Blood in 5 Month Olds Stool, Exclusively Breastfed

You should get a second opinion --- from a doctor, not from the peanut gallery out here. Blood in the stool is a serious symptom, and you need medical advice, not anecdotal advice.

This happened to my friend's baby.

Have you tried giving up dairy? My friend's baby stopped having blood in his stool after she gave up *all* dairy. You have to really read the ingredients to make sure there are no dairy products like casein, for example.

If you stop breastfeeding, you can pump to keep up your supply.

Good luck.

I see someone mentioned removing wheat from your diet. You didn't mention what grains you are eating but blood in the stool can be caused by celiac disease or gluten intolerance. You can read about it online. Maybe you can search "infant celiac gluten intolerance symptoms" or something like that. See if your daughter is experinece one or more of them.

I would recommend removing all gluten grains (wheat, rye barley, and there are a few other less common ones) from your diet and asking your doctor to test your daughter for celiac disease. It is a blood test that looks for antibodies. If the antibodies aren't there now, they could show up later. It is sort of a complicated condition but totally treatable with a gluten-free diet. It wouldn't hurt to rule it out. Even if the test is negative, I'd remove the gluten and see what happens. It is the only real way to know.

Please feel free to contact me if you want to know more. There is a lot of info out there on this subject and some doctors are just starting to catch on to gluten intolerance.

Hi A.,

My son had the exact same problem with the exact same remedy prescribed! My son's pediatrician recommended that I go off of all milk proteins, completely different from being dairy free. Usually, dairy free implies that you are going off of lactose, but there are several milk products that make their way into foods that you wouldn't suspect. I am a vegetarian and at the time it forced me to go vegan (I am vegan now, though) and it was terribly hard for me. Even the non-dairy cheeses contain milk proteins to help them melt. The pediatrician also explained that it would probably take about two weeks past making the changes to see any results. Get a second opinion and possibly try to go off all milk proteins before starting nutramigen/alimentum. The milk proteins include casein, whey, lactose, and lactic acid and maybe some others that I don't remember at this time. You will find these proteins in many, many foods so be sure to look closely at the labels. Good luck to you!

-H.

Hi A.,

My daughter had blood in her stool at 7 weeks, I was exclusively breastfeeding....after 3 months of eliminating dairy, soy, egg, fish etc......she still showed signs of the blood (although it wasn't visible to the eye, it was proven on a test at the doctors office) -- because of the inflamation, it was recommended by my doc that I stop breastfeeding and start formula to stop the blood. My doctor's fear was that the inflamation could make her sensitive to other foods and create more allergies....when we tried the regular hypo-allergenic formula the blood increased, so we switched to Neocate (a formula broken down to the amino acid level), within 2 weeks of switching, the blood was gone. Since we started solids at 6 months, she loves to eat a huge variety of food, she has never really been sick and is growing, thriving and wonderful -- my point is this; it was so hard to stop breastfeeding (especially suddenly) but I had to keep telling myself, in my specific and individual case, breastfeeding was NOT the best for my baby any more (it's so hard because we are constantly being told of the benefits, which indeed are true in most cases) -- I also found solace in knowing that I had breastfed her for the most critical first months and was ultimately trying to find solution to the inflamation in her gut -- I went through a tough time emotionally after switching but it was offset by the fact that my baby was healthy again!! :-) In the end this is our goal as mothers.....right?
My daughter is 15 months now and though she doesn't have dairy or eggs, she loves salmon, avocado, all fruits and veggies, a little tofu here and there etc....she is a great eater, a happy, healthy & VERY talkative little girl.....

Albeit a difficult one, I now realize I made the right decision.....for us....I am confident you will make the right decision for your family....best wishes....

After reading the responses just want to add how important it is to Drink 8 glasses of pure fresh water a day. You can read F. Batmanghelidji M.D.'s book "You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty- Water for Health, Healing, for Life." It may help you and is an amazing book. Especially the chapter on Allergies and the Immune system. It puts a new light on health and the bodies ability to heal.
GOOD LUCK.

A.,

before giving up on breastfeeding all together contact a lactation consultant. I was talking with a friend who is a LLL leader about someone I knew whose son was allergic to breast milk and she got to the point where she was only eating rice pretty much and ended up going to formula. The LLL friend said it was a shame that she had not talked with a lactation consultant because there were things she could have tried (enzymatic digestive aids etc) that might have helped. Your pediatrician should be able to recommend someone or contact your local LLL for a recommendation.

C.

