>> 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.
>

My son (now almost 6) had severe infantile excema from age 4-18 months and
then it finally totally disappeared at 2 1/2 yrs. He is very allergic to
dairy (he gets hives if it gets on him) although over the years the allergy
had subsided a lot (we keep him totally off dairy and only know his
reaction is not so sevre from "accidents" where he has had something with
dairy with no reaction.

As in all baby allergy cases the details are too long to go into, but I had
read all the La Leche League books and was convinced that his excema was a
food allergy.  Since I am lactose intollerant I only had a little yogurt my
whole pregnancy and completely gave up all dairy (totally cooking from
scratch and reading labels carefully, and no restaurant food) after he was
born since we saw the reaction when I gave him a "milk bath" after he was
born. His only milk source (no formula or soy) was breastmilk until age 2.

I tried the whole elimination diet and it made no difference with his
excema.  Finally at about 1 1/2 his excema started to shift to asthma
(common) and that was about the time we found out that our mobile home had
a mildew problem.  As we started to clean that up he got better (we also
did a homeopathic remedy for his asthma and mold allergy) and after we
moved to an apartment when he was 3-1/2 he never has had an asthma attack
again (although very infrequently wheezing in hayfever season).

The point is that after all this I found out that not all infantile excema
is food related and that babies can get it due to mold and airborne things.
We'll probably never know what caused the excema for sure but I really
think it was the mold.

Rachele Shaw
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