Advice for baby with cows milk protein allergy - esp soya yoghurts - please!!

[SamJohnsMum]

My DS has a cows milk protein allergy and has a red, bumpy rash appear whenever he has normal formula, yoghurt or normal milk. He is 7mo and BF, aside from the usual vegetable (and some meat) mush.

On the advice of my GP, I use soya formula when making up his cereal (I didn't want to express for this and anyway, I want to slowly phase out the BFing over the next few months - I have posted about this on the BF/FF thread).

I thought he might ok with organix fruit custard as it only had 3% milk and when I tried it, he seemed to like it, but afterward the rash appeared all over his chin and neck - I was horrified!

Anyway, I now accept that I really need to avoid dairy for a while with him, so what other cheese and yoghurts alternatives would people recommend? Goat's cheese? What brand of soya yoghurts might be worth a try?

Any tips or suggestions very welcome! Thanks.

Sorry you are going through that - it's awful.

I'm afraid I was advised to avoid soya as it can also trigger allergies, we used rice milk where necessary, but mostly just avoided anything which took milk of any kind.

There is a special prescription formula you can use though.

My DD is severely intolerant to soy and cows milk and I avoid both like the plague!!

She has been prescribed neocate which has improved her a lot.

There is a hipp organic jar banana rice pudding which does not have milk/soy in it. Whenever I see them I buy 10 at a time

Am still a bit in the dark myself TBH but am seeing dietitian for the first time in a few weeks.

My DS had exactly the same reaction as yours. We were prescribed Nutramigin (sp) (privately - it's expensive so GP didn't want to fork out!) and were advised to use rice milk in cooking, and for calories (as he wasn't getting full fat things) use lots of avocado, olive oil and things like that.

He had a very mild reaction to soya formula but has been ok with the marge, yoghurts etc. You can get nearly everything - cream, custard, ice cream (when he's older!) unsweetened milk (which tastes nearly exactly the same as normal milk in cooking, so use it for toad in the hole, yorkshires, pancakes etc).

The only thing I've never found a decent alternative to is cheese - DS had a mild reaction to goats cheese, and soya cheese just tastes rank (it's called something like sheeze, you have to go to a health food shop). I've used it occasionally for mac cheese just for DS, but tbh have got used to cooking without it. (That was hard!)

DS is now 3 and a half and hardly reacts to anything anymore, but the GP said to still keep him off as much as possible until he's 4 or 5

Good luck, you really just get used to it after a while

Thankyou all!

Ibblewob - that's a really encouraging post, thankyou - esp the bit about adding things like avocado. I'll try to do that more often.

I'm not surprised that a product called 'sheeze' tastes vile!!

Thanks again xx

dont know if this is helpful but one of my friends who is very lactose intolerant is ok with buffalo milk and cheese - available from lots of farmers markets [cringes at pretentiousness of this post]. Apparently it is much more similar to human milk than cows etc.

You can get sheeze at Sainsbury's - there's a cream "sheeze" and a regular chunk o' sheeze that's supposed to be like cheddar. They are disgusting. But having said that, my DS (10 months) loves them. He also eats soy yoghurt and either rice or oat milk in porridge. We're getting together with the HV this month to try to tackle weaning from bf further. I'm trying to avoid doing formula because I figure if I've bf this long there should be some kind of "reward" (other than ds, of course .The catch with all this is if you're trying to avoid added salt, it seems like all these fake dairy products have a fairly high salt content.

We were told to avoid soya before age 1 year for boys because of some fairly flimsy evidence that it can cause hormonal problems due to plant oestrogens in soya. We were prescribed neocate which I can't get DS2 to drink, but which he will accept being used as a liquid to puree up foods (saves the hassle of expressing and bumps up the calories in his food compared to using just water). He will also accept neocate being made into a custard type thing. I must admit though, although the dietician told us to avoid soya, DS2 does really enjoy the alpro soy yoghurts and since it can be difficult to convince him to eat at the best of times, if that's what he likes...

That's interesting, academicmum - someone expressed concerns over soya on another thread, so I've double-checked with my doctor and they said, no ti's fine. But I'd not heard of the hormone thing so i think I'll ask about that anyway.

Thanks others for comments too - plenty of food for thought. Dreadful pun sadly intended !!!!!!

