Dear Elizabeth,
       How awful for this baby and mom.  But, please, do not call this
situation "allergic to breastmilk".  Babies can be allergic to some food mother is
eating, when that food's proteins get into the breastmilk, but the baby can't
be allergic to *breastmilk*.  We need to be careful to distinguish this.  If
the baby was truly allergic to the *breastmilk*, we could never fix the
situation, and we usually can.
       Mom only waited 5 days without dairy.  Allergens can take up to 3
weeks to clear from mom's body after she has taken her last bite of the offending
food.  Fortunately, most babies start to do better much sooner than that.  But
I have seen numerous babies who showed no improvement until far beyond 5
days.  Mother needs to continue avoiding dairy.  It is still too soon to decide
dairy was not the offending agent.
       You ask why the situation started at 6 weeks.  Babies' symptoms often
increase over time, as the allergen load builds in their bodies.  My guess is
that this baby quite possibly was showing other signs that were not
recognized, such as intestinal gassiness that may have been slowly getting worse,
spitting up that was progressing from trickles with burps to gushes after feeds and
between feeds, nasal congestion that was becoming more and more persistent but
was thought of as a "cold".  It could have been any or all of these symptoms.
 But they were not recognized as signs of allergy and the situation worsened
until the diarrhea started.
       Any insult to the intestines can cause the lining of the intestines to
be less protective until they heal again.  So it is possible that the baby
could have trouble with more foods now than he would have before the diarrhea
started.  But I'm more inclined to think in this particular situation that a)
just not enough time was given for the dairy to clear mom's body/breastmilk or,
b) if there are other foods baby can't tolerate, he probably couldn't tolerate
them before the diarrhea started either, just no one knew it then.
       It would be useful for this mother to do some "family detective work"
and ask on both sides of the family what foods "don't agree" with certain
family members.  Mom should *not* use the words "what foods are family members
allergic to?"  She'll get a much better, more valid range of answers if she uses
the first wording.
       As to testing the breastmilk for allergens, I could be wrong about
this, but my understanding is that it is very difficult to *accurately* test for
allergens any other way than by trials of exclusion.
       Dee

Dee Kassing, BS, MLS, IBCLC
Collinsville, Illinois, in central USA

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