Cow’s milk is a very common trigger for baby eczema. Cow’s milk is one of the first food proteins to which most children are exposed either in a formula or through the mother’s breast milk.
Children who are allergic to cow’s milk will often be allergic to other foods, especially eggs and peanuts. For those children who are allergic to cow’s milk, it is important to find them a safe alternative drink. There are a number of choices depending on the age of the child.
Milk can cause a host of problems
Almost any symptoms can be caused by milk. This is why milk allergy/ intolerance is so hard to pin down. It tends to be the last thing that your doctor will think about (instead of the first).
Symptoms include
- Eczema
- Other rashes
- Diarrhoea
- Constipation
- Blood in stool
- Gastric reflux
- Runny nose
- Asthma
- Glue ear
- Headaches
- Mood changes
- Irritability
- Behaviour disturbance
The eClinic can help you a lot more to work this out.
Typical milk allergy story
Here is a typical story that I see every week. I asked Toby’s mother to write it down. She says this:
“Dr Ford, thank you for giving me an opportunity to write my story. As last, Toby (now 14 months old) is well again. I am so relieved.
Toby is my second baby. Everything went so well for the first few weeks. I was a contented mother. He was breastfed and beautiful. But then our troubles began! By four weeks he was starting to whinge and squirm after feeds. I noticed that his skin was getting dry and felt scaly.
I got anxious. Over the next few weeks his rash got worse and worse. His cheeks got red and began to crack and weep. He developed cradle cap. He was being sick after his breast feeds. At times he seemed miserable. My GP had given me a steroid cream to put on – but it didn’t make much difference.
Luckily, one of my friends told me that this might be a food allergy and that I should see Dr Ford. I did! He solved the problem!
After listening to me, he did a series of skin prick tests. They were easy to do. They were done on his back and Toby didn’t even notice. Within five minutes he had two big bumps like sand-fly bites on his back. They were reactions to cow’s milk and to egg. It was amazing! I had an answer!
It was now so easy. All I had to do was to remove all cows’ milk and egg from my diet. I did this. Within three weeks Toby’s skin was almost perfect. It was hard to believe!
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