Allergic to Milk (??)

As of now, we've made it through the newborn stage and have figured out that our babies have a milk protein allergy and likely also have a corn allergy. I feel like it is so counterintuitive to be allergic to milk, but it does make sense when you think about how immature our babies' little digestive systems are.

Sadly, the best thing for them would have been breastmilk that didn't have milk in it from me cutting out dairy in my own diet, but I just never produced enough. We figured out the allergy around 6 weeks, which is when I stopped pumping anyway. It was so hard for me to stop for a couple of reasons.

First, my body was doing something truly amazing! It was creating food! And it was the best food for our babies! It wasn't creating much, but it would have maybe been fine for one baby and with less stress I probably would have had a better supply, but there are just some things you have to let go of with triplets. But it was really, really hard to make the decision to stop since I knew how good it was for them and I wanted to give that to them.

Second, I didn't know (and still don't know) if we would ever have more babies and it was hard to think I would never do that again. Selfishly, I wanted to keep it up for my own experience because it was hard thinking that I might not get to ever do it again.

Honestly, it was one of the most weirdly conflicting experiences I've gone through. I still wish I could have produced enough for them all, or even just one or two and rotated through who got it which day. But then it would have been a lot harder to figure out our babies' allergies, so in the end I know it was for the best. Plus, with the tongue and lip ties things wouldn't have worked anyway unless we'd gotten that figured out and taken care of sooner. All in all, I wish things could have turned out differently, but we did the best we could with the situation we had.

It has worked out to keep me sane (pumping and taking care of three babies was hard!) and allow others to help us.

But anyway, that was a long tangent to the real point of this post ha.

Our babies started showing signs of discomfort pretty immediately after we started introducing formula about a week and a half in. Up to that point they had been getting my pumped milk as well as donated pasteurized breastmilk. But since my supply was low we knew we'd be supplementing with formula anyway and they needed to get used to it before they left the NICU.

At the time, there was no way to tell it was the milk protein, but I remember thinking that Quin always seemed to be in a lot of pain and thought that it must be constipation. He would start whimpering and then crying and it made me so sad because I couldn't do anything to help him. The nurses said they don't worry about babies not pooping until it was a lot longer or unless his stomach was getting hard from it being backed up. But he never had that problem and now it makes sense since we know what the pain was from.

I just really wish it had been easier to pinpoint sooner. One of the nurses even said it was the reflux, but now we know better. I don't blame anyone, it's a hard thing to figure out.

Once they were on the formula, they started having different poop and since I only know what breastfed poop was supposed to look like, their green, liquid poop didn't mean much. But then I started seeing mucus in it and that made me worry. I turned to the internet and it gave a variety of answers, including allergy, but also a virus. So I assumed they might have a virus and hoped they could recovery quickly.

But it kept up and the boys would always wake up screaming about 2 hours after eating. At their 2 month appointment we brought up the screaming and our doctor said it was time to try Zantac for babies since it was probably reflux. By that point in all of my research I was confident it was the milk allergy, but she said that was the next step if the medicine didn't work. As we were about to leave I brought up the mucus and said I was worried about a virus, but our dr immediately said, nope, that's the allergy unfortunately and that the fix was to use a special, and expensive, hypoallergenic formula.

The crazy thing is that Lydia also had the mucus but didn't wake up crying, she would just cry when she was awake. We ended up giving her the new formula and zantac as well.

They all improved a lot once we switched them, but they still seemed fussy about two hours after eating until we accidentally stumbled upon the fact that they did better on the ready to use (already mixed up) formula than they did on the powder, even though it was the same formula and everything. We were lucky because Dillon had been looking for deals on this formula, and a person he bought some of the powder from also had the ready to use that was going to expire soon, so they just gave it to us (and it really worked out because the person selling it was my sis-in-law's co-worker).

I wanted to let the babies just be on one thing for an extended period of time because they had been switched from breastmilk to one formula, then to a different one, then to another, and then the powder special formula, then the ready to feed special formula in their short, little lives. We hoped that if they were able to get used to the ready to use then we could move them to the powder once their bodies could relax. Sadly, after a month of (really expensive) ready to use, we tried them back on the powder and they reacted within a few days so we immediately moved them back to the ready to use.

At the same time, we had tried Lydia on a regular, but still gentler, formula to see if she really did have the allergy since she never really complained before and we thought maybe her system matured enough. Nope, within a few days she had mucus back in her poop and this time it was bloody, poor girl. She barely complained but I can only imagine what her insides were doing!

So everyone was back on ready to use while I tried to figure out why the heck they could only handle that and not the powder. Sadly, we didn't feel like our dr was much help in knowing why it could be so I went back to the internet. There were very few forums that talked about powder vs ready to use, but a few of them mentioned that if a baby does better on the ready to use then it can indicate a corn allergy.

The frustrating thing is, ALLLL BUT ONE formula has corn syrup and corn starch as main ingredients. Thankfully the only one that doesn't have corn in it is also a hypoallergenic formula so our babies could use it! It doesn't save us any money ha but it also doesn't cost us more either.

We made the switch, and guess what? The boys are happier, settle more easily, have normal poop, and immediately started eating more! So even though we haven't had them officially tested yet (we will soon), we're pretty sure we know what's going on, finally. But fingers crossed nothing else will show up!

So between that and the tongue/lip tie business, we're beat! It was hard to not know what was going on and not have any answers from medical professionals, but by doing my own research and advocating for these babies, we got them the help we thought would benefit them. And we think it's made a world of a difference!