Hi A.,

First of all, don't lose heart about breastfeeding - it's one of the single most important things that ONLY you can do for your little girl in the first years of her life, and the proven benefits will stay with her for her lifetime. Second,
there may be other sensitivities that she has that you haven't hit on yet - this is not entirely uncommon. There is a GREAT group of moms on Yahoogroups who have dealt with food and chemical sensitivities in their babies and sometimes themselves, and they are a wealth of information about how to cope, what to do to help heal your baby, elimination diets, and loads of emotional and moral support as you go. The group is called FoodLab and I'd encourage you to contact them ASAP - if you have any trouble signing on, let me know privately and I can put you in contact with some local members in the Bay Area. I also agree with the poster who suggested seeking the advice of a good lactation consultant and perhaps a pediatric GI (with reservations - don't let them try to "blame" your breastfeeding for your baby's problems and tell you to stop!).

I know whereof I speak - our daughter had severe GERD (infant reflux) and some stooling problems as an infant till she was almost 2. We did need to give her medication for a period of time and we did watch her (and my) diet closely, and it all worked out in the end. We did do a bit of supplementation with (ugh!) formula early on, due to inexperience and some weight loss issues when she was first born, but I pumped a lot and kept breastfeeding despite naysayers, and I was SO GLAD I did. It may be a bit of work but it's well worth it to keep BF and I didn't actually have to do a lot of pumping for long before she was back to exclusively BF.

Contact FoodLab on Yahoogroups - you will be glad you did.

Blessings to you and your little one,

S. M.

Hi A.,

Please reach out to lactation consultants and a 2nd opinion from a different GI specialist for additional advice. I am sure they have encountered similar situations.

Hi A.,
I'm sorry this is happening to you and your baby. My son did not have bleeding, but he did have lots of GI issues. We had to switch him to Alimentum (did Nutramagen first, but Alimentum smells and tastes --my poor husband tried them both -- a lot better) both because of his GI issues and because I had a serious health condition and had to go on meds that would be present in my breast milk. Luckily, the overwhelming majority of health benefits are already passed on to your baby by now, and kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) with a blanket around the both of you can replicate the closeness and bonding to a great extent. I also agree with the previous poster who said to get a second opinion on what is causing this bleeding. Is the blood bright red or are her stools really dark? Dark (almost black) stools in adults, anyway, mean that bleeding is happening further up the digestive tract (e.g., bleeding ulcer) versus further down (e.g., anal fissures or bleeding hemmerrhoid). The reason the GI wanted me to stop breastfeeding (before the meds I had pumped a ton and still a few bottles of breastmilk in the freezer) was because my son's gut was sensitive to who knows what, but he had no known food allergies. He is now six and still does not appear to have any food allergies. Because of the meds I knew I had to stop breastfeeding anyway and was okay foregoing those last few bottles of breastmilk. In your case, though, especially with the bleeding, I would see another GI, just to be safe. I understand and respect that you very much want to breastfeed for longer. At the same time, please know that you will not be harming your child. There are no solid studies out there (where breastfeeding can be truly isolated as a variable with all other variables held constant) showing that your child will be harmed in any way if you stop breastfeeding now. Again, the kangaroo care (and "wearing" your baby) can be a really wonderful way to bond if breastfeeding turns out not to be the best option for your daughter's health. You're doing great, mom!

This happened with my sister and niece, when my niece was 3 months old. My sis did tons of research on the internet. You have to completely cut dairy out of your diet. After 3 months of no dairy, my sister began to slowly introduce different dairy items back to her diet. See what you find on the internet and maybe make an appointment with the pediatrician because it could be a sign of more food alergies down the road.

Hi there - I also cut out soy and wheat from my diet when it happened to our daughter. They say that soy intolerance is also very common in babies who are intolerant to dairy protein. It is little harder but doable. Our doctor also suggested nutramagen if it didn't get better but thankfully it did. As she got older and eating more solids, her system matured and I am able to add wheat back into my diet. I am still off dairy but our doctor said I can probably start with yogurt. I guess it depends on how badly her condition is but I was very reluctant to take my daughter off breastmilk. Friend of mine's baby had to switch to nutramagen and she did great on it. She was consistently off the charts in her growth.

My son had blood in his stool, as well. As soon as we started giving him Nutramagen the blood disappeared and was never a problem agian. This was six years ago. I suppose a second opion wouldn't hurt. Maybe you can "examine" why you want to keep breast feeding? If it's because breastfeeding is the "healthiest" choice for babies? Obviously for my son it wasn't. An emontional and loving bond can still be developed with your baby in other ways-not just through breastfeeding. I have a wonderful relationship with my son, who is six years old now and healthy, and was breastfeed for a very short while.