Question:
My daughter is one year old. We introduced her whole milk three days ago.
Today she suddenly developed severe diarrhea (three diarrhea in two hours).
She doesn't have fever, not vomiting, has no pain in her abdomen and is
still active. My question is if this sounds like milk allergy. From what I
read, the milk allergy should happen much fast, one to several hours after
consuming milk. She has had milk for three days already. Is it possible
that she is having food poisoning?
Answer:
Was she exclusively breastfed until that point or did she take (and
tolerate) a milk-based infant formula before that? She was exclusively breastfed, never had formula. I am still breastfeeding
her. One thing I know is that her skin is sensitive to cow milk. If I mix
cereal with cow milk and it comes into contact with her skin, a red rash
appears right away. It disappears after I wash her face with water.
Her diarrhea hasn't come back since yesterday later afternoon, but yesterday
morning and early afternoon she probably had six diarrhea episodes.
If she is breastfeeding without problem, she couldn't be lactose intolerant,
could she? How have her bowel movements been after the first three diarrheas? Kids aren't very good at localizing symptoms. So if she has a virus, she
could get runny nose, cough, and diarrhea. I would stop the milk for a few
days and introduce it slowly.
How does she do with cheese and other dairy products? Is she on any
antibiotics?
She just had her first bowel movement in the 24 hours since her last
diarrhea. It looked normal. I wasn't able to get her eat cheese, she is not interested. I tried yogurt
and she didn't like it either. If she gets yogurt on her face, her skin gets
rash just like when she gets milk on her face. The rash disappeared after I
washed her face with water.
This was actually the second time we introduced milk. The first time she got
little pimples with white heads in the middle on lower part of her face, but
we were not sure if it is due to milk. This time she didn't get that kind of
reaction.
She is not on antibiotics.
