Everything You Need to Know if You are Dairy Free for Breastfeeding

When Raymond was born, I knew nothing about allergies. I had never even dealt with seasonal allergies, let alone food allergies. Honestly, we thought we just had a super fussy baby.

After what felt like decades, that first month appointment proved that he indeed had a cows milk allergy, and my whole world changed.

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Babies and Dairy Allergies

If you are new to allergies, like we were, babies being sensitive to cows milk is actually pretty common and will usually outgrow it within 6 months. We had a total of 4 babes with the sensitivity.

So what is this allergy? Well, I usually use the term allergy and sensitivity interchangeably although I know they can be vastly different.

There are allergies that will send a person into full affixation – closing up their airwaves and making it impossible to breathe. We are not talking about this type of allergy here.

What we are talking about is a sensitivity to the cows milk enzyme in the milk or formula that literally tears the lining of the intestines causing extreme pain and discomfort to the babe.

Most times, if your babe is sensitive to the cows milk, they will also be sensitive to soy as well. Check with your pediatrician for more info.

What are the Symptoms?

Symptoms can be very mild to very serious.

Baby Acne
Fussiness
Upset Belly
Spitting Up
Constantly Hungry
Eating Aggressively/Fast
Gassiness
Green, Mucusy Diapers

Severe Symptoms

Bloody stool/diarrhea

For us, Raymond started out with baby acne that started at his forehead and went all the way down his face, chest, belly and stopped at his diaper. It was bad. Not dealing with this before and hearing baby acne was common, I didn’t think too much of it. This, however, was different.

The next symptom was extreme fussiness. I am talking grunting, crying, whining, not being able to get comfortable. Raymond would grunt all through the night and could never get comfortable. It hurt me that he was in pain, but at the time we still were clueless about the sensitivity.

Raymonds’ belly would always be very loud and would gurgle after eating. This is turn would cause the fussiness and then the crying. He would then be latched to nurse for hours. One point specifically, I nursed for 4 straight hours and still he was not comforted.

Lastly, Raymonds’ diapers were very mucousy, green, and never anywhere near normal. May be TMI, sorry!

What Did We Do?

As I mentioned before, we honestly thought we just had a fussy baby.

When I brought this up to our pediatrician at the time, luckily, she had the same issues with her boys, 20 years prior. She immediately caught the sensitivity, and examined and tested his dirty diaper. Of course, it came back positive.

This is when everything changed for us.

What Can You Eat?

The most common concern followed by a positive testing is usually the concern as to what you can eat.

Now, brace yourself. There is dairy in LITERALLY EVERYTHING. Sorry!!

I will share a great secret with you. I googled “Hidden Dairy Labels” and found some great resources!

So obviously, you can no longer consume milk, cheese, cream, anything that is made from milk. But there are many, many, many different names for dairy ingredients, and they are in everything.

After I learned all the hidden dairy labels, I printed the list out and went to the grocery store. I spent what felt like hours in the store, reading all the usual boxed foods I would buy. Turns out, dairy was in ALL OF IT.

So, my saving grace was Pinterest and all the dairy free recipes I could find. I lived off of Fritos, Tostitos, homemade Rice Krispie treats, and plenty of homemade meals.

If you don’t have to cut out soy too, Oreos are dairy free! Score!

Dairy Free

Now, our first round of going dairy free for breastfeeding believe it or not, there weren’t all the dairy free products like there are today. Silk had JUST come out with their almond milk creamer and I didn’t even know about it for the first couple months.

Yeah, I cut coffee cold turkey because I couldn’t have creamer, and then I found out about the almond milk creamer. Hallelujah!

Some of my favorite dairy free products:

Califia Farms Almond Milk Creamer AMAZING Coffee Creamer

Califia Farms Almond Milk Toasted Coconut I use this all all dairy free recipes. Just a hint of coconut. Really good on cereal too!

Earth Balance Butter This was the only dairy free butter at our grocery store at the time. If I was still cooking specifically dairy free still, I would still be buying this. Its the best!

Anything made by Enjoy Life Brand – I lived off these bags of chocolate chips! They are honestly the BEST!

So Delicious Yogurt is SUPER yummy! I eat this if I’m dairy free or not!

I highly recommend checking out Thrive Market if you are going on the dairy free journey. They have ALL types of products for ALL types of dietary needs. There is a whole section dedicated to dairy free/vegan.

What to Expect

If you choose to change your diet for the sake of continuing to breastfeed your baby, there will be major changes happening.

First and foremost, your baby will be SO MUCH HAPPIER! Within 2 weeks there was a DRASTIC change in Raymond. The acne went away, he was SO calm, no fussiness, the painful gassiness and upset belly was gone.

He was the most content and happy baby afterwards. Other than the fact he then refused a bottle and I was forced to breastfeed for 13 months. NO REGRETS!!!!

For myself, however, I had to relearn how to cook EVERYTHING and I lost a total of 65 pounds.

I remember reading a blog about a mama who shared she lost 35 pounds and that got my excited, since I had some baby weight I wanted to lose. My husband said “you’ll probably lose about 10, maybe 15 max” HA!

Again, this was a major change for me. I was used to eating a lot of junk. This was at a time when I hated vegetables.

The most veggies I ate were potatoes and green beans. That was it.

So for me, cutting out dairy and soy, it was a shock to my body but I felt SO GOOD. I was always full because I was eating real, whole foods instead of the processed junk.

My skin cleared drastically, my confidence in myself AND my parenting improved. Most importantly, my body and my baby FELT good.