Someone I know swears that her second baby reacted to at least 10  
different foods that she ate, including dairy & soy, but also  
tomatoes, broccoli, sweet potatoes, fish, and I forget what else. I  
have serious doubts about this. As you all know, X occurring after Y  
does not mean that X *caused* Y. I agree with you, Pat, it's easy to  
think: "Baby's gassy and fussy. Mom ate tomatoes earlier. Ergo, baby  
is allergic to tomatoes." Baby ended up partially breastfed and  
partially on Alimentum. What makes me especially doubtful is that by  
the age of 18 or 24 months, this child had *no* allergies whatsoever,  
not even dairy. I'm certainly not an expert on allergies, but it seems  
unlikely to me that a baby would have numerous serious allergies and  
then outgrow them all so quickly.

I strongly suspect that the real problem was some combination of  
oversupply, OAMER, or scheduling feedings or limiting time on each  
breast and not allowing baby to finish the first breast first, etc. A  
baby who is gulping air and not being allowed to stay on the breast  
long enough to get the fattier milk might well be gassy and fussy, no  
matter what mom ate or didn't eat.

Many doctors and mothers seem to think breasts are just bottles  
attached to mom's chest. With a bottle, the milk baby receives in the  
first minute is identical to milk they get in the tenth minute, but of  
course that's not true with the breast. And using that assumption,  
dr's make all kinds of breastfeeding recommendations that make  
absolutely no sense. Such as one I heard recently: newborn baby didn't  
stool for two days, so dr told mom to take baby off breast completely  
and pump for 24 hrs so they could "see" if she was making enough milk.  
What was the point of this? Baby was obviously not getting enough  
milk, the question was *why*? I saw this dyad at an LLL meeting and  
even to my untrained eye, as soon as that baby opened his mouth, there  
was a big ol' frenulum under his tongue holding it down. But as soon  
as there was a BF problem, all the attention was on mom and her milk  
or lack thereof. No one gave any thought to whether the *baby* might  
have an issue preventing him from transferring the available milk or  
from stimulating the mother to produce milk. We gave her info about  
having baby checked for tongue-tie, but last I spoke to her the  
pediatrician was strongly against the idea of clipping. I suspect he  
told her that LLL people are crazy, although she was too polite to say  
so to me. :(

Last thought, about the question of hormone's in cows milk, on all the  
milk cartons here it says "No significant difference has been shown  
between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows." But  
apparently that disclaimer was demanded by the mfr of the rBST  
hormone, so take it FWIW.

Jennifer

On Jan 22, 2009, at 11:42 AM, Pat Young wrote:

> Personally, imnsho, I don't think allergies have increased.  As  
> usual - blame it on mom's milk - is the easy answer.
>
> I was intrigued the other day by Sarah McCann's question about  
> growth hormones from cow's milk, showing up in mom's.  First of all,  
> do we know if this hormone really shows up in the cow's milk and  
> then, if so, will it pass into mom's milk?
>
> Pat in SNJ

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