Food intolerance in a breastfed baby

[Sungrl]

Hi there,

My 3 month old DD Zoey has been getting increasingly more fussy over the past month.  She used to be a very happy baby but now can have days where she fusses and cries all day long.  Her pediatrician thought she had reflux and she is taking medication for this but I am not sure I am seeing a big difference in her mood.  I am seriously starting to wonder if something I am eating is bothering her (I exclusively BF her).  She does not seem to be particularly gassy but does have explosive poops pretty often and her little bum is really red all the time even with creams, etc.

I do not know what I might be eating that would be affecting her.  I do know if I have particularly spicy foods Zoey is very gassy and restless in her sleep, but this is different though.  She is just always fussy and seems uncomfortable.  I do not have the greatest diet and honestly forget to eat a lot of the time.  I do have one (fairly large) cup of coffee in the late morning with real cream every day.  I do not drink milk but I do have a large glass of orange juice every morning fortified with calcium and vitamine D.  I often eat cheese and DH often cooks things with cream sauces, but otherwise that is about it for dairy.  Aside from those things I do not have much that I eat on a regular basis.  I am wondering if I should try cutting out the coffee and/or the cream and cheese???  Or...could it be the orange juice?  How long do you go without eating things to find out if your baby has an intolerance to them???

Any help you can offer would be wonderful.
Shannon

[willowonyx]

Hi there,

My 3 month old DD Zoey has been getting increasingly more fussy over the past month.  She used to be a very happy baby but now can have days where she fusses and cries all day long.  Her pediatrician thought she had reflux and she is taking medication for this but I am not sure I am seeing a big difference in her mood.  I am seriously starting to wonder if something I am eating is bothering her (I exclusively BF her).  She does not seem to be particularly gassy but does have explosive poops pretty often and her little bum is really red all the time even with creams, etc.

I do not know what I might be eating that would be affecting her.  I do know if I have particularly spicy foods Zoey is very gassy and restless in her sleep, but this is different though.  She is just always fussy and seems uncomfortable.  I do not have the greatest diet and honestly forget to eat a lot of the time.  I do have one (fairly large) cup of coffee in the late morning with real cream every day.  I do not drink milk but I do have a large glass of orange juice every morning fortified with calcium and vitamine D.  I often eat cheese and DH often cooks things with cream sauces, but otherwise that is about it for dairy.  Aside from those things I do not have much that I eat on a regular basis.  I am wondering if I should try cutting out the coffee and/or the cream and cheese???  Or...could it be the orange juice?  How long do you go without eating things to find out if your baby has an intolerance to them???

Any help you can offer would be wonderful.
Shannon

Only cut out one thing at a time, for up to a week, to see if that is what is bothering her.  I would cut out the coffee with cream first.  Then anything else that may have lactose in it (cheese)....and work you way from there.  It could be anything including the OJ.

My daughter had explosive poops for about 2 months, so it is completely normal, from what I hear.

Also, if the reflux medication was prescribed a while ago (even less than a month) it is possible that she has outgrown the amount.  Some reflux meds like Zantac are based on the babies weight, which can change so dramatically.

[LyndaManus]

Do any of those things bother dh?  I was drinking oj and ds was getting very gassy.  Come to realize that dh gets a slight upset stomache any time he drinks oj (I always thought he just didn't like it  )  So, I gave up oj and ds was a good bit better.

Also, how is your letdown.  I had a lot of gassy problems with ds b/c of an overactive letdown.  Also caused him to eat more than he intended and this caused his tummy to hurt. 

I agree with pp on the explosive poops for the first couple of mths.  Are the poops green?  If they aren't green and he is not upset then that might just be how he is.  Everyone insisted to me that ds had diarreah, but the dr assured me that he was perfectly normal.  After two months they slowed and changed consistency.  On the diaper rash, make sure to let him air out a bit when changing the diaper (maybe lay him on a blanket for some tummy time without a diaper) - this will help. 

[binxyboo]

Riley would be extra fussy whenever I ate large amounts of dairy. I say "extra fussy" because he was just a high needs child in general, but this was more than typical for him. He also had excema, sniffly nose, red ring around the anus most of the time. By doing the elimination diet, that is cut out all dairy from your diet for a minimum of two weeks, including trace dairy found in bread etc, I did see that his skin cleared up and his bum got better and he was less fussy. But it wasn't as dramatic a change in temperament as I would have liked to have seen I slowly started to reintroduce dairy gradually and found he was okay if I ate trace dairy in bread etc., but having milk on cereal would cause a reaction. When I intro'd cow's milk at a year, I found he could not tolerate it at all, so now he is on Rice Milk. He does fine with yoghurt.

If she is gassy, another thing you could try is block feeding, where you nurse from one side a few times in a row. This helped us a bit. I don't have experience with the reflux meds, but I have read on here that sometimes it can take a while to take effect, or sometimes you may need a different med.

[Mortish]

I guess there would be no harm in eliminating, like people said, say the dairy and see how she goes.  Having said that I know with ds Orange Juice was a no no with him as a baby...the acid in it was just too much for him to take and even though I changed his poopy nappies immediately it would always burn his bum.

One of the guys at work recently had their baby and they found that when Sharon had either milk, chocolate or cheese, their little Sophie suffered.

Hope you get to the bottom of what it is.  Good luck!!

Serina
xx

[tstasko]

Just wanted to reiterate what most of the pps stated re: eliminating dairy and citrus.

I had to do that w/my dd until she was about 4 months old.  She just had a sensitive tummy.  Absolutely no milk or cheese, but trace dairy was fine; I also steered clear of marinara and chocolate.  Started slowly reintroducing around 4-4.5 months and was back to regular food (dairy, choc, sauces, etc.etc.) pretty soon. 
As a side note - once we introduced solids (5.5 months) she was fine w/them - I just waited a bit longer w/citrus, but everything else was on schedule w/no probs (she looooves her solids!).  Just needed a few extra months for her tummy to mature. 

It was kind of a pain, but worth it if that's the issue...and you adjust quickly.

Good luck and HUGS to you and your LO!

Tari

[Sungrl]

Thanks for the replies everyone. 

I have decided to cut the orange juice out first...along with those yummy Christmas oranges!  It seems to have helped with her bum. 

I do think she may have some dairy issues though; last night we had pizza for supper with extra cheese and she was very unsettled after she woke to nurse at 4am.  She actually started to cry at 5am and I had to go and give her some Ovol drops.  I don't think I will be eating cheese anymore either.

Shannon

[meltown]

I have heard that dairy, cutris and caffine all agrivate reflux and cause gas.  It could be that it is aggrivating the reflux.  my son is the same way with the dairy.  I think I will have to pretty much cut it out all together.  I also limit all caffine and citrus because I don't ant it to aggrivate is reflux.

[ScaredyCat]

Hi Shannon,
My LO has reflux too and I have read in many places that dairy intolerance is often an exacerbator for reflux, so I've cut out all dairy (although I don't eat a lot anyway).  Have also cut out citrus and caffeine.  It seems to help (reflux is still there and will be until he grows out of it).  Also, I had to ask my doctor if Zantac dose needed to be increased based on his weight gain (had gained nearly nothing prior to being prescribed and then put on 1lb 13ozs over 3 weeks!!)  Consequence was Doctor took one week to notify me, but increase dose from 0.27ml to 0.44ml and this immediately seems to have helped also - we had a day of hardly any chuck up!
Good luck with this - I know it can be a pain, but tbh, dairy is only 50% digestible by humans anyway, so imagine a LO trying to cope with this and reflux and it's only for a short while (comparatively) while your bfing.