Weaning a baby with cow's milk intolerance.

Olliebeak

My dgd2 (Caitlin) has an intolerance for cow's milk and has been on the soya milk prescribed by the GP for a few weeks now.

I know that nowadays the advice is not to wean a baby until almost 6 mths old - but she is getting to the stage where she is taking an interest in what everybody else is eating.

Obviously this means that we are going to have to be careful what we let her have a 'taste of' eg dipping her dummy in for a try out. In the past, we've been able to get yoghourts and give babies some of that but in Caitlin's case it will have to be soya yoghourt. The ones that my daughter has seen available are around £1.50 for 4 :eek: . Is it possible to make your own?

Has anybody on here got any experience of babies with similar problems and any recommendations for baby foods that are soya based - especially rusks etc. Any recipes for soya milk based things would be extremely welcome as well.

We have been told that there is a chance she may grow out of this problem around the age of 7 - but not to build our hopes up too much.

I'm sure that somebody on here will have some ideas - you all seem so knowledgeable practically everything :T .

Many thanks - Ollie, Helen and Caitlin

anguk

My son was milk & lactose intolerant when he was a baby and had the soya milk from the doctor (wysoy). What I used to do when weaning him was just read the labels and use his dried milk to make things like rice-pud or mix with rusks. The best thing to do is make everything from scratch then you can be sure that there's no milk in it, it's easy to do I used to give my son what we ate but mashed it up! He hated tins or jars of baby food but would eat the dried stuff that you mixed with boiling water or milk (we used his wysoy), so I just gave him that or home-made.

My son did grow out of it, when he was 12 months old we followed our doctors advice and slowly re-introduced boiled cows milk into his diet to see if he had any sort of reaction, thankfully he didn't and by the time he was about 18 months old we stopped using his Wysoy. He's now a strapping 6ft 2in 21 year old so his milk intolerance didn't do him any harm!

Edit: You could give the Farley's Tinytums Careline team a call on 0800 212 991 and ask them which of their products are milk-free. I used to get the rusks & breakfast cereals for my son but the ingredients may well have changed over the past 20 years!

Edit again! Have a look at the Organix website, they list all the ingredients for their different baby foods. http://www.organix.com/

squeaky

Olliebeak wrote: »

In the past, we've been able to get yoghourts and give babies some of that but in Caitlin's case it will have to be soya yoghourt. The ones that my daughter has seen available are around £1.50 for 4 :eek: . Is it possible to make your own?

There's some help here...

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=637867

At least, I hope it will help.

Good luck

Olliebeak

Thanks for that advice :T .

I think the careline and the website are a great idea - and I'll give both of them a try.

And that yoghourt link is brilliant - guess I'd better start checking freecycle for a yoghourt maker :rolleyes:. Have seen all the stories on here about people making their own and to be honest we don't really eat enough of the stuff to justify getting a ym for our own use, but when it comes to the dgk's then i'ts another matter altogether .

ness_w

I asked about this elsewhere for you - there's an interesting reply about help from the dietician: http://www.tamba.org.uk/html/messageboard/viewtopic.php?t=31260

Ness.

Olliebeak

many thanks for that link - my daughter is waiting for an appointment with the dietician at the moment :T .

We were told to avoid sheep's/goat's milk, at least for the time being. Caitlin has been prescribed Neocate for now - funny to see her smack her lips when she sees everybody else eating something - but so difficult to stop ourselves, and the other grandchildren, giving her 'a taster' of something.

skylight

Emily had a lactose intolerance and now nearly 4 has grown out of it!

What part of cows milk is she allergic to?? As Emily just had lactose issues, we gave her Lactofree cows milk - in cartons with a cow on the front, close to the cartons of soya milk in the supermarket fridges. It is cows milk with the lactose removed so she had all the good bits a growing child needed! Of course, if yours has problems with protiens and stuff in cows milk, then this isn't great!

We also gave her the soya yoghurts. Expensive I know, but she enjoys them so much. We did buy an ice-cream maker so she could have icecream too! Soya milk is not great tasting on its own in icecream so add masses of fruit puree.

