I need help figuring out how this works!

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

I don't really understand how this allergy business works.

DD has explosive, mucousy poos. She is quite gassy and uncomfortable *some* of the time. Her Ped had me do a dairy free trial. I didn't see any real improvement. We have two good nights, one bad night, a few good ones and then more bad ones. We saw the Ped yesterday and she said cut out soy, eggs, gluten and red meat also.

What I guess I don't understand is why we have lots of good day and then some bad ones. How long after you eat the food does it cause the problems in LO?

Also, DS used to have mucousy poo which was solved simply with probiotics. Can it be something simple like that?

Does anyone find peanut butter to cause gassiness in babies?

Does it make sense for me to eat a really simple diet with just plain foods for two weeks and see if there is a change and then add foods back in to find out what the actual culprit is? Is two weeks long enough?

TIA

[Shiv52]

{{{hugs Jenn}}}

An ED can be really overwhelming. 

For us I noticed the symptoms came and went but they were definately diet related.  So you can have good days and the bad days can still be caused by diet. 

When you say a plain diet what were you thinking?

[deckchariot]

how long did you go dairy free?  It can take a month to get it all out of yours and dd's system.  Were you doing just obvious dairy or hidden dairy too?

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

I've been dairy free (obvious and hidden) for three weeks. The doctor said o should see an improvement in 4-5 days
 
For a simple diet, I mean nothing with additives. So like rices, plain vegetable and meats, I guess. I was thinking f doing that more to just see if this is food related or not

[deckchariot]

when we went dairy free, I was told I could see some improvement in the crying in 2 weeks, but to expect mucousy poops for a month or so yet.  It takes a really long time for the milk protein to get out of your system and then out of her system.

Are you doing soy free too?  The dairy protein is very similar to the soy protein and often bubs who have trouble with one have trouble with the other.

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Now im doing it all (soy, dairy, gluten....) but I only started that today. I guess I will keep trucking along then. I don't see a steady improvement in her symptoms at all. It comes and goes just like it did when I was eating everything.

[deckchariot]

I did a food diary for about 3 weeks as well to see if I spotted some connection.  I didn't.  Not that you wouldn't.  I've been dairy/soy free since April and dd2 really started improving in early June and has gotten steadily better since then.  There's loads of great support on here!!

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Alright. I guess I will keep going. I despise this in every way

[deckchariot]

It does get better.  I've been doing it for quite awhile now, and the only thing I really missed was cheese.  But I just added goat cheese back in a week ago and dd2 is doing just fine   I didn't do gluten free though, just dairy/soy.  Honestly, we still get some mucousy poopy diapers, but there's no blood in her stool.  She probably would have benefited from a trial of gluten free (or egg free or both...), but I wasn't.  She's doing so much better now, I'm ok with the choice we made.  Our pediatrician has been super supportive, so that's helped.  She also recommended taking a probiotic, so I do that as well (it's tough to find a dairy free one, but I did).  Good luck!

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Okay, I need more help I have been dairy free for 5 weeks and soy, gluten, red meat and egg free for 2 weeks. Emily is taking probiotics and is on iron which her paed wants her to be on. Emily's poo is still incredibly mucousy and not getting any better, in fact, maybe getting worse. I notice no difference in her gassiness/fussiness since the changes in my diet. She appears to be getting a few spots on her face which look a bit like excema starting. I have emailed her paed but haven't heard back yet. What else can I do? I'm getting really frustrated!

[~*~Louisa~*~]

It depends on amounts that you eat too... for us i couldnt even sniff dairy without causing a reaction... but as long as i only had 1 egg or 1 slice of toast (not togeath that would cause a bad day) we would have bad poo but not crying

Have you checked the probiotic for anything?

for us rice was a problem too and sals

[lilisuze]

jenn. About 4 weeks old dd got a terrible skin thing going on. Might just be the glands developing. How mucusy are the poops? Can you describe them? Big hugs. Will think more when i can get on the pc rather than my phone

[Shiv52]

Hugs Jenn xx

The skin thing we had here and wasn't related to food intolerance.  It was like baby acne.  It settles in about 3-4 weeks and a lot of BFing babies get it.  CAn't remember the exact reason but it was to do with hormones changing in mum?  The HV gave us a cream and it made it so much worse.  So in the end I left it alone and it went away.  It was awful looking though.

are you probiotics dairy free? 

Is she very uncomfortable?  can you get her settled at all? How is she sleeping?  For me I would need to see huge changes to make that diet worthwhile.  That being said 2 weeks free from those other things won't have them out of your system.  I think with gluten it can take a month to be out of your system then a further 4 weeks to be sure its out of babies system.  I think dairy is 4-6 weeks though overall. 

My friends LO is allergic/intolerant to a whole host of things and she never quite got things just right with an ED.  On the advice of the paed she switched to a hypoallergenic formula but didn't actually see a big difference and really missed BFing so she went back to BFing and did the best she could with the diet as at least the baby was getting all the good things from BFing that she wouldn't be getting from the formula and her LO got much better at 6 months, even better at 8 months and so on. 

[deckchariot]

I too would check that probiotic - a lot of them have dairy in them.  What about nuts?  What "milk" are you drinking?  some almond milk can have soy in it, and if it's a nut issue, the almond/coconut milk could also be the problem.

Have you had her stool tested for blood?  Is there any concern that the crying/fussiness could be reflux from the food intolerances?

Katie's mucousy stools never cleared up completely when I went dairy/soy free.  Oddly enough, they seem to have improved once starting solids (I actually suspect she's beginning to outgrow whatever other intolerances she had).  But she didn't have blood in her stool anymore, and she was (still is) on meds for reflux and that addressed the pain that was causing the screaming.  Our pediatrician said I could continue trying to eliminate things from my diet, or I could keep going as I was (dairy/soy free only) because Katie wasn't suffering long term damage (no blood) and her pain was managed.  The GI specialist told us to quit bfing and go to amino acid based formula as Katie was allergic even to the protein in my breast milk.  In the end, we decided not to stop bfing (for many of the reasons Shiv mentioned above) and she continues to get better.  At 3 mos, I felt like we really began to turn the corner.  We've not changed her meds in 2.5 - 3 mos, I've started eating goat cheese, and she's started solids and we've not had a reflux flare in almost 3 mos and no mucous in 3 weeks.

[Shiv52]

Our pediatrician said I could continue trying to eliminate things from my diet, or I could keep going as I was (dairy/soy free only) because Katie wasn't suffering long term damage (no blood) and her pain was managed.

This was what my friend thought too.