The discussion over the past few days about mixed feeding prompts me to tell
a personal story which is not directly bf related but has implications for bf
support and especially for how peds and parents think about mixed feeding.
Background: My now-3.5-year-old daughter Ronit was not a spitty infant, but
began having reflux symptoms -- throwing up, nasty burps, etc -- from about a
year. She was weaned (unrelatedly, as it then seemed) around 20 mos.
Symptoms got worst around age 2, then between 2.5 and 3 gradually better but
still oppressive; she always grew fine but (aside from the laundry issue) was
really afraid to be touched in the morning, to wear clothes with a turtleneck
or a stiff waistband, etc. And of course gradually she became able to could
talk about it pretty articulately (she learned to request a shot of Mylanta
[antacid], poor thing). Finally got pediatrician, a cautious sort, to refer
to a peds GI. Prescription of Zantac 2xday has resulted in a very, very
happy little girl. "Now I have no more yucky burps and don't need the white
medicine [antacid] any more."
Now here's the interesting part: The PGI thinks that most likely this is all
caused by an eosiniphilic gastro-neuritis, resulting -- again, best guess
only -- from cow's milk allergy.
In other words -- I'm a lay person, so the translation was important to me --
probably Ronit was allergic all along to cow's milk, which she began getting
complementarily around 12 mos, drank more of after weaning, drank less of
after about 28 mos, but still loves and drinks often. She has never had any
obvious direct allergic reaction to dairy, so I had sort of ruled it out in
my mind, but the doc suggests that probably the only response is a general
increase in eosiniphils in the gastric tract. So she doesn't gag or reflux
particularly when she drinks milk, but rather all the time -- her whole
digestive system has been affected by the immune response to the milk.
(Let me emphasize here that both my ped & this PGI are very med-oriented,
non-touchy-feely types -- by no means the dairy-is-bad-for-everyone style of
counseling.)
The bf connection here is that a baby or older child who does not seem to be
reacting specificially to dairy in mom's diet, or to cow's milk formula, or
straight cow's milk in her own diet, may still have other generalized
symptoms, like reflux.
In Ronit's case we have decided not to eliminate the dairy right off (by this
time she's very attached to it and it's important in her diet and a pretty
safe & conservative dose of the Zantac is helping).
But with a younger child, especially one still bf, I would next time take
much more seriously the possibility of cutting out dairy, or at least
remembering that reflux or other non-specific symptoms can have dairy
sensitivity as an underlying cause.
And the mixed feeding angle is that this started while Ronit was still bf but
also getting comp foods, especially cow's milk while I was at work, and yet I
tended to describe it as having started "while she was still bf," as if it
were the same thing, which obviously it was not.
Food (and drink) for thought.
Elisheva Urbas, NYC
discovering once again that her whole life is bf related
***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|