After a year of steering clear totally of things with lactose in them, I started to re-introduce them into her diet in very tiny quanities so "test the water" so to speak and I think that this really helped in her eventually building up a tolerance to them.

It wasn't cheap buying soya stuff for her, so we had to make adjustments elsewhere (cheaper nappies/money off vouchers etc.. I even gave up salad cream for a while.... BOO-HOO!!!) to fit it into our budget.

The biggest problem were other family members who "forgot" or thought I was making it up. They weren't the ones who had to deal with a child screaming in pain - and it made me cross.

shed_head_2

My 3 year old is lactose and casin intolerant. We use Organic soya milk for everything for him. Yoghurt, icecream, porridge, Muffins, yorkshire puds, etc. He is the youngest of three. We didnt want the other boys to miss out on milk so when batch baking I do the lot with soya, however porridge etc they all have seperate coloured bowls. As for weaning him, he just ate the same as us. I tend to cook fresh each night so he had the veg meat etc. from day one. The only special things I did was no milk in mash. Oh and I made my own bread using soya milk.
As he got older it was hard explaining why he could not have ice cream when we went to the beach. The easiest soloution was to stop everyone having ice cream. He seems to tolerate a little dark chocolate these days. It just causes a little runny poo. However if he has white chocolate the results are terrible.


it was also hard to convince the relations, nursery etc. The amount of times we had hassle with granny cause she gave him one of her home made muffins full of milk!!! Our family are now into the routine of things. So not really an issue these days. Also Holidays at Butlins are great as they have a full list of foods onsite that he can eat. They also have soya milk and ice cream in the dining rooms if you go half board.

Hope this helps a little

Em

pigpen

My youngest boy is lactose intolerant.. helped of course by him having reflux until he was 2 as well!! He is 9 next month and seems to have outgrown the worst of it.

I got him soya yoghurts and stuff from the local health food shop.. and I also got some bits on prescription from the doctor... as well as the soya milk.

The dietician was completely useless.. her advice was.. read the labels if it has any of these words in (milk, lactose, whey) don't give him it.. DUH!!! and stop giving him his bottles during the ngiht. He didn't eat anything and the only 'food' I cold get down him at 18 months was 4 month pure!d baby foods in a beaker with a lid needless to say he was very underweight and sickly!!! I didn't bother going to any of the follow up appointments.

I gave him loads of fresh fruit and veg which seemed the best option. I got him bread and yoghurs from the health food shop.. I just made sure they were vegan suitable and we got by.

When he got to about 5 he could manage a bit of milk on cereal though it has to be semi skimmed. He could have ordinary bread or a spoonful of ice cream. Buns etc were ok. Yorkshire puds have only just started to be tolerated. Milk puddings he can't eat or custards, pancakes (though I think that is because they are just disgusting)

My advice would be to stick with fresh fruit, veg and homemade stuf until she is a bit bigger.

Tesco value rich tea biscuits featured heavily in our diet too!!

I'd rather chew off my own limbs than go back to that!! I hope she outgrows it very quickly!!

alm721

Just to say my son is allergic to milk as well as wheat and eggs, He's also has Neocate for cooking etc. We are having a bit of a hard time but are gradually getting there. The only thing I would say is that we've been told by 2 hv and our GP not to give soy products. The soy formula is not really recommended anymore and off the shelf soy products like youghurts etc are not recommended for children under 2. You may want to dicuss this with your gp.

Olliebeak

Many thanks again for your replies/suggestions.

The really funny thing is that Caitlin has never appeared to be 'not thriving' at all. She has always been a good weight - the only problem was disgusting poops (similar to curdled korma sauce after EVERY bottle). The GP then requested that my DD should get a sample and take it, and Caitlin, to the local hospital. They decided to admit her and do tests and it came back as 'cow's milk protein intolerance' and they started her on Neocate there and then. She stayed in hospital for a week until stabilised and was also given gaviscon to stop reflux. The poops have now settled down to 1 nappy per day but it's now dark green/black (similar to new-born yukky stuff!).

She feeds 5 ozs every three hours but manages to sleep around 9 - 10 hours each night - at least one blessing there. She now has signs of teething - so maybe the sleeping through will end now :eek: .