You don't have to give baby formula...

by Julie
(California)

Regarding breastfeeding problems, my daughter lost a lot of weight after she was born. The hospital I was at was nice enough to give me several options on how to supplement.

I ended up going with the SNS. It was really hard for me to use in the beginning and just added a lot of frustration to being a new mom. I struggled for a long time to get her weight up. It took me almost 3 months to finally phase out the SNS. At that time she started getting blood in her stool. It took a long time for the doctors to listen to me about how much blood it was and she was crying A LOT too. After about a month I was finally able to get a referral to an Gastroenterologist (sp?). She was diagnosed with Milk Soy Protein Intolerance.

I was advised to cut out all dairy and soy from my diet. I did that but no change. The doctor told me to stop breast feeding and give her Nutramagin formula. I was determined to continue breast feeding. I researched online a lot and decided to try the Dr. Sears total elimination diet. Basically I ate nothing but turkey, rice, pears, and squash for a couple of months. That did it and my daughter was fine within a couple of weeks. After 2 months I slowly added foods back but not many. The good news is that I lost all that baby weight quickly!

Oh, I should add that while I was waiting for my pediatrician to listen to me about the blood in my daughters stool, the lactation consultant I was seeing diagnosed Milk Soy Protein Intolerance the first time I mentioned the blood. She advised me to cut out dairy, soy, nuts, etc long before my doctor would even listen to me. However, my daughter turned out to be intolerant to many more foods so I had to do the elimination diet to really take care of it.

I introduced cows milk at 12 months and my daughter is fine now, she can eat whatever she wants.

That was my first child. My second child didn't have the same intolerance problems. However, he was jaundice and had to stay under the lights. I ended up having to supplement him with a bottle so he could get enough fluids to flush out his system. We didn't have any problems getting him back to exclusively breast feeding after that though. It was hard because I only had 30 minutes to nurse him every three hours. That was all he could come out of the lights. I decided to do the bottle so he could get as much fluids as possible in that 30 minutes. I knew from my daughter that there was no way I could get a full feeding done with a newborn in 30 minutes, the lights make them extra sleepy too.

The bad thing about my second child not have MSPI is that I didn't have to do the diet and I still haven't lost the baby weight from him and its been 3 years!

Go back to the lactose intolerance page