Dear Lactnet:
I was reading doula digest and saw this question and thought an experienced
IBCLC could help this woman.
                                                        Thanks,
                                                        Laurie Gluszek, RN,BSN,LCI

a former client of mine just called me, with a problem I have not
encountered before, so I am asking for help and input and experiences please.

Her son (born 12/98) has apparently had a little bit of blood in his stool
(visible to the eye, but not much) since age 6 weeks. Occasionally. Now it
has become more frequent. As often as every day with a BM. Like streaks of
blood, seldom mixed in. She has seen today, as he was passing a BM while
she was changing him, that the inside of his rectum his totally red,
inflamed looking, with fissures and a fair amount of blood visible.

She was told by her pediatrician, that it was either a bacterial infection,
which he ruled out, because the little guy looks healthy, no temp, not
uncomfortable, no other signs of illness; or that it was an allergy against
milk. So she cut out all milk products out of her diet about 2 1/2 weeks
ago. With no sign of improvement, if anything worse. The they said it
might be soy, so now she has cut out all soy products, since a few days
ago, with no difference so far.

Her pediatrician wants her to wean and give him instead a hypoallergenic
formula, which contains casein and soy products, but he says it is in a
form that the body will not react to it. He also says there is no way at
his age for them to do allergy testing and come up with a result that would
tell them anything.

She obviously is very uncomfortable with that advice, but also desperately
would like to know WHAT she can do to stop the bleeding...

I am at a loss. I am going to a search, but also wanted to throw this
question out to you all, and hope that some of you very experienced women
have come across something similar before or can point me in a direction
that sounds promising in terms of a  way to solve this problem.

I only remember reading that no-one is allergic towards breastmilk, and
that sometimes only a slight dietary change may be necessary.

Help, please?

Uta