Breastfeeding Babies with Dairy Allergies

Apparently, breastfeeding is a subject that causes confusion on everyone's part, including pediatricians and other professionals.

Today everybody agrees that breastfeeding is the best policy as a general rule.

There are exceptions, though. A major one concerns babies with food allergies. It's known that proteins from the mother's diet can enter breastmilk and cause reactions in the baby. The cure is simple in concept, but not so simple in practice: remove all trace of the allergen from the mother's diet.

Yet, as Yamiche Léone Alcindor reports in the Seattle Times:

"It isn't uncommon to have a pediatrician write food allergies off," said Jennifer Truluck, whose daughter, Savannah, now 6, is allergic to all eight of the top food allergens. When Savannah was an infant, Truluck said, doctors did not readily consider food allergies as a diagnosis.

"My first pediatrician was really dismissive. ... It wasn't until I bypassed him that I found out how serious her condition was."

Several studies have put the extent of food allergies in children as high as six percent, so there is really no excuse for medical professionals not to be aware of the problem or of its scope.

Local groups are trying to provide their own information for parents. The Food Education Allergy Support Team (FEAST) has several local chapters (including Dayton and Seattle) but its national version is so new that the website isn't even working properly yet.

In the meantime, Anne Munoz-Furlong, Founder and CEO of FAAN, has several suggestions for websites that are operating and provide excellent information:

• Kids with food allergies: www.kidswithfoodallergies.org
  
  
  
• The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN): www.foodallergy.org
  
  
  
• Food Allergy Initiative: www.foodallergyinitiative.org
  
  
  
• American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology: www.aaaai.org

Remember that this is an entirely different problem from lactose intolerance. Breast milk is seven percent lactose, so any baby who is lactose intolerant will have symptoms from breast milk.

Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence naturally, and only becomes an issue for babies who have temporary lactose intolerance from an illness to the intestines. As the name suggests, the symptoms will go away when the intestines heal in a few weeks. A nondairy formula can be substituted in the meantime.