Milk free food

Fruit and veg to start with

That’s all I give my little girl and she’s just over 4 months now. Started her at 16 weeks as doctors told me to

When she turns 6 months ill start giving her meat as well as veggies and putting her own milk in to make things like mash potatoes and root veg mash but my doctor also said to start the milk ladder at 6 months

@Paige are there any pouches that you give or is it all done at home? I want to a combination of spoon feeding and BLW so want to introduce pouches as well for convenience

I do both but all the 4 month pouches are just fruits and veggies. It’s not till 6 months the pouches are more meal typed ones

I wanted to do blw but hadn’t really worked out that way for me so when she gets to 5 and half months I’m going to give her more lumpy pureed food

We started with single vegetables and cook most of his meals at home. There are very limited ready made baby food pouches (we use Ella’s kitchen beef stew, chicken casserole or lamb roast sometimes). We haven’t really given dairy such as yoghurt alternatives, he just goes without that type of food x

@Paige thank you! We are going to wean when she’s 6 months so will need to see what pouches I can give her x

@Parris thank you! I want to do most of it at home too but think pouches are best for when going out etc x

I use oat milk for recipes if I don’t have breast milk on hand, like purées or eggs. Ella’s Kitchen also do some dairy-free rice pudding and yoghurt pouches. I’m going to test if he has a soy allergy soon because most of the dairy free ‘cheese’ and stuff you can use for BLW are made from soy, which is a main allergen

We just give her what we eat, blw from the start at 6 months. Out and about I have a satsuma/easy peeler in the bag quite often and some melty sticks or baby wafers and order/buy something dairy free (ebf so also dairy-free myself anyway) which is so easy now with most places doing vegan options and being allergy aware. Worse case, like in a cafe in Bruges the other week where even the bread for sandwiches had dairy, most places do a bowl of chips! We also had cooked up a sausage to bring in a cool bag and a boiled egg so baby had a couple of chips and bit of sausage. At home we use flora spread instead of butter and oat milk for cereal etc. I'm yet to find a df cheese I can tolerate the texture of though.

We give all sorts of foods There's always alternatives and lots of free from things Just check all ingredients to every product every time you use it If making mash etc just use your choice of alternative milk soya oat etc Lots of df butter and cheeses too

I try and use alternatives that are fortified with vitamins. My boy has oat milk with his cereals. Koyo coconut yogurt is a hit too. His fav cheese is the grated from Aldi!

We do baby led weaning and have always just mainly given modified versions of what we have. He has oat/soya or almond milk in his cereal/in mash etc. He usually has the suckies dairy free yoghurt pouches or just the alpro soya ones. I just buy dairy free spread for us all to use and he has vegan cheese/cream cheese etc. Definitely try to introduce the soy allergen early to make sure baby's not allergic to that too as a lot of the milk alternatives are soya based. Xx

@Levi I’m really nervous to introduce soy as the dietician said it’s proteins are really similar to cows milk so babies that have CMPA are very likely to also have an allergy to soya milk 😞

Thank you all for your tips! I’m probably worrying for no reason and will hopefully get the hang of it once I’ve started xx

We just went through BLW, I was breastfeeding so am already dairy free so just have him what I eat. We use oat milk instead of normal milk in recipes. Just introduce allergens one by one (nuts/soya/eggs/strawberry/etc) but otherwise just check ingredients for everything- if you have checked it before check it again because they change the ingredients all the time!

It's only about 40% of cmpa babies that have a soy allergy.

@Paige that advice is wrong, gold standard practice is to start dairy ladder at 12 months. Bub won't have grown out of it by 6 months. And if bub has experienced repeated croup and bronchiolitis as a baby, you delay milk ladder until 2. There is a strong link between dairy too young, and asthma.

@Ella well she hasn’t and okay that’s fine you ring my doctor and tell her that she is wrong.

And ring my daughter dietician too.

You don't have to believe me, you can literally google it 🧐

@Ella hey, I see a paediatrician who’s the one of the leading paediatric allergy specialists in the uk, she teaches at prestigious universities and has nearly 30 years in the field - she advised to start the milk ladder at 6 months too. The whole point of the ladder is to get milk into their system from an early age in small doses so that their body can get used to it - the earlier the better as the more likely they are to grow out of it. They don’t need to be grown out of it when they start the ladder x

@Parris they do need to have a level of tolerance though or they just immediately fail step 1 and you have to stop. So you've achieved nothing except stressing their immune system and negatively affecting their gut

But it’s better to try because if they can tolerate a small amount it’s best to have the dairy in their system from a younger age to prevent them not being able to grow out of it

@Parris that’s why you do the milk challenge with them before weaning. If they react then you wait to start the ladder. I think in an ideal world you get the allergen in early but with a lot of babies they just aren’t able to tolerate it at 6 months. I mean in all honesty there is not a chance we could have started the milk ladder at 6 months because little man was around 10 months before he was actually eating enough to even contemplate starting any of the ladders. He wouldn’t have eaten any of it at 6 months - have you been given a different dairy ladder to do from 6 months to the normal one?

@Becky I get that. I think it’s just the earlier the better. We didn’t start it until 10 months too because we had other allergies and issues to deal with but yes I’ve been given a different milk ladder but still same quantities of milk on each step. If they bc ant tolerate it, I’ve been told to wait a month and try again but the earlier dairy is in their system the better

@Parris information is so conflicting. As there is so much about multiple reactions getting worse over time which is why you have such a big break before starting the milk ladder. I know the idea is to get allergens in early to stop reactions but most CMPA babies have reacted already, some really badly. Guess that’s why this all should be done under doctors advice as each baby is different