Has anyone had any experience with a baby with food allergies who is being breastfed? LO's diapers have been bloody and mucousy the past week and he cries inconsolably. We have him on Alimentum formula (smells like dog food) for the next 5 days while I start a diet of no gluten, dairy, soy, or eggs. The doctor says we can slowly try adding the foods back into my diet, but it might take upwards of a year to do. There's no guarantee its one of those allergens either, so the diet might get even more restrictive. It just sucks because I've really struggled with breastfeeding (I honestly hate it, but I want to do it for him), and this selfishly makes me want to give up.
Anyone gone through something similar? Any encouraging stories? I know that my breastmilk is best for him...but it just seems so hard right now.
Re: Baby with food allergies
Also, while BM is probably easiest on an allergy tummy, it's certainly not easy on mom, and a happy mom is a good mom. If the Alimentum works for him, there's no shame in staying on that instead of starting down the road of diet restrictions if you already hate BFing. Good luck! I hope something works out for the little guy, because I'm sure that must be hard for you to watch
We took our son to an allergist and a GI specialist in addition to his pedi and ultimately... we never figured out what the allergy was. He was definitely sensitive to dairy and eggs (says the allergist) but even after I had eliminated those he still had green, mucous-y stool often and sometimes flecks of blood. He also had reflux, which we treated with meds until he was 6 months old or so. I stayed on the diet until he was about 9 months old and we had been introducing solids to him for a while (carefully). The craziest part is that as we introduced solids he never had any allergic reactions to them! Now he has NO allergies at all except diaper rash from too much acidic food like citrus. He drinks milk etc.
Looking back on this time and thinking about how I will do things differently if we face the same problem with this LO, the only advice I can give is - do your best to figure it out but just realize that you may never figure out what the source of the problem is. I never did. Also, having these problems now does not mean you will have the same problem when LO is older. And I can tell you that switching to formula is probably easier than trying to stay on a difficult diet yourself for a long time. Good luck! PM me if there is anything else I can help with.