Introducing dairy to a lo with contact allergy - any tips or advice?

[~ Vik ~]

Hi everyone 

So D had his 1 year checkup this week, and his doctor gave us the go ahead to try to give him some dairy.  He still has a pretty severe contact reaction (hives) but may be able to tolerate it digestively.  (I think Amelia1227 told me that first! )  Because he gets hives so easily (any contact with milk, even mouthing a toy that was last mouthed by a recently formula fed baby) I don't intend to make dairy a huge part of his diet.  It would just be nice not to have to read every ingredient label, kwim?  If I knew that he could handle it, I could ignore trace dairy in foods, maybe give him some hard cheese once in a while, etc.

His doctor suggested giving him a couple tablespoons of whole milk in a medicine syringe and seeing what happens.  Just wanted to know if anyone had any other ideas on how I could introduce it?  Or is this really the best way?  It just seems strange to me to be doing this...  What should I be looking for in a reaction (besides the obvious hives, vomiting, etc.)?  What changes might be normal when newly introducing dairy?  How long should I wait to see a reaction before giving him more?

He also has eczema.  The very first time he had dairy (at abour 5.5mo old, skim milk powder in baby cereal) his eczema flared horribly.  However, I cut dairy out of my diet for a month and saw no improvement in his skin, and reintroduced it very suddenly with no ill effects.  The dozen-ish times he's come into contact with dairy since then have given him hives, but have not affected his eczema.  I will obviously though watch for a flare.  However, if he flares with straight milk, should I still try trace dairy to see if that has an effect?

Thanks for any advice and information you can give!
Vikki

[~ Vik ~]

Just bumping myself... Any thoughts about introducing dairy would be a huge help!

[Mashi]

His doctor suggested giving him a couple tablespoons of whole milk in a medicine syringe and seeing what happens.  Just wanted to know if anyone had any other ideas on how I could introduce it?  Or is this really the best way?  

This is generally the way it is done in a hospital "milk challenge" - we ended up not doing ours because we moved overseas on the day after DS's 1st birthday and they were not able to get us in the week before he turned 1, and wouldn't do it any earlier than that. But, we did have the info packet they sent us and a few appts with the dietician and paed who were responsible for the milk challenge that outlined what they did, and it was exactly that.  Ffwd to arrival in Germany and we were making a booking for having it done here, paed explained what would happen and sure enough, starts out with 5mL of whole milk in a syringe. In the end, again the wait-time was so long on the appt that we just did it at home ourselves.

I think the syringe is the safest way if he has contact allergies with it, reduces him getting it all over him.  

I would tackle it in the same way you have suggested - whole milk in a syringe first, keep an eye on him for a couple of hours for any skin reactions, vomiting and so on.  If there is no reaction a couple of hours later give him another 5mL in the syringe and watch again.  Depending on how fast his skin reactions normally come about would depend on when I would make the judgement on if he was okay, kwim?  If his eczema usually comes out quite quickly or if it used to take a couple of days. A normal change when introducing dairy is softer bowel movements - softer, but not tooooo soft.  A few mLs may not make a difference, but should you move on to giving him larger amounts don't be alarmed or call it off if he has softer poop for a while - our paed told us that up to 14 days of very soft poop was okay, as long as it wasn't watery and explosive.  And yes, we did have lots of soft poop, would def have called it diarrhea, but not watery/explosive, and it lasted for close to 2 weeks.

HTH?

[~ Vik ~]

That's great information Mashi, thank you   Although D's doctor is usually quite good, he was very vague about this...  Don't really know why!