Milk Allergy vs Intolerance and night wakings

[Wilsmon]

This subject has probably been discussed in the past b/c when I did a search and put in "Milk Intolerance" there was 409 results!  I just don't have time to back through all of these so forgive me if I am dredging up an old subject.

Two questions:

(1)  Is there such a thing as just an intolerance to milk (dairy) as opposed to an out right allergy and

(2) can night wakings be the only symptom of an intolerance?

DS does not have a rash, bloody stools etc but inspite of 5 months of sleep coaching he still wakes at night. It takes him two hours to go back to sleep no matter what we do (we don't however, give a bottle, pick him up etc, any comforting is done with him in the crib).  However, every once in awhile we will get some "good" spells where he will sleep through the night for a few nights.

The ped. wants me to switch to soy formula (he is 11 mos and I am afraid it is going to be difficult to get him to switch at this point) to see if that might be what is causing the wakings. 

Any thoughts or experiences with this and whether or not it helped the night wakings to get them off dairy?  The ped. wants me to try it through the weekend (3 day weekend) and if it doesn't help he wants to see me next week in the office and go from there (I talked to him over the phone for this).

Thanks.

[Kayna]

Hi Wilsmom, here's a link to a very helpful post. There is an initial couple paragraphs you may want to read when it comes to a milk intolerance.

http://www.babywhisperer.com/forum/milk-soy-protein-intolerance-mspi-vt25218.html?sid=2a81bd62a7e44fa0d189b7f37dc4714f

I know there is a difference but I'm not sure exactly what it is. dd was tested to see if she had an allegy with a blood sample from her diaper. It came back negative but she had an obvious intolerance.

My daughter had mucousy diapers and blood in her stood for symptoms so I'm not sure about the fussiness. HTH a little.

[kc]

My friends son is milk intolerant. They discovered it when he was a baby & thought he had grown out of it.

He is 3 years old now & just recently it has returned. He was getting sick every 2-3 weeks without fail, both vomitting & diarrhea (sp?) & very lethargic. He had been to the doctor & was being referred to a Pead in their local hospital. His mother realised that this was the same symptoms he had as a baby & took him off diary totally. He has not had any problems since & when she took him to the hospital they agreed that Mum had done the right thing & didn't do any tests on him.

We talked a lot about it because my daughter has a milk allergy, we were comparing the symptoms or lack of comparisons.

[Wilsmon]

Well, I did find time to read some old threads and it seems that you can't always see the blood in the stools.  Still, he has never had vomiting, and as long as he gets some sleep he is generally a happy baby.  His stools will range from fairly hard, almost constipated to pretty loose but I contributed this to teething.

I switched to soy formula yesterday and he is actually taking it well so we will give this a go and see what happens.