Allergy Alphabet - Blogging A to Z day 4

Day 4 of the April A to Z blogging challenge and it's time to talk about the first of Monkey's allergens.

D is for dairy which is the first allergy of Monkey's that we knew about. People often think she is lactose intolerant when I say she is allergic to dairy but what she actually has is Cow's Milk Protein Allergy.

Poor Monkey had every single one of the symptoms mentioned in the video. Her main problems were the crying, terrible nappies and poor growth. But I just told myself that babies cried and babies pooed.

I did take her to the doctors various times with the different symptoms but nobody seemed to join all the symptoms together and look at allergies. It was my health visitor who first suggested an issue with dairy. At first the doctors said she couldn't possibly have an allergy as she was still exclusively breast fed at that point. After seeing a different doctor due to terrible nappies we were advised to go dairy free. About a week later Monkey was admitted to hospital due to wheezing and swelling and concerns about her growth. At this point she'd been having problems for three months and was only just going into newborn clothes. While we were in hospital she was officially diagnosed with Cow's Milk Protein Allergy.

I thought dairy free would be easy. I hate milk. I have the tiniest little bit in my coffee and that's about it. But going dairy free means a lot more than drinking black coffee. Cheese is out, and yoghurt but I suppose they're still quite obviously dairy.

Chocolate was a difficult one for me to give up. But what was really upsetting was to find I couldn't even have crisps instead. Yes, crisps have milk in! In fact I pretty quickly discovered everything has milk in. Giving up dairy was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

I had to learn a whole load of other names that milk could be called. Luckily there are new laws in place now that mean the top 14 allergens have to be declared in food so any of these should clearly state that they're milk. That wasn't the case when we first went dairy free though and I spent a lot of time checking labels against this list.

The following contain, or may contain milk:

Nisin (may)	Curds	Whey
Casein	Rennet	Lactose
Lactulose	Whey and casein hydrolysates	Lacalbumin
Lactoglobulin	Lactate starter	Ammonium caseinate
Artificial butter flavour (not always)	Butter solids/fat	Calcium caseinate
Caramel colour (not always)	Caramel flavouring (not always)	Caseinate
Delactosed whey	Demineralized whey	Dried milk
High protine flour (not always)	High protine flour	Hydrolzed casein
Lactabum	Lactabum phosphate	Lactate
Lactroferrin	Lactogloblin	Magnesium caseinate
milkderivative	Milk fat	opta (fat replacer)
Potassium caseinate	Solids	Sour cream solids
Sour solids	Sour milk solids	Whey protine concentrate
Enriched flour(not always)	Formage frais	Sodium Steatoyal(not aways)
Sherbert(not always)	Nougot	hydrolized vegtable protein
tagatose / Naturose	Recaldent	PROSPEC MI (At dentist)

I breast fed until Monkey self-weaned at about 15 months so I was strictly dairy free all that time. Monkey has never eaten any dairy directly. All her reactions were through my milk. Being dairy free wasn't easy but it was worth it. We saw a difference in her almost straight away although it took six weeks for the dairy to completely clear.

Many children can sucessfully start to gradually reintroduce dairy to their diets at around 12 months old. Monkey is 21 months old but has still never eaten dairy even in it's most baked form. We have been advised by the hospital not to do any reintroduction yet. We've not got any dates set for food challenges yet but we've been told that they will be done in hospital. I'm really not looking forward to that day but for now we'll just keep on doing what we're doing and keeping Monkey safe.