Dear Barbara,

regarding your patient, did you get in the history that either mom or
baby has been on antibiotics in the past 3-4 months.  With those
symptoms, I always check a stool for C difficile toxin.  For those who
dont know C difficile is a bacteria that grows in the gut of patients if
the bacterial balance has been upset, the toxin cause injury to the
mucosa and bloody stools.  Breastfed babies seem to have less sever
symptoms than non bf because bm inhibits the growht of the bacteria.
Also, if the symptom is only a few specs of blood in stool, I am not sure
that we do babies a favor to get them to quit  BF for elemental diet.
Benefit: make blood go away, long term does it make a difference?????
Disatvantage: not breastfeeding with all the consequences.

Good luck
Maryelle