Allergies and Sensitivities

Earlier I posted about a potential allergy our son may have to cow milk proteins. We've received a lot of conflicting advice from the Health Unit, a dietitian, and our family doctor. Ranging from give up breast feeding in favour of Soy formula, to avoid all formula and solely breast feed.

Kelly has been doing an amazing job of feeding Elliot exclusively by breast (still 7-9 times a day), but even with that his weight gain has not been great recently. He's six months now, which is when we're supposed to introduce rice cereal (pretty much the most bland tasting mush you can make). We started using a Nestle product that you can mix with breast milk which we tried - Elliot got diarrhea with it, but Kelly was on an antibiotic at the time so we weren't sure whether it was the cereal or if it was the drug getting through the breast milk.

So we waited a few days and tried a different brand (from Heinz) that didn't have any milk proteins and contained a lot fewer additives than the Nestle version. Again we were mixing with breast milk and thought everything was going well (no upset tummy, no red cheeks) - but today (day #3 on the cereal) he had 7(!!!) dirty diapers and now the poop is green and chunky - yuch.

We're not sure what's going on...but we're going to try a couple more days since he doesn't seem dehydrated (yet) and he has a Doctor's appointment on Tuesday morning.

We never had these problems with Maya - I didn't realize how easy it was back then.