My Dairy-free Baby

When our baby was crying inconsolably and having diaper blowouts, we figured out that a milk sensitivity was causing her issues and cut dairy out of our diets.

Babies cry. Babies go though fussy patches. Babies have runny poop. When my newborn baby was exceptionally fussy after I consumed things like creamy hot chocolate and ice cream, and she had consistent diaper blowouts right after breastfeeding, I started to suspect that this behavior might be linked to my diet.

Fast forward 6 months and we determined that my daughter was sensitive to cows’ milk. Convincing myself of this took a while. When she had a lot of blowouts, my first reaction was to try different diapers - new brand, new size. When she was fussy, I would always find one or two other things in our schedule that could also cause fussiness -maybe our outing overwhelmed her, maybe this is a developmental leap that causes fussiness, etc.  Some dairy didn’t seem to bother her. When I ate cheese or yogurt*, she did not have as much of a reaction. Still other times, she would be fussy when I had no dairy at all.

(*Cheese and yogurt are bacterially processed and can be easier to digest for someone with dairy issues than other milk products)

Here are several of the observations that lead us to conclude that dairy bothered my daughter:

• Touching cream cheese icing irritated her skin and made it red and raised

• Using normal formula upset her stomach and gave her diarrhea.

• She had particularly bad reactions after I had ice cream or a glass of milk

• Eliminating and reintroducing dairy eliminated and reintroduced stomach issues and discomfort

  Implementing an Elimination Diet

  We eliminated dairy from our diet and then reintroduced dairy items as a sort of “food challenge.” We eliminated dairy for a period of at least two weeks to be sure there were no traces of milk protein from our systems. Early on when she was only breastfeeding, I would try dairy then waited to see if negative symptoms followed. This was particularly hard while breastfeeding, because I could find no clear answers for how long it takes for cow’s milk protein to get into breastmilk.

  When we tried milk, she would have particularly bad reactions after I had ice cream or a glass of milk. She would have loose stool and get flush cheeks or a few red bumps on her face or back.

  As she got older (> 9 mo.), we would let her try dairy products herself periodically and see if she had any adverse reactions. We continued to try some dairy every few months to monitor whether she was outgrowing her sensitivity.

Red raised marks on hand below thumb and knuckles more than an hour after playing with cream cheese icing

Flushed cheeks more than an hour after eating cream cheese icing

Labeling the issues

So now that we knew that cows’ milk negatively affected her, we needed to understand what to call it. Several options we had considered include:

•             Dairy allergy

•             Dairy sensitivity

•             Lactose intolerance

•             Breastmilk formilk-hindmilk imbalance

What is the difference between lactose intolerance, an allergy, and a “sensitivity”?

Lactose is a sugar found in milk. If you are lactose intolerant, then you do not have the enzyme (ie. cellular machinery) you need to break down this sugar in your stomach and intestines. This leads to stomach issues like gas or diarrhea after consuming milk products.  

An allergy on the other hand is when your body considers a protein from milk to be a harmful intruder and uses the immune system to attack it. This can manifest as hives, difficulty breathing, gastrointestinal issues, and other symptoms.

Some lactation consultants suggest that when you have an over-supply of breastmilk, components of the milk your baby is consuming will be skewed to include more of the human lactose in the watery foremilk. Then your baby gets full before getting the fatty, calorie-dense hindmilk. This foremilk-hindmilk imbalance can cause similar symptoms to dairy sensitivity. Oversupply was an issue for us and did cause lots of spitting up, however, several observations mentioned above made us realize that my daughter’s symptoms flared up when she was exposed to milk.

We however existed in the grey area of having cows' milk sensitivity. A true allergy causes a response using antibodies that can be detected in your blood stream. Many patients test negative for the milk protein blood test for allergies, but still report showing symptoms after having milk products. However, doctors still recognize that there are many cases where someone might not have a true allergy and they might not be lactose intolerant, but they are still sensitive to cows’ milk. People with milk sensitivity still experience symptoms such as gastrointestinal issues, skin irritation (eczema, hives, etc), or respiratory problems. The good news is that being sensitive to milk usually goes away over time in children under 5.

At the time, I felt like my pediatrician was not as helpful as I had hoped she would be in arriving at the conclusion that my daughter had a milk sensitivity. When I explained the symptoms, she did not make it sound like a big deal. Babies go through many changes and have many different symptoms and although ours were uncomfortable, they did not seem life threatening.

She said it sounds like she may have a dairy or cow's milk sensitivity but that they wouldn’t label it allergies until she was older.  As my daughter passed the one year mark, the doctor took the stance that if it didn’t bother my daughter then we shouldn’t worry about it. Allergy testing is laborious, uncomfortable, and if your baby’s life is not threatened, your child may grow out of the dairy sensitivity without needing the testing. Also, many people that report symptoms due to dairy products do not have positive allergy tests. So we could get a negative test result and that would not discount that we were still seeing milk-related symptoms. Our doctor advised that we wait and test for an allergy if symptoms worsened or persist until the age of 5. In the mean time, we would just avoid dairy.

Managing a cow’s milk sensitivity

Even though the diagnosis was not 100% clear, the best way we found to manage the symptoms was to eliminate dairy from our diet and see if it helped get rid of the issues. We took care that even though we were eliminating dairy, we still got a balanced diet that included calcium in the form of a plant-based “milks” like almond milk. We also periodically tried dairy to see if she still had issues and as a sanity check to see if we were making all of these changes for nothing. For us, dairy really did cause my daughter's stomach and skin problems.

Ultimately, we decided to make a life style switch to be dairy-free for the duration of her cows’ milk sensitivity (or allergy). This made meal planning, eating out, and going to other people’s houses all way harder, but it was worth making the shift for her to feel better. Plus, she finally did outgrow her sensitivity when she was 3 years old, so it was only for a small window of time in the long run.