I don't give much advice to other parents – experience has taught me that every child is different, and what works for one may well not suit another. One thing I am passionate about though, is encouraging young children to be adventurous with flavour. Give them things you don't think they will like and you may be surprised! My daughter loves sardines, spinach, dark chocolate, tomato and chilli soup, Indian food – the list could go on.
Sardines are brilliant for dairy-intolerant little ones as they are very high in calcium, and packed with omega-3 fatty acids. My daughter LOVES this recipe from the brilliant Chocolate & Zucchini blog, for tomato and sardine pasta with cumin. It's cheap, quick and tasty.
I've even come up with a couple of recipes of my own over the past year (since I started getting more sleep!) and will post them soon.
Thursday, 27 September 2012
Monday, 26 September 2011
How common is milk allergy?
Cow's milk is the most common food allergen in young children (source: Jane Clarke: Yummy Baby). Anything from 2-7% of babies will have a cow's milk allergy (I can't pin down an exact statistic - let me know if you can), but most will grow out of it by the age of 3 (hurrah!).
My experience
I had no idea of this when I first suspected that my baby could be intolerant to milk. Having stopped and started weaning three times (at first I thought it was food she couldn't tolerate, not the formula I was mixing her purees with), and being woken by a crying baby every 45 minutes from midnight onwards, I was at breaking point. As an experiment, I started making up her food with water. Almost instantly, she was fine. She went back to waking 2-3 times a night to feed, but settling back peacefully to sleep each time (instead of screaming as soon as I put her down). Two weeks later, I reintroduced a tiny amount of milk (about 15ml) and the problems returned straight away.
Instead of taking me seriously, the health visitor dismissed my concerns, saying it was just a 'coincidence', and told me not to bother seeing a doctor as they definitely wouldn't prescribe a hydrolysed formula. She told me to carry on breastfeeding until 8 months and try milk again at that point. If I had known that most children grow out of this allergy by age 3, not 8 months, I wouldn't have done this. I weaned my daughter on a dairy-free diet, and when I gave her 80ml milk in a bottle at 8 1/2 months, she was up all night, had diarrhoea, and cried and cried. I felt terrible that she had to go through that, and very angry. It was at that point I went to the doctor and demanded to be taken seriously - but I still haven't had any advice about nutrition, or a referral to a specialist - hence all my online research and starting this blog.
Cow's milk protein allergy is not ultra-rare... around 1 in 20 babies suffer from it. So why was I dismissed so quickly? And why isn't there more information available about it? In another post, I'll go into the different formulas available for babies who can't digest cow's milk. Frustratingly, my daughter is refusing to drink them as they taste very different from breast milk and cow's milk (quite bitter/starchy). I feel that if I had started her on them earlier, it might have been different. But we'll never know!
More upbeat and practical posts to follow, I promise, but I wanted to give a bit of personal history/context to start with. Please feel free to share your own story below.
My experience
I had no idea of this when I first suspected that my baby could be intolerant to milk. Having stopped and started weaning three times (at first I thought it was food she couldn't tolerate, not the formula I was mixing her purees with), and being woken by a crying baby every 45 minutes from midnight onwards, I was at breaking point. As an experiment, I started making up her food with water. Almost instantly, she was fine. She went back to waking 2-3 times a night to feed, but settling back peacefully to sleep each time (instead of screaming as soon as I put her down). Two weeks later, I reintroduced a tiny amount of milk (about 15ml) and the problems returned straight away.
Instead of taking me seriously, the health visitor dismissed my concerns, saying it was just a 'coincidence', and told me not to bother seeing a doctor as they definitely wouldn't prescribe a hydrolysed formula. She told me to carry on breastfeeding until 8 months and try milk again at that point. If I had known that most children grow out of this allergy by age 3, not 8 months, I wouldn't have done this. I weaned my daughter on a dairy-free diet, and when I gave her 80ml milk in a bottle at 8 1/2 months, she was up all night, had diarrhoea, and cried and cried. I felt terrible that she had to go through that, and very angry. It was at that point I went to the doctor and demanded to be taken seriously - but I still haven't had any advice about nutrition, or a referral to a specialist - hence all my online research and starting this blog.
Cow's milk protein allergy is not ultra-rare... around 1 in 20 babies suffer from it. So why was I dismissed so quickly? And why isn't there more information available about it? In another post, I'll go into the different formulas available for babies who can't digest cow's milk. Frustratingly, my daughter is refusing to drink them as they taste very different from breast milk and cow's milk (quite bitter/starchy). I feel that if I had started her on them earlier, it might have been different. But we'll never know!
More upbeat and practical posts to follow, I promise, but I wanted to give a bit of personal history/context to start with. Please feel free to share your own story below.
Friday, 23 September 2011
Why I started this blog
My daughter is 9 months old and has a milk protein allergy. I realised several months ago that she couldn't tolerate even a tiny amount of formula milk (I was breastfeeding exclusively but using formula to make up baby rice) - but my concerns were dismissed by the health visitor. It was only this week that she was finally given a prescription for hypoallergenic formula (and she won't drink it due to the bitter taste!).
Having spent some time on the internet researching the subject, I found similar themes coming up time and again. Namely, it taking months for a diagnosis to be made, and finding it very difficult to be taken seriously by health professionals, or get a referral to an allergy clinic or dietician.
There also seems to be a lack of information online about how to wean a baby who can't have dairy products. I am very concerned that my daughter has enough calcium and other nutrients, as I'm sure any mum would be.
The aim of this blog is to bring together the disparate sources of information on the internet in one place. It will focus on milk protein allergy and babies, simply because I am writing from my own experience. I am NOT qualified or experienced on this subject - indeed I am in the dark and this is a starting point to finding out how best to feed my daughter and ensure she grows up strong and healthy. My hope is that other parents with milk allergic/lactose intolerant babies will share their experiences, tips and advice, and we can support each other.
Better go as naptime is clearly over...
Having spent some time on the internet researching the subject, I found similar themes coming up time and again. Namely, it taking months for a diagnosis to be made, and finding it very difficult to be taken seriously by health professionals, or get a referral to an allergy clinic or dietician.
There also seems to be a lack of information online about how to wean a baby who can't have dairy products. I am very concerned that my daughter has enough calcium and other nutrients, as I'm sure any mum would be.
The aim of this blog is to bring together the disparate sources of information on the internet in one place. It will focus on milk protein allergy and babies, simply because I am writing from my own experience. I am NOT qualified or experienced on this subject - indeed I am in the dark and this is a starting point to finding out how best to feed my daughter and ensure she grows up strong and healthy. My hope is that other parents with milk allergic/lactose intolerant babies will share their experiences, tips and advice, and we can support each other.
Better go as naptime is clearly over...
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