Hi Everybody:
   I have read a few posts recently about eliminating dairy as a way to
relieve an infant's distress. In Pediatrics 1994, pp.1006-1008  Francine
Ducharme et al. published an article "Apparent Insatiability: An Unrecognized
Manifestation of Food Intolerance in Breast-fed Infants" that has led me to
make a different recommendation with infants in distress. The mother needs to
eliminate all bovine protein, as reported in the article.  Not just milk and
butter, but hamburgers, steaks etc. I worked with a mom the other week who had
eliminated dairy from her diet, which did relieve the baby some but all was
not yet well. Turns out mom is eating beef every day.
  This isn't true for everybody; many mothers and babies get relief by simply
eliminated the cow milk protein from mom's diet. But in severe cases, as with
blood in the stool, go all the way.
   This article also described beautifully how the "baby nursing all the time"
can be a symptom of allergy. The baby gets milk that makes her tummy upset, so
she nurses more to be comforted and gets more milk that makes her tummy upset
so she nurses more........a vicious circle.
   Also, when the "hypo-allergenic" formulas are used, the AAP recommendation
is that they be used for the first dose in a situation where there is
resuscitative equipment readily available. The cases reported in the
literature of anaphylaxis have been after a dose of "hypo-allergenic" formula.
The protein pieces in such formulae are so tiny they go right through the
walls of the damaged gut. So use'em with care!
   People are so casual about the use of the "hypo-allergenic" formulae; it
only means that 90 healthy babies out of 100 won't get allergic reactions. So
what do the other 10% do? Relactate? Warmly, Nikki