Tummyache?

[IheartR]

How long after giving a certain food would it give baby tummyache? Are we talking half an hour? 2 hours? 4? 6?!! Or is it impossible to say and depends on the baby?!! Are there any ways of telling whether baby has a tummyache as opposed to something else that is making them grizzly or cry? Lots of questions I know!! Thank you xxx

[~inbalance~]

Or is it impossible to say and depends on the baby?!!

I'm going to go with this answer!   

Usually when a baby's tummy is bugging them they will cry like they are in pain, and will pull their legs up to their chest.  If your baby is exhibiting behaviour that is not normal, then you could consider that it was the food you tried.

What kind of food did you try that you are worried may have caused a tummyache?  You can stop it altogether and try it at another time, or try it again tomorrow and see if you get the same reaction. 

[IheartR]

Hi Martina

Well there are a couple of things I'm wondering about-maybe you can shed some light on them!

The first one is milk (as in cows milk not formula). DS has had cows milk for a while in various forms - cheese, cheese sauce, butter etc and I started to give him milk in cereal and baby rice. He never seemed to have any problems with these however, there have been a couple of times where I wonder whether it has given him a tummyache if he has eaten a larger quantity of it than normal? The first one was he had had a decent sized portion of baby rice with a little fruit for pudding at dinner time (5:30pm ish) and woke at 11:30pm seeming to be in pain. it is unusual for him to wake at this time. The second time was that he had again eaten a full portion of cereal for breakfast (whereas maybe other times when I'd used cows milk he hadn't eaten much??can't remember now!!) and he then woke from his morning nap about an hour and a half later after only 20 minutes of being asleep, which is very unusual for him. Again he woke up seeming to be in pain although I don't remember him pulling his knees up to his chest. i haven't given him milk again since.

The other thing which I'm wondering about is wheat, particularly bread. Again he has had it many times before but in the last week I have been giving him little pieces of toast as finger food before almost every meal. He'll eat maybe 1 or 2 stamp sized pieces or sometimes none at all. We haven't had any episodes like above with the milk but he has been very grumpy and grizzly over the last few days and he's been waking up a lot at night. Thinking about it this is probably due to teeth or him generally feeling a bit under the weather, but both DH and I limit the amount of bread we eat as it makes us a bit bloated!

I was going to leave both foods out for a couple of days and see how he is then try them again and see what happens. i haven't noticed any other reactions to these foods - he has eczema but it doesn't appear to have got any worse since trying these foods and his poo hasn't changed.

Thanks! xxx

[~inbalance~]

How old is your LO?

I think you are right on track.  Both dairy and wheat are highly allergenic foods, and while might be tolerated in small amounts can often cause trouble if eaten too much.  It's funny because they are common problem foods, and also foods that most of us tend to eat in large quantities every day! 

With the dairy, some things like yogurt and cheese are often more easily tolerated because of how they are processed.  The milk proteins are broken down during processing so they don't cause as many problems.  Cow's milk on the other hand might be more troublesome and is often best avoided until closer to a year.  Some LO's will tolerate it in cooking or in cereals, but for others it might still be too much for their sensitive tummies.

With the wheat, consider all gluten as well which is in other grains, not just wheat.  Lots of people are gluten intolerant so it might be a good idea to avoid all of it.

Definitely stop both for a good few weeks I would say.  Then what you can do is pick one of the two and try it out first.  Wait and watch for the symptoms to return, then you should have a good idea of if it's an issue.

HTH

[IheartR]

He's 8.5mo. Thanks very much I will give that a go! X