Tell If My Baby Is Allergic to Breast Milk - Breast milk is the perfect food nature of nature for children. True allergies to milk are virtually nonexistent. Most milk allergies are actually allergies to other food proteins that are present in breast milk. Identification and elimination of common allergens in the mother's diet solves almost all cases of allergy to breast milk.
How to Tell If My Baby Is Allergic to Breast Milk
Discuss your baby's newborn screening results with your doctor. This heel poke blood test is done on all babies within first few days of life to test for rare metabolic disorders. One of these is galactosemia, genetic absence of liver enzyme that is essential for digesting lactose. According to La Leche League, galactosemia occurs once in 85,000 births and is one of only true contraindications to breast-feeding.
Recognize allergy symptoms in your baby. These include colic, reflux, eczema, chronic congestion, vomiting, diarrhea and blood in stool. Discuss these symptoms with your pediatrician before beginning treatment, as allergy is one of several possible causes. Tell your doctor about any family history of allergies. Babies whose parents have food allergies are at higher risk for allergy.
Remove common allergens from mother's diet. Start with cow's milk, most common allergen. mother must stop consuming cow's milk in all forms, including butter, yogurt, ice cream and cow's milk derivatives such as casein and whey found in ingredients of many products. It can take one to two weeks for all traces of cow's milk to be out of mother's system and another one to two weeks before baby is clear. While results may be seen quickly, it sometimes takes as long as six weeks for baby's symptoms to improve. If eliminating dairy products does not work, other common allergens to try include soy, eggs, peanuts, corn and wheat. Like cow's milk, these can be eliminated one at time for several weeks to see if they are affecting baby.
Try elimination diet. baby's symptoms can be relieved fastest by mother eliminating all common allergies at once. This is done by eating highly restricted diet for several weeks and then reintroducing foods one at time, stopping if baby's allergy symptoms return. See Resource section for information about elimination diet recommended for this purpose by Dr. Sears.
Tell if You Have Casein or Whey Allergy, Tell If You Have Cat Allergies, Tell If You Have Gluten Allergy, Tell If You Have Mold Sickness, Tell If You Have Sinus Infection, Tell If Your Child Has Gluten Allergy, Tell If Your Dog Has Food Allergies
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allergy treatment