Sorry if I ramble too much here, but I had to add my 2 cents about allergic
babies and breastfeeding. I've also got a question for which I've never
figured out the answer, and am hoping someone can help.

Avoiding *all* common allergens while nursing can be very hard, and you can
never
be sure that your baby won't develop an allergy to a less common ingredient.
My son does have multiple food sensitivities and I suspected it when he was
still nursing almost exclusively, but I could not pin them down at that
time. I lost the last of my pregnancy weight gain and then some while doing
an elimination trial, but didn't learn much. The symptoms became much more
clear-cut after he actually ate the foods in question, and I did avoid milk
and
peanuts for over two years so he could continue nursing.

I hate to say this, because I believe strongly in the benefits of
breastfeeding, but it seems impossible to say that a baby can *never* be
allergic to mother's milk. I would guess that it's very rare, just as
galactosemia and congenital lactase deficiency are rare, but not impossible.
Sensitivity to foreign proteins seems much more likely, and although my
experience wasn't easy, I'd still recommend investigating this before giving
up breastfeeding. But in a case where the symptoms are severe and avoiding
several foods doesn't make a difference, it becomes very hard to say if it's
something in the mother's diet or if it's the milk itself.

I do have a technical question about cow's milk and human milk. I understand
that there are dozens of different proteins in cow's milk, and different
people may be allergic to different proteins. I saw one reference that
listed different types of casein--alpha casein, beta casein and kappa
casein--and described the proportions of these in cow's milk and human milk.
My question: Is any casein in cow's milk identical--atom for atom--to that
in human milk? Or at least similar enough to cause a cross reaction in some
cases? Could casein from human milk cause problems for people who have
difficulty with cow's milk and gluten because of opoid excess problems?

Thanks,
Jean