How can you tell if your diet is harming your baby? Is your baby just fussing around or is something truly bothering her? I lost count of all the sleepless nights I had when my son was younger. I wasn’t able to determine what was bothering him and allergies were the last thing on my mind. I thought it was normal for babies to fuss around and have a rash here and there. A friend of mine suggested that I switch my diet. I was breast feeding at the time and didn’t think that my diet would affect my son. To my surprise it did. All of the dairy products I was consuming were harming him. He was congested, restless and sometimes had diarrhea. By adjusting to an almost vegan diet I saw a tremendous change. Although it is normal for most babies to fuss around and wake up in the middle of the night. What you can do is pay close attention to your baby after she is breast fed. 

The common symptoms for food allergies in babies are:

• Colic
• Congestion
• Constipation
• Diarrhea or change of color in stool
• Ear infections
• Eczema/rashes (other than a diaper rash)
• Flatulence
• Hives
• Itchy/watery eyes
• Spitting or vomiting
• Wheezing or coughing (signs of asthma)

If you realize that your baby is very sensitive and has multiple symptoms, it would be best to switch to the elimination diet till your baby is old enough to eat solids. Do not consider formula as an alternative to breast feeding. Formula is a major hazard to babies, especially if your little one is allergic. Some babies die after consuming soy or milk based formula. Neither is hypo-allergenic formula a way out of this situation, all the formulas contain chemicals and are not meant to nourish your baby. What can happen is that your baby will have difficulty gaining weight, or worse, she can have an allergic reaction to the formula. If you realize that your baby is loosing weight, even though you are feeding her constantly, seek professional help immediately. Also switching formulas can worsen the condition. This malnourishment is an actual condition called “failure to thrive“. In other words your baby will be starving because the formula is not providing enough nourishment. Avoid this risk and continue breast feeding if you are capable of doing so. Once you tweak your diet a bit you’ll notice results right away.

Tags: baby food allergies, baby formula, baby loosing weight, colic, failure to thrive, hypo-allergenic formula

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 11:04 pm and is filed under allergy remedies, allergy symptoms, asthma, eczema, food allergies, soy allergy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.