It came as a huge (and emotionally traumatic) shock in my newborn-baby-zombie-state to find that breastfeeding was not going to work for me. I wont bore you with details but I eventually tearfully - admitted defeat and introduced him to formula at 10 days old and he was fully bottle-fed by 14 days. For a week or so everything was good. His crying had dramatically reduced (he was a hungry newborn) - and so had mine - and we were eventually enjoying our baby. Then around 4 weeks old my son very rapidly developed a red rash, pretty much all over his body. The worst areas were on his belly, neck, back and back of the knees (see photos). His crying increased and he was generally pretty unhappy.
To cut a long and hard story short, after numerous trips to the doctors, being given various different steroid creams, emollients, recommendations for anti-colic drops and even antibiotics at 3 months, we were still no closer to sorting out the problem. The doctors were convinced it was eczema (he didnt have diarreah or vomiting) and told me to stop worrying about using the steroid creams and to keep applying them twice a day.
When our son was 4 months old my husband found some articles on google about doctors mis-diagnosing diary allergies in babies and managed to convince a doctor to let us try our son on a non-dairy baby formula (they are not cheap for the NHS!).
Within 2 days of using Neocate (an amino-acid based baby formula) our son's rash had completely disappeared. He wasn't happy to begin with as Neocate tastes like sour potatoes but he soon got used to the fact it was that or nothing and became a happy baby again.
Soon after this our specialist appointment finally arrived and we were told that we had sorted it. No, really?! Despite being told that there would be no benefit in trying our son on dairy regularly to see if he was getting a resistance to it, I did, as a very small amount infrequently didnt seem to have any negative effects. I started to wean him gently on to solids around 4 months and was able to introduce a little bit of cows milk or cheese into his diet maybe twice a week without the rash returning. By about 8 months he was having 1 portion of dairy pretty much every day and so I started making up his bottles with half diary baby formula and half Neocate. By 10 months he had completely grown out of his allergy and the nightmare was over!
I know a lot of babies can unfortunately get a much more acute allergy than my son did. This information will hopefully help you and your doctors diagnose diary allergies in infants much more effectively than when we went through it.
There are several non-dairy baby formulas to try. Some people go for soya-based ones but I think there is some link to fertility problems when they grow up. Not sure if this is still thought to be the case?
Just remember - there are far worse things to be allergic to!
Good luck.
Jess
