giving him a range of foods. You dont want to restrict what you give him out of fear of a reaction, yet i understand hesitancy on introducing the most allergenic foods. Things like peanut maybe best to wait. If you suspect milk, then leave it out. Baked milk is often betteer tolerated.
Has your allergist appointment been scheduled? Referral not even made yet?

Thanks for the replies, I know what you mean about blw being more about self feeding, but I'd hoped to be able to shove a plateful of our dinner in front of him without having to worry about individual ingredients - eg if he had a reaction how would I know what the culprit is? We eat a lot of food with sauces eg curry, pasta sauces, chilli etc.

I'm very hesitant about dairy as a friend of a friend had a colicky bf baby with no diagnosis, who went on to wean with mashed potato and he had anaphylactic reaction to the dairy. I know it's extremely unlikely and I will obviously avoid dairy for the foreseeable, but it's just scary not knowing. And I hate that intolerances are so difficult to diagnose - I could be cutting out an entire food group with no real reason. It's been so hard to do a proper controlled test as I keep having accidentsl slip ups so when I think I've been dairy free a while I then discover some hidden milk powder in a bread roll or something.

DH just informed my that our dinner last night contained dairy - we so rarely eat ready meals and I just didnt think to check the label. He had a look this morning. Argh. It's so hard!

Unless you all alter your diet, it sounds like you're not going to be able to shove a plateful of your dinner in front of him, whatever you do. At least for a little while. Sorry.

So that leaves you with the choice of change your diet, or make his meals separately.

If you are going to be making his meals separately, you can decide whether to puree them or not. You can still take your time about introducing allergenic foods, without needing to spoon feed if that's not what you want to do.

If it were me, I'd be meal planning, with the intention of there being a bit of the meal he could eat, even if the meal on my plate was out. So e.g. plain pasta (once gluten's been OKed) and a bit of cucumber, maybe a bit of meat or egg if I had some leftover. That sort of thing. Then by the time you start worrying about meals being balanced, hopefully you'll have a better idea of what he can tolerate and can plan round that.

My DH is dairy-free, and it's fine once you get used to it.

Good luck!