PREVENTING FOOD SENSITIVITY: BABIES FEEDING
Because food molecules pass into breast milk, it is important for the mother to watch what she eats while breast-feeding. She should avoid eggs, cow’s milk, peanuts and fish, and should restrict her alcohol intake, especially of red wine. Calcium gluconate tablets can be prescribed to make up for the lack of calcium in a milk-free diet – or she can try goat’s or sheep’s milk, in limited quantities. If any previous children are highly allergic to specific foods then these too should be excluded from her diet, and should not be given to the new baby in its first year.
Ironically, the most difficult place to ensure that a baby is given nothing but breast milk may be in a maternity ward. The practice of giving supplementary or ‘complementary’ feeds is still common in some hospitals, and can be very damaging in the first few weeks of life. These feeds contain infant formulas based on cow’s milk, which are likely to be allergenic for the susceptible child. At this early stage in life the baby is very vulnerable to sensitization by foreign proteins.
Giving supplementary feeds can also have more insidious effects that may lead to the baby having to be entirely bottle-fed. Extra feeds from bottles upset the subtle balance of demand-and-supply that is established between a breastfeeding mother and her child. A rubber teat works differently from a real one, and babies that are given bottles do not always suck properly at the breast. Their appetite is also diminished, so they suck less hard, and the mother therefore produces less milk. This sets up a vicious circle, which may end with the mother being told that she ‘does not have enough milk’ and must therefore bottle-feed.
Where there is a hospital policy of not putting babies to the breast during the night, breast milk can be ‘expressed’ and stored, to be given from a bottle by a nurse. This method can also be used at home, for times when breastfeeding is not a practical proposition.
*319\180\8*
