Lactose intolerance anyone?

This is what your kitchen counter looks like when your child is lactose intolerant:

It would appear that she's lactose intolerant based on her reaction to her old diet and her non-puking reaction to her new one. We have no firm diagnosis from a doctor, but we've eliminated her old formula and stopped feeding her products that have milk products in them (ie. baby cereal, baby mum mums) and in turn, she's done her part by keeping the throw up at bay.
It started a couple weeks ago. She would throw up everytime she breastfed, but it didn't concern me at first. Then she was throwing up after she ate, everytime she ate. Coincidentally, she got a bottle of formula after each meal but I knew it couldn't be the fruit/veg I was feeding her because we were smart about introducing solids by only giving her one at a time and not starting a new one until she had had one for a few days in a row. And it couldn't be the formula because she had been drinking it since we came back from England and she never had a problem with it before. I couldn't seem to figure it out but I knew that the throwing up wasn't normal since it came out of the blue and since it happened everytime she ate. She wasn't showing other signs of being sick; she didn't have a fever or diarrhea or a tummy ache. But then, I was talking to my mom one day and she said "maybe she's lactose intolerant." Hmm...now, there's a possibility that hadn't occurred to me. I started researching symptoms of lactose intolerance in babies online and found this list:

-showing signs of reflux
-is unsettled and unable to sleep (everyone knows we've been trying to get her to sleep through the night for months!)
-has excessive wind
-frequently vomits up whole feeds
-raised red blotches on the skin (also, eczema is a common reaction to lactose intolerance)

That last point really stood out to me because she's had red, rough blotches on her cheeks (along with the other symptoms) for a little while now but it didn't worry me because she's had them before and they've always gone away with time but these ones have stuck around for longer.


























With this new information fresh on my mind, I went to the pharmacy to ask a pharmacist what he thought (I didn't think it was serious enough to wait in out-patients with her and our family doctor is in Halifax). He suggested trying a lactose free formula to see if it made a difference. Luckily, the brand of formula we had been using for months makes a lactose free kind (I was glad, because I had reservations about giving her soy and because I didn't want to have to transition her onto another formula altogether). That night she had her first bottle of lactose free formula before bed and presto! no throwing up! she even drank the whole thing which is something she hasn't done in a long time. I now realize that it was probably bothering her stomach and she therefore didn't want to drink more. We've given her other foods on their own, without formula, to see if she's able to eat some products with milk in it. But unfortunately, skim milk powder is the second ingredient in nestle cereal and the third of four in baby mum mums and neither agreed with her stomach. It resulted in changing her outfit, or my outfit, or both.

So, this is the second day we've been puke free! I went to the store this morning to stock up on fruits and veggies to prepare for our trip to cape breton this weekend for thanksgiving. Without cereal, she's eating a lot more fruits and vegetables and I've become a puree making machine! Hopefully things will stay where they're at now and she'll eventually grow out of it. For now, all we can do is just keep the milk products away and maybe reintroduce them later down the road.

Gotta go make sweet potato puree! Ta ta!