On Fri, 15 Aug 1997 13:37:05 -0400 Kimberly Sherwood <[log in to unmask]>
writes:

>><I wondered how this worked for milk allergy.  Apparently milk allergy
works
>>by the same rules.  Breastmilk is FAR better than any formula when
you're
>>at risk for a food allergy, and the lactating mother should not have
ANY
>>dairy products in her diet (including things like sodium caseinate in
>>processed food, etc.)  However, if the baby shows signs of an allergic
>>reaction even to breastmilk (rare, but it happens) then you'll have no
>>choice but to switch to a completely milk-free formula.

> It is absolutely impossible for a baby to be allergic
>to his mother's milk.  Babies with galactosemia, a rare metabolic
>disorder in which the infant totally lacks the enzyme lactase, cannot
drink their
>mother's milk or any milk, but this is not allergy related.  The
proteins in
>human milk are entirely compatible with human babies.

According to my pediatrician and allergist, babies can be allergic to the
proteins in human breastmilk and not just something in the mother's diet.
 My ped. brought this up with me after numerous trips for vomiting and
because of the babies severe eczema.  She suggested doing a trial of a
dairy free soy formula for a week to see of the eczema would clear up.
Knowing that pumping for a week and bottle feeding was not going to be
much fun, we decide to try a total elimination of dairy from my diet.  It
helped quite a bit and satisfied the ped. that her skin was clearing up
and the diarrhea was much better.  It took about another month to
discover that chocolate was the other culprit for the vomiting.

I also asked my allergist about doing the soy formula trial because I
found the whole allergy to breastmilk a bit questionable.  To me this
sounded incompatible with life, basically.  He said he had no objections
to doing the trial and that it couldn't hurt.  It's very rare to be
allergic to breastmilk protein, but any protein can cause an allergy.

I did many searches looking for information on this whole subject and
found very little.  This was the beginning of my dealing with food
allergies.  There just isn't that much out there I found about infants.

Kathy