Dairy & Soy free for me

giggler25

Emily (5 weeks old) had little flecks of red in 2 of her poppy diapers last night, so her pediatrician advised me to avoid dairy and soy. Poor little baby.

I'm not a big dairy lover to start with... I HATE milk. I do love ice cream but other than that I eat cheese on an occasional sandwich or with pasta. Darn, the past a is going to be HARD now that I think about it.

My latest food love was Silk yogurt which is soy so that's a no go, and I just bought a box of toffuti cuties. Bummer! But I will do it to help my little one!

Just wanted to introduce myself and say hi to all you other BF moms and especially those on special diets!

Brittlamarche

I'm going dairy free too. My little has had mucous in his poop so we are trying dairy free to see if that helps. My sisters son had the blood in his poop and it took 2 months before it cleared.

giggler25

@casey78‌ - Thanks so much for the tips!!! Glad to hear you have the hang of your restrictions. How long have you been on restriction?

@Brittlamarche‌ - sorry to hear your LO is having issues too. GL!! Emily has only had a few specks so I'm hoping I caught it early, though I have heard it will take at least a week for the food to clear my system.

giggler25

@casey78‌ - Wow, those are a lot of allergies. Your poor LO! How did you confirm all of those allergies, or is it just trial&error?

mommatotwo2

Unfortunately for @casey78's LO, food allergies do have a tendency to "run in groups". Often when a LO is allergic to one of them, they are allergic to more than one of them. We have a "dairy sensitivity", my LO seems ok with non straight milk forms of dairy and we haven't had her officially allergy tested yet, but we've held off on eggs and peanuts for this reason.

The good news is that many kids outgrow these early onset allergies, so hopefully that will be the case for all of our LO's.

Good luck OP! There are quite a few moms on here dealing with being dairy/soy/other things free and hopefully they can be a great resource for you!

giggler25

mommatotwo2 said:

We have a "dairy sensitivity", my LO seems ok with non straight milk forms of dairy and we haven't had her officially allergy tested yet, but we've held off on eggs and peanuts for this reason.

How do you know it's a dairy "sensitivity" versus "allergy"? Also, at what age can they be officially tested? I assume that would be once the LO is actually eating the food directly versus breastfeeding? I don't mind restricting my diet if it will help her but my DH is not convinced this is the right solution since everything he's read indicates this affects such a small percentage of breastfed newborns.

mommatotwo2

In our case, my LO showed no signs of a dairy allergy until we tried to introduce her to cows milk in a cup at 11.5 months old. She had been doing fine with cheese and yogurt from 8 months on and I'd definitely not been dairy free while nursing. She never showed any of the usual signs of a dairy allergy, like blood or mucous in stool etc. She was never overly fussy, though she is a crummy sleeper and that can sometimes be a sign. When we introduced the cows milk, she got small red spots on her upper lip. I talked to our pediatrician, who said because all other evidence did not point to a dairy allergy, that we could keep giving it to her and over time the spots would go away. After a couple weeks she was getting them less frequently, but then she started having loose poop which may have been related, or could have been teething or ear infection and cold related, but I talked to the pediatrician and asked if we could hold off a month and try again, and nurse 3x a day and give a little soy milk. He agreed with the plan so at 13 months, that's where we are at. Unfortunately without allergy testing, it's a guessing game, but our pediatrician didn't feel allergy testing was warrented at this point. I'm not sure of the minimum age for testing, though he did suggest that allergy testing has a high rate of inaccuracy the younger a child is. I'm not sure a couple flecks of blood warrents you having to go dairy and soy free, that could be related to a lot of things and may not even be blood. But I'm not a doctor.