Hello all,
After reading so much about how dairy might affect colicky babies I would
like to ad my own experience.
My second child (soon 10 yrs old - how time flies...) was a VERY colicky
baby. From the age of about three weeks she would cry (scream!) almost all
her waking time, and she would rarely sleep more than 40 minutes in a
strech - day or night. She would start nursing, then pull away screaming
with the let down, then nurse a little, scream again, and so on, and so
somehow time passed and she grew. She nursed for 20 months. I can't say
when it got better, but of course it did get better with time. To this day
she is quite short tempered. The only thing that would calm her was walking
with her in a baby carrier (the soft kind which ties the baby to your
chest).I remember reading a bedtime story to my two year old walking around
the room with the baby in the carrier, or my husband walking around the
neighbourhood in the middle of the night with the baby, and then falling
asleep in the rocking chair with the baby still tied to him...
I must confess to consuming a lot of dairy, and at the time it did cross my
mind that maybe my daughter is allergic to this, but I simply could not
think what I would eat if I cut out all the dairy. I usually lose a lot of
weight while nursing, and I am basically thin, so I never really tried
eliminating all dairy, even though if it had worked it would have really
changed our lives at the time. Maybe if I had someone encourage me, and try
to help me find altenative foods I would have succeded. I never had this
kind of problem with my other three children.
I am writing this in order to show that even in very hard situations it can
be very difficult to eliminate dairy, and  some mothers may need a lot of
help to accomplish this. From reading your posts it does seem to be worth
it, but it is not an easy change for some mothers. If I where in the same
situation today - I still don't know what I would eat...
Today I tend to agree that cows milk is meant for calves, but in our
household we consume really big amounts of milk and other dairy products,
and I have no idea how we could change this - if someone has any ideas I
would be happy to hear from you. I think this should be done by direct
email, as I wouldn't want to waste precious LACTNET space on a maybe not so
relevant topic.

Mira Leibovich, MD
Kibbutz Hama'apil, Israel