Diagnosing dairy intolerances in babies

That sounds awful!! Sounds to me like a case of milk protein allergy, and I'm no doctor, and only know what I've learnt here on Ohbaby!!

I can't believe so many health professionals didn't pick it up, because its not that uncommon these days. Poor wee tyke, hope he gets better and puts on some weight, now that its finally been picked up.

So sorry about your grandson, how scary. My son wasn't diagnosed until 4 months but his allergy was not as severe, he was a totally different baby once on neocate so fingers crossed your grandson will quickly thrive and you will soon find it hard to remember him being so ill.

We unfortunately were also let down by "professionals", unfortunately it seems to be a lack of education about allergies rather than a negligance issue (in my opinion anyway). When my son was breastfed he would projectile vomit out of his nose, scream, back arch, not feed properly and feed very frequently, most likely hungry cos of puking so much all the time. Our midwife told us it was normal, being first time parents we thought it was and struggled on with our "spilly baby". At 3 months old I stopped feeding because I kept getting infections and we put him on standard formula, he started doing green poos when he did poo cos he also got extremely badly constipated and his small patches of eczema became pretty much one enormous patch that covered his whole body. The screaming, back arching and puking stepped up to a whole new level and because he was in so much pain from his stomach and from being constipated he would scream so hard that he would turn purple, he did this in front of a plunket nurse one day and still it wasn't suggested that he could have either an allergy or reflux, instead she checked to see if he was teething and then did mention about trying goats milk to help the constipation. After him not going to toilet for days on end and him being up all night screaming we had yet another visit to the Drs where we were prescribed an enema to give him and some stronger creams for his ezcema, when I asked about he formula possible causing problems and that we had changed him to goats milk, I was told that would make no difference to his skin and when I asked what I should do I was told "just keep trying formulas"
In the end it was a lady at nutricia who first mentioned an allergy when I phoned them to find out which formula I should try next, I then had had enough of the public system and booked him in privately to see a paed. He was diagnosed then and put onto neocate and it was amazing. His constipation was gone instantly, he started drinking large amounts at his feeds, he became happy to feed, no more back arching or screaming, he continued to be spilly but wasn't upset about it anymore, and after 2 weeks his skin was clear.

In fairness to your midwife, the baby would not be intolerant to breastmilk, but cow's milk protein gets passed through breastmilk, had your daughter in law stopped eating dairy he may have improved, but she should have been advised that and it may not have helped because with an allergy as severe as it sounds like his is it's likely that he may have other allergies as well and they would have been passing through her milk also.

There are some really good websites around that can help with allergy stuff, I will come back and put some links for you and you can pass them onto your son, I have found it helps to have heaps of info for when you see people like plunket/gp as they often don't know what they are talking about.
I had a gp tell me you couldn't test for allergies till age 2 and that is completely wrong, I had a paed at a hospital question why my son was not eating dairy even though out private paed had put him on neocate and told us to have him on an elimination diet, he also questioned why he wasn't eating egg even though the two allergies are often inter related and good job he wasn't cos as it turns out when he was tested at 12 months it turned out he is allergic to egