INVESTIGATING FOOD SENSITIVITY: BREAST-FED BABIES

With breast-fed babies who are thought to have food sensitivity, the first step is to check that it is not something other than breast milk causing the problem. Think about what else the baby consumes, and if possible eliminate everything except breast milk, including medicines (with your doctor’s approval), vitamin drops (which often contain artificial colouring), fruit juices and any solids. If the baby needs to go on taking medicines or vitamins, ask the doctor to prescribe something that does not contain any colouring or other unnecessary ingredients. You may need to give boiled water to compensate for fruit juices or other extra liquids that you have withdrawn.

If this has no effect, the next step is to compile a list of suspect foods from those that you are eating. Keep a record of everything you eat, recording the quantities and times of eating as well. Make a separate record of your baby’s symptoms, with the time, duration and intensity. Continue this for a week or two, and compare the two records to see if there are any likely suspects. The time interval between the mother eating the food and the baby suffering symptoms can vary from one day to several days.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it must be cow’s milk, just because this is the food problem that we hear about most often in babies. For the exclusively breast-fed baby, it could be any food. However, babies who have received supplementary bottle-feeds are more likely to react to cow’s milk than anything else. Even if you have never given a bottle feed yourself it is possible that the baby received one from a nurse while in the maternity ward.

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