I would be caeful with the soya. My DS developed an allergy to soya after being advised to give him 2 soya yoghurts a day to keep up his calcium intake.

If you do give him soya then the alpro yoghurts are nice. Toffuti do a cream cheese which is pretty good.

hard cheese is difficult to replace. Scheeze is a bit grim, but not too bad if yo use it in a chees sauce or on top of lasagne. Just don't ever try it uncooked!!!!

I only really use goat's cheese (for myself - not intolerant to cow's milk but it contributed to my acne). It's got a stronger flavour, but I happen to like it.
Sainsburys sell an own brand hard goat's cheddar which is reasonably mild. I also love Delamere farm. They do a goat's yoghurt too.

I tried scheeze on a pizza once. Once only.

Extract from this article:

'The Department of Health and the British Dietetics Association advise against this because soy contains high levels of compounds called phytoestrogens that mimic the action of the female hormone oestrogen and which could pose a risk to the long-term fertility of infants.

There is also a risk that babies who are allergic to cow's milk will also be allergic to soy milk, and sheep and goat's milk. '

I would use rice or oat milk in cooking, but make sure that you buy the one with added calcium.

Dd used to have an occasional Alpro soya yoghurt, but it wasn't part of her staple diet.

Cheezly was the standard soya cheese 2 years ago. Has it been renamed, as I've never heard of Scheeze?

Hi can I add some questions here? DD (6 months) gets a blotchy face from dairy - just where it has been on her face, so from contact with the skin, not eating it I suppose. So Mother-inLaw (ex GP) says cut out dairy for a while, HV says don't worry, just carry on as it isn't a problem. Any ideas?

I have been giving her soya formula for her cereal and baby rice, and today got some alpro yogurts which she loved. Should I cut down on this soya then? It hasn't caused any problem so far - about 8 days.

Also bought some feta cheese today, but am thinking it is way too salty? Sheep and goat milk should be ok though shouldn't it?

Cheers for any advice

You also said that your child is allergic to the protein in milk products. That means casein rather than lactose doesn't it.
Whicj means any kind of cheese ( goats buffalo rats whatever ) are off.
And there is actually casein in breast milk.

Custard-type thing out of Neocate, Academicmum? I like the sound of that. How do you do it?

SweetBasil, the custard-type thing made out of neocate is just boiling water (8 oz) in a pan and mixing in cornflour to thicken (with a bit of cold water to stop lumps), then add a couple of teaspoons of sugar, vanilla essence and finally 8 scoops of neocate and stir. Add the neocate powder last to avoid the nutrients breaking down. You can still distinctly taste/smell the neocate but much less so and adding in some pureed apples/pears goes down pretty well with my ds. I've also just got an ice-cream maker so I'm going to have a go at neocate ice-cream next.

My DD had a cow's milk protein allergy, and was largely weaned on stuff like avocados, bananas, lentil and root veg casserole, plain meat and fish, and fruit.

She bf till around 14 months, but as she was at nursery the bf was supplemented (from around 8 months) with a mix of calcium-fortified rice milk, soy formula and Nutramigen. Although none of these is ideal, I figured that at least if she had a mixture it might limit any problems.

Generally, my advice would be not to get too hung up on dairy substitutes and the whole 'milky pudding' thing which is pushed by HVs. Cheesey stuff really isn't necessary. Try and keep up the bf-ing for as long as you can, that is the best thing really. I appreciate it's not easy, especially if you have to go back to work (that is why I started supplementing as I couldn't express enough for 'nursery' days.)

Calcium-fortified rice milk is good as a general drink, I used to add vitamin drops to it. It doesn't contain much protein though, so make sure you add protein to his diet in the form of pulses and meat. Hipp Organic do some good dairy-free jars which contain meat protein (the cottage pie, lancashire hotpot, and some of the chicken ones). And of course you can make and freeze your own versions of these. Good luck, it's a pain but it's definitely manageable (oh and by the way at 2.6 she has well and truly grown out of the allergy now, her favourite foods are butter and cheese! )

soya is quite high on the allergenic potential list, so the advice to use soya is not particularly good and you might consider telling your GP so.

Rice milk is much better; I used this one for DS as it is supplemented with Vit D as well as calcium. You can also get oat milk from some health food shops; but neither have as much protein as he will require.