This is one mother’s story about her experiences with dairy intolerance.
Dairy intolerance is something I never really knew too much about I know my little sister had dairy allergies when she was younger but that was really about it.
Dairy intolerance was pretty foreign to me until my son developed it. My little boy is now almost 5 years old. He’s a pretty healthy kid now, but, when he was younger, he suffered from frequent colds, hay fever and mild eczema as a baby and toddler.
He’s always been a great eater, not too fussy and from what I could tell he’wasn’t’allergic to anything.
Come 2 – years old, he showed interest in toilet training. It took quite a while to train him (as with most boys) but finally, we made it through! We had quite a lot of problems with poo (sorry, yes we are going to talk about poo here!) He went from doing about 2 poos a day in his nappy to maybe dropping back to doing one every second day in the toilet/potty. And his poos would be quite hard and huge!
The poor kid got to the point where he wouldn’t do poos at all and it became a battle. All along, hubby and I thought it was psychological so we tried every bribe under the sun to get him to go.
For about 6 months, we rode the poo roller coaster (that’s a poor analogy I know!) and as a family, became pretty obsessed with when our boy did a poo.
At times, when he was obviously constipated, he would be bloated, irritable, uncomfortable and off his food, and every toilet trip was a major dilemma! Then suddenly he would come good for a while after he eventually did a big poo!
Eventually, I decided we needed some medical help so off to the GP we went. We were told it was probably psychological in nature but his bowel had become stretched and he’d lost the urge to have bowel motions, so he needed glycerine suppositories daily and Movichol sachets until his motions became regular. That was the worst few weeks of our lives subjecting him to that! Awful! But his bowel motions did go back to normal”.until we stopped the bowel treatment! I was at the end of my tether!
After doing some research and chatting to a few other mum friends, I decided to try my son on some dairy-free alternatives, in case he had some sort of dairy or lactose intolerance. I cut down his intake of dairy altogether for a while, then gradually tried him on a couple of dairy substitutes.
He hated soy milk, so I tried him on some lactose-free milk.
Lo and behold! his bowel motions went back to normal, his abdominal bloating settled and he was happier and more active than he’d been for almost 12 months!
Now I know that I may have “self-diagnosed” my son’s dairy intolerance, but when I took him for his 4 year health check last year, the child health nurse supported my actions and confirmed that he probably had a mild form of dairy intolerance and would eventually grow out of it. It definitely explained his symptoms that he’d been suffering the last few months.
Now he’s been on lactose-free milk and minimal dairy for the last 12 months or so he is fully toilet trained and very healthy and happy.
Best news is – no more constipation!!
If you become concerned about any symptoms, please seek immediate medical attention. We have some hotlines and suggested websites for further information and advice.
SAHM takes no responsibility for any illness, injury or death caused by misuse of this information. – All information provided is correct at time of publication.
Responses to “I Didn’t Know: My Son Has Dairy Intolerance And He Suffered For 3 Years”
My daughter was born a healthy and beautiful. I was really excited to finally become a mother. I knew coming home with her from the hospital that newborns cried alot but after only a few days something told me this amount of crying was not normal. Only trying to help, my mother in law suggested that maybe she was crying alot because I was not producing enough milk and she suggested that I frequently drink large glasses of milk. She was crying for hours and hours on end and I could not figure out why. It was heart breaking for me. I could clearly tell she would be hungry, I would put her on the breast and she would feed for a few moments then latch off screaming. And this would repeat itself for months on end. She would struggle between feeling hungry and feeling pain. We visited the doctors (who told me it is collic) I called any help line I could get my hands on (they suggested different breastfeeding positions) and talked to anyone I could get to listen. My second (desperate) visit to the doctors was when they told me that she might have silent reflux and they gave me medicine to give to her to help with the pain. This helped a little but I was continuously giving my newborn medication throughout the day and I was not happy doing this. Finally, at my wits end, I kept a diary of everything that I was eating, when she was breastfeeding, what times she slept and what we did throughout the day and when, for how long and what intensity her cries where. It took me about 2 weeks to notice the pattern… but finally it clicked! When I would eat dairy her following breastfeed would cause her lots of pain. I stopped eating dairy all together and after about 2 weeks or so she was off her medication and was crying 80% less! Once she reached 6 months I slowly reintroduced dairy into my diet (babies guts sometimes are more mature and therefor more able to digest dairy products) and am now able to eat anything (as a side note, the no dairy thing, I beleive, also helped me shed all my baby weight! Added bonus!) I never would have thought dairy would cause my baby such excruciating pain and I only hope that a new mother out there can learn from my experience. Follow you gut. Hopefully my experience might spark a lightbulb for someone else.
I have a lactose intolerant toddler. When he was born he was perfect. 9p 2o so was definantly not malnurished. After a few feeds I noticed as this was my 3rd child he had reflux and after a few weeks he developed colic. His spit ups turned to projectile vomiting and his poops were horrible. I thought it was my milk, maybe it had turned bad, so put him on S26 newborns but it got worse. My lactose intolerant husband said that maybe he was like him. So we tried S26 LF and low and behold it worked it fixed everything even the colic. We then went to the pediatrician and got it diagnosed and got a script so it was 5 tins for 1 price from the pharmacy. Still lactose intolerant, but now they have zymil milk and zymil cream, and LF yogurts. Make home made icecream for him. He has no idea I keep it as normal as possible for him.
I had feeding issues with all 3 of my children. My first daughter came good on Soy Formula (solved the severe colic), 2nd daughter had reflux so bad she would posit milk from her nose, I would feed her then get a towel to wait for the return of it minutes later, I was told she would grow out of it. Her story I feel is somewhat different in respect to the dairy issues continued but manifested in a different way. Once weened she was fine, however at 13 months we started to experience very severe behavioural issues, like terrible 2’s had come early. Having a older child I felt that this behaviour including pulling her own hair and headbutting floors and tables and “zoning out” was not “normal” behaviour. My daughter was diagnosed with ODD (Oppositional Defacite Disorder) and I was advised by GP to learn to deal with it. However, as her mother I knew in my heart that something else was going on and that I had to fight for my daughter and take matters into my own hands. I read everything I could find on behaviour. Cutting a very long story short (another 2 years in fact) after doing a full food elimination diet over the space of a very long 18month period, we discovered that diary was the cause of the behavioural issues. Once dairy was removed from her diet she became the happiest little girl in the world, she is now 6 and I get tears in my eyes just thinking about it now and how her life could have been if we had not put in the time to discover the underlying problem by following my heart. There is no information written linking diary and behaviour that I have found. I have since had a little boy (now 18mths) and was hoping for drama free feeding this time around but alas it wasnt to be and my son is lactose intollerant, knowledge is power is my moto and trusting your own instincts.