Dear Mary,

Unfortunately, eczema is a devil of a thing to deal with.  My first child had multiple food allergies and had eczema off and on for quite a few years.  Dairy may be only one of the culprits.  My son also was very allergic to wheat and tomato products.  I ended up on a very limited diet while nursing - rice, chicken, pork, fruits and vegetables - and even then, the eczema would flare up from time to time for no apparent reason.  It eventually lessened as he got older, mostly settling into the usual places in the creases of the joints.  At the age of five, he developed asthma, also very common with kids with severe food allergies.  However, his asthma was never very severe and I believe that was due in large part to the fact that he was almost exclusively breastfed for over a year and continued nursing until he was five.

Now my husband has developed very severe food allergies and we are back to the same thing, reading labels and cooking almost everything from scratch.  Eliminating wheat and dairy is very hard to do unless you are very dliligent.  Many things contain either whey or casein or wheat protein.  There have been many posts before on this - check the archives.  Soy is second only to dairy as an allergen for humans, so giving soy may certainly be a problem for this baby.  We did eventually find that goat's milk was OK for our son, and used that in small amounts as he got older (some cow-allergic people are also allergic to goat - it is a trial and error process).

Please encourage this mom to continue breastfeeding - it is very important for her child's health.  It is almost certain that the excema will only get worse if she weans.  Please share with the mom all of the present concerns about soy formula (also in the archives).

It sounds like this mom may have already made a decision, in conjunction with her physician, so please don't feel too badly if she decides to wean - you are providing good information which she will either choose to incorporate into her life or not.  Unfortunately, I think that her problems have only just begun.




Warmly,
Sharon Knorr, BSMT, ASCP, IBCLC
Newark, NY (near Rochester on Lake Ontario)
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