I feel so defeated...bfing/allergy related. btdt advice please

ds is one month today and it looks like he may have a milk protein allergy. today when I changed his diaper, he had streaks of blood in it. dd also had a milk protein allergy. I eliminated all dairy with her and got sick enough (totally threw my stomach off) that I wound up in the hospital. I am so afraid to eliminate dairy and have it happen again. with dd it was easy to.give up bfing because my supply was nearly nothing. This time my supply is awesome. I even have 550 oz in the freezer. now I feel like its all for nothing. dh wants me to just put ds on alimentum so I dont get sick again and at first I thought that's what I wanted, too. Now im not so sure. I still have cases of alimentum in my house that are not expired. The on call ped (not one of the regular doctors) said to keep giving him bm but to cut out milk and cheese....just the obvious signs of dairy and to bring him to the ped when they open either tomorrow or monday. with dd I had to pump and dump and give her alimentum for a week til the dairy was our of my system. the on call dr said that it's not necessary. any btdt advice?
eta:it's strange. ds has none of the symptoms dd had suchas vomiting and poor weight gain. she also never wanted to eat. he eats nonstop

Message edited 2/9/2013 10:09:47 AM.

Re: I feel so defeated...bfing/allergy related. btdt advice please

I wouldn't worry about pump/dump its stressful enough to go through what you are going through with the dairy allergy... Either way it will take about 1-2 weeks to get the dairy protein out of his system so I would just cut out the dairy from your diet and go from there that way you aren't having to introduce formula at the same time/cold turkey. My pedi never told me I had to stop BFing in the interim. I also had to cut out all dairy (obvious/hidden) from my diet and it took about 2 weeks for DS's stools to go back to normal/no blood. I'm sorry I know how you feel and it is HEARTBREAKING to lose all of that milk in the freezer, happened to me to. Whatever you decide to do from here on out is completely up to you, you have already given him a huge gift by BFing up until this point. Sending lots of hugs

Re: I feel so defeated...bfing/allergy related. btdt advice please

Posted by petvet

I wouldn't worry about pump/dump its stressful enough to go through what you are going through with the dairy allergy... Either way it will take about 1-2 weeks to get the dairy protein out of his system so I would just cut out the dairy from your diet and go from there that way you aren't having to introduce formula at the same time/cold turkey. My pedi never told me I had to stop BFing in the interim. I also had to cut out all dairy (obvious/hidden) from my diet and it took about 2 weeks for DS's stools to go back to normal/no blood. I'm sorry I know how you feel and it is HEARTBREAKING to lose all of that milk in the freezer, happened to me to. Whatever you decide to do from here on out is completely up to you, you have already given him a huge gift by BFing up until this point. Sending lots of hugs

Re: I feel so defeated...bfing/allergy related. btdt advice please

I dont really have too much advice but i have read that babies can outgrow the allergy so maybe you can give him the frozen bm later on? Also it can take up to about 3 weeks for dairy to leave your body. Good luck, youve done a great job so far!

I feel so defeated...bfing/allergy related. btdt advice please

I went through the same thing. DS was 5 weeks when he started with the streaks of blood. I was able to cut out dairy only. Soy didn't bother him. I kept at it for 8 months and then I slowly introduced dairy back into my diet. I ended up BF'ing till a year.
As for all my frozen milk when we found out about the allergy, that's another story :( I had to throw it all away...I am sorry you have to go through this again!

Re: I feel so defeated...bfing/allergy related. btdt advice please

I agree with the above posters. Stop dairy on your end. It may be ok with your system this time around. No reason to pump and dump. And the frozen milk you can give your lo later. You are doing a great job!!!!! Keep up the awesome work!!! Sending hugs