On 2nd April 2018, we welcomed our beautiful baby girl Bella into this crazy world. She was the most happiest, calm and content baby you could wish for. We had hit the jackpot! After about 4 weeks, Bella started getting bad wind in during the day and at first we just thought she was drinking her milk too quick. Bella has been bottle fed since she we left the hospital at 12 hours old and used to guzzle her bottles down! When she was 6 weeks old we had about 3 or 4 days of each afternoon crying and pulling her legs up. I knew something wasn’t right so I took her to the doctors who advised it sounded like it could be a Cow’s milk intolerance and to swap her to the Comfort milk version. Bella’s symptoms improved greatly and we were really happy with the improvements. Her wind had subsided within a day! Probably about a week later she started having really green runny explosive nappies (sorry to be graphic!) and the wind had started again with her crying unconsolably and pulling her legs up. I didn’t know what to do but tried to see it through as much as I could. The next day, she was back to her happy smiley self again. We went through this same cycle for another 2 weeks until we went back to the doctors who then brushed us off with saying Bella just had colic. Yes her systems were very similar but I knew this wasn’t the case. A mother knows her own baby, whether it’s your first child or your fifth! I decided to stick it out until she was 3 months which is when babies should grow out of colic. As we had good days then bad days due to what we thought could be a build up, we could manage.
Three months hit and I took her back to the doctors, this time after a lot of online research, I demanded prescription milk! Enough was enough, I didn’t want to be fobbed off and I wanted my baby to be better. Hallelujah! My baby girl had improved within a week. No wind, no thrashing about and I could finally sleep knowing she wasn’t in pain.
We have since been back and forth to our dietician who has confirmed Bella has a non IGE cows milk protein allergy. Non IGE allergy is where there is a delayed reaction and unfortunately we can not have any tests done. Weaning was tough as there isn’t many purée products on the market that are dairy free. We are finally in a place now, at 11 months, where Bella is completely dairy free with dairy alternatives and has been symptom free from a milk reaction. There are still a few foods that we aren’t sure Bella can tolerate yet, like beef and asparagus which are both quite rich foods. I am much more confident with giving her food and it has become second nature to ask for dairy free options and to read labels. I suffer with awful anxiety which hasn’t been helped with having an allergy baby, especially as my husband and I have never had allergies so this is all new to us. We are hopeful Bella will grow out of her CMPA! We are currently transitioning to oat milk and once Bella is settled on this milk, we will try the Milk Ladder for the first time. If everything goes okay, she could be having milk products within the next two months. Fingers crossed for us. We have an incredibly happy and cheeky little girl on our hands. She has been walking for a month now, talking away and showing us every day that we are such lucky parents. My husband and I are so blessed to have the little family unit that we do! I am sharing our story and our journey on my new Instagram page ‘BellaSophieCMPA’. I want to show first, second, third time mums that an allergy isn’t the end of the world and you can learn to cope with it. Our babies are perfect in every single!
Lots of love
Sophie - Mama to my beautiful Bella x
