Hi,

I've been reading this group for a few months now and found it very
useful.
I was hoping with all of your collective experience that I could get
more information about what to do about my son's situation.

He was put on soy formula at 4 weeks of age because he had bloody
mucousy (sp?) stools. He was drinking regular infant formula.  He was
fine after that.

At 4.5 months, I fed him infant cereal containing infant formula.  After
a couple of days, he started waking frequently at night and was
extremely cranky during the day.  So, switched to a
non-infant-formula-containing cereal and the problems went away.

He was kept off all milk products and anything containing milk/dairy
until about 8 months.  Then he was at a day home and unbeknownst to us,
the provider fed him cookies that contained whey.  We learned about this
later and since we hadn't noticed any change in behaviour, we began to
wonder what his problem was.  So I started giving him small amounts of
yoghurt.  He didn't have any symptoms for two weeks.  So we fed him a
muffin.  The next day he had diarrhea and the pediatrician said he's
allergic to milk do not feed him any dairy products at all.

I then asked that he be tested by  a pediatric allergist.  That was done
when our son was 1.  It was negative (yes it was just a scratch test).
The allergist said that our son was probably lactose intolerant.

So we've been feeding him lactase milk and other lactose free milk
products and all was well for about 6 weeks.  Then diarrhea started
again.  Initially we chalked it up to teething, but the tooth came
through and the diarrhea continued.  We again took him off all dairy and
gave him soy formula to drink.  Well, the diarrhea has stopped.  Also,
he has stopped his high pitched screaming.  We're beginning to wonder if
his high pitched screaming was somehow connected to his problem with
milk.  The screaming was so annoying that we had to buy ear plugs.  We
thought it was just a phase but it seems strange that that stopped the
day after we took milk out of his diet.

Given that his symptoms are delayed and so minor - just diarrhea and
possibly mild behavioural changes - we're wondering if this is just
intolerance.  Does anyone know of a good book that I could read that
describes intolerance as opposed to allergy?

If anyone has any experience with intolerance that they would like to
share, I would like to hear from you.

Thanks for reading,

Sarah

Mum to Sean 28.4.96