Tonight I was asked by someone if I could offer any advice about having a baby with a milk allergy. It’s something I’ve not talked about a huge amount on my blog but this seems a good opportunity.
Nell was very difficult in her early months. People said, all babies cry, health visitors told us, diarrhoea is normal, then they spent some time with her and their eyes opened a bit wider. Luckily for us, we’ve known other babies with allergies and they were quick to suggest that this could be the problem. Four months into her life I cut milk and egg out of mine, and two weeks later our child was reborn, a wonderful, happy thing. For the next ten weeks things were smooth – mostly. There were some incidents, when I realised most crisps have milk in them, for instance…and later, guacamole. On the whole, I avoided milk and she avoided giving us nappies of liquid, stinking, gold.
Then came time to wean and we realised that there was more learning to be done. We’d managed to get a dietician appointment, but the outcome of that was simply to introduce her to the egg and milk ladder bit by bit. Helpful to an extent, but we are now six months on and she is most definitely not ready for milk (we’ve tried, the results were disastrous).
I could go on about this all day, but rather than give a long winded story about what came next, I’d rather share some tips that we’ve picked up along the way.
Tip One – recipe books
It’s so hard to know what to feed your baby if you can’t give them milk or eggs. While other children chow down on cheese cubes and scrambled eggs, yours gets to go nuts on a carrot stick. I found inspiration so hard in the first few weeks of weaning, but that changed once I had found myself a recipe book I could rely on.
If you’re going to buy a weaning book, make sure it has a decent amount of dairy-free in it. You are most likely going to get experimental during this time, I certainly have, but I started with others’ recipes. A lot of them were a waste of time. Either they were full of eggs and dairy, or the vegan options were vegetable smush, mush and splush. In the end I bought the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook (which, because it comes in app form, is super convenient). It allows me to filter meals by allergy and the recipes are so simple that anyone (even Husband) can follow them. Husband and I have also become avid followers of Wean in 15 on Instagram.
As my confidence has grown I’ve started to adapt non dairy-free recipes to suit, which leads me to tip two.
Tip Two – adaption
If your child has an egg allergy it can be a pain in terms of finding a binder for food. During weaning I’ve made a lot of patties, but most recipes call for an egg binder. I’ve found dairy-free spread and milk work fairly well if you melt them together first. I also came across the wonder that is aquafaba – aka, chickpea juice. This wonder product, normally thrown away, is an amazing albumen substitute.
In terms of milk, there are so many alternatives out there, so which should you go for? I am reliably informed that hemp is a great choice, but darned if I’ve ever seen that in Aldi or Sainsbury’s! We’ve been using Almond Milk (unsweetened) so far and plan to move to Soya milk once Nell is a year old. The problem is that none of these milks have the calorie or nutrient levels of good old breastmilk or cow’s milk. So, if you’re going to give your child a milk sub, look for a fortified version. Alpro, for instance, has a brand of soya milk called Alpro Growing Up with added vitamins and minerals.
Added vitamins and minerals I hear you say? Time for tip three.
Tip three – calcium
Yes, there are non-milk yoghurts on the shelf – but you need to check to make sure they don’t have too much sugar in them, and they may not offer calcium at the levels you’d like them to.
Being deficient in nutrients was a big fear for me in terms of weaning. I gave vitamin drops but I also made sure I looked up where Nell could get protein, outside of eggs (in those first few months she wasn’t ready to eat meat), and calcium, outside of dairy. The answer was surprising; calcium is in a lot of things! Spinach, kale…anything dark green and leafy…and beans. She’s had a lot of white beans and lentils in her diet. Lentil and bean cakes are not my favourite thing, but she loves them.
If your child isn’t a fan of the green stuff, then I recommend pancakes. Pancakes don’t have to be naughty and full of sugar. Tonight I made the following recipe by adapting a pasta dish from the BLW cookbook
Recipe (I don’t like cooking too closely to quantities):
- Frozen peas (lots)
- Two pears
- Brussel sprouts (a couple of handfuls)
- White flour (you can buy fortified which has extra calcium in)
Steam the sprouts, pears and peas. Blend. Add flour and stir until it has reached the consistency of a mashed potato. Spoon into a frying pan, as you would a pancake, and cook for about 2 minutes. Flip and cook the other side – until the middle has set.
Tip four – food on-the-go
It’s hard to buy food on-the-go for an allergy baby. So many ready-made products have milk in – and eating out is a huge pain. That pain is shared by me as I also have to remain milk free. As an adult, I rely on vegan menus and on questioning the staff thoroughly about the ingredients in food – I was told by a waiter once that the pate had no dairy but, not believing her, I asked her to double check. She came back to say it had cream in but not milk!!! Riiiiggghhhtttt. Thankfully, the introduction of Natasha’s Law has meant that restaurants and cafes are really upping their allergy game now.
As for the baby, preparation is everything. I have a freezer stocked full of meals I’ve prepped over the weekend, all contained in these handy stacking, weaning containers. In the early days, one pot was the perfect portion size, now two is a better estimate. We keep a stacked layer of ‘side’ dishes frozen (mashed potato or mashed veg) and a layer of proteins (mince, chicken casserole etc) that we can grab quickly. These we take with us if we are unsure about external food options for the day, or when we don’t have anything fresh to hand. The photo above is a case in point, upon breaking down on the motorway, we were very glad to have some dairy free food ready in our bag.
We’ve also learned to watch our child like a hawk. As they get more mobile, they start stealing other babies’ food – we don’t want her to steal a bit of someone’s milky bar and scoff it before we’ve had time to react!
I try to make a variety of foods that stay safe in the fridge for a few days each week. Falafel is a great option, pasta with homemade pesto is another (make dairy-free pesto by blending a bag of pine nuts, a bunch of basil, a squeeze of lemon and some garlic).
Final tip for now…
Tip five – get yourself on the ladder
My dietician suggested the milk and egg ladders for Nell. However, when we tried this, the reactions were strong and messy. Then, another friend explained that her dietician had said she should do the ladder first. This made a lot of sense. If the food your baby gets through breastfeeding is a watered down copy of what you eat, then by introducing the allergen to yourself slowly, you’re introducing it to them even slower.
We followed this method with egg, cautiously bringing it back into my diet. It felt weird after so long, and I still have only had solid egg three times, but it does seem to have helped. After three months, as I built myself up from eating food with egg cooked into it, to eventually eating an omelette, we were ready to start Nell on egg herself. For the most part, it’s worked. She can still only take a small amount before it tips her over, but we are well on our way. In terms of milk, we haven’t been as lucky – every time I touch it (I try every couple of months), she suffers for days, and it seems horribly cruel to keep putting her through it. At least it’s through me she’s having it so it’s not so powerful; I’d hate to see what would have happened if she’d been fed it direct.
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Having a child with a gastro milk allergy is tough. It’s not as tough as having a child with a respiratory allergy though, and I am so thankful that we don’t have to worry that hers is life-threatening. It’s uncomfortable for her and messy, but it could be worse. Overall, coping is just a case of being vigilant, thinking ahead and being prepared when mistakes happen – and it’s likely that they will. Planning menus and trying to keep some variety in their food life seems hard at the start, but it gets easier. And, with more free-from food stuffs on the shop shelf these days, we have it a lot easier than our parents and grandparents did.
Do you have any tips for mums with CMPA or lactose-intolerant babies? Share them if you do!
The Honest Parent 