Reaction to Dairy

jlf1019

This may be a dumb question, but has anyone developed a reaction to dairy in their pregnancy? I've never had any problems with it before, but the past two days, any time I've eaten dairy-heavy foods, it's made me feel terrible! 

Yesterday, I was snacking on cheddar cheese, and it made my stomach super upset and left me feeling just bluh for a couple hours after. This morning I had a yogurt with breakfast (which I have done a thousand times before), and same thing. I'm feeling awful. But I ate pizza the other day with no problem, but maybe that was because it was "diluted" with the bread, sauce, etc. 

I have an appointment with my doctor early next week, but thought I'd just ask around first and see if anyone else had similar experiences. 

jennypolkadots

It's far more common to be lactose intolerant than to be tolerant. You can also develop food allergies at any point in your life and pregnancy is a common time to do so because of the huge hormone changes. There should actually be a word for the tolerance of lactose because it is really rare. Most people just don't get super sick and instead have sort of a constant state of poor gut health that feels normal to them and can present itself in non-tummy form like occasional headaches. My husband is super intolerant (he can not eat anything that contains milk like bread, baked goods, etc. or he is sick for a week) and I had a pretty mild intolerance growing up where if I had something heavy in milk like ice cream I would get dizzy and a headache and need to rest. During pregnancy it is more common for the intolerance to go away and mine seems to have done this. This is because your body lowers it's immune response to foreign bodies which protects your baby from the body seeing it as a threat. But we all have different bodies so it's totally possible the hormone shift may have lead to you developing a reaction. No way to know if it will continue past pregnancy though.

It's also possible to develop an allergy if you suddenly start consuming way more of something than you used to. During pregnancy many women start eating lots of yogurt and dairy to get protein. My SIL is extremely allergic to peanuts and only developed the allergy after working around them at a bar for several years. It takes 3 weeks for milk to get out of your system and know for sure that is the trigger. Avoid major dairy items for now and see what your doctor says. Make sure you are replacing the dairy based protein with something else though, you need at least 70 g a day during pregnancy. 

ahbEsq

I never had a problem with dairy, even while I was pregnant the first time, but after delivering DS I developed lactose intolerance. Fortunately I can still handle cheese but milk, ice cream, and creamy sauces are out for me. Still the same lactose intolerance while pregnant the second time.