Dairy Sensitivities in Breastfed Babies

My second pregnancy was a bit of a journey in itself, which I will share another day.

Once our son arrived the journey didn't get any easier, as cute as he was. He screamed for hours in the evening and I mean for hours. I would try everything I did with our daughter, but nothing worked.

My husband travels for work so it would mostly be our daughter and me at home.  At this stage, she had been an only child for 7 years and I could tell my precious first born was becoming stressed. Our peaceful home had turned into a screaming nightmare.

I remember being at a BBQ and he started to get fussy. I tried to put him down for a sleep but he cried and cried and nothing would work. I was feeling a bit isolated in my friends babies room, trying not to cry myself! My friend came in and we started to talk about dairy intolerances through breastmilk, since I was questioning my cheese intake that night.

I had eaten a lot of cheese at this BBQ, because, well if you put cheese in front of me I will eat it all. Even if you just spent large money on Gorgonzola, I react like an addict. And I get very attractively, gassy!

You can only smile with an unsettled baby for so long, I was so exhausted! I was trying to carry on as normal with my part time job and catching up with friends. But, I soon realised I needed to focus more on my son and myself, so I cut back on 'life'.

At this stage our son started to have blood in his nappy/diaper. Sometimes it would be mixed with a frothy looking substance, sometimes green, yellow, streaks of what looked like mucus.

I went to my Doctor with lots of photos of poop! And found out, yes he has a dairy allergy through my breast milk. Thank you cheese addiction. So off I went to try and figure that out.

I started to "cut out dairy' but I didn't realise that actually, any trace of dairy was affecting him.  So, what I needed to do, was treat dairy as if it was gluten!

You would think with my experience with celiac I would be a master of label reading, but sleep deprivation does funny things. And, it turns out dairy is in more things than I realised.

My son started to settle better once I got the hang of things though, no more screaming or weird looking poop! I started to realise how much pain he was in before, how he would arch his back to try and release his trapped gas.

Slowly I started to reintroduce dairy, but it took a long time for him to be okay with dairy in my breast milk.  Dairy takes some time to get out of your 'breast milk system' so each fail meant he suffered for sometime, all over again. And, the rest of us got anxious again as "witching hour' approached.

I started to wonder if maybe I should use a substitute such as goats milk, because I felt like my breast milk was failing him. He didn't like the substitutes, and I didn't try very long because I felt guilty.

I read one day that some babies with dairy allergies through breast milk could be due to the Mum having an allergy to dairy.

This got me thinking, well, I get pretty gassy when I eat cheese, and, I won't eat cheese at nighttime because it gives me nightmares. Then I remembered, my husband had to stop dairy as a child, but I couldn't remember why. Maybe we gave him some anti dairy gene!

But, slowly our son could manage some dairy through my breastmilk, we did it. At a Doctors check up I was told its always best to try and reintroduce dairy through breast milk, rather than risk a life time of dairy allergies. Findings may have changed now, but for my son this was true, thankfully.

I however, started to notice milk was making me breakout in pimples. What works for me is having only almond milk at home, this keeps the pimples at bay. And, Ive learnt to chill out with the cheese, doing the world a favour, I'm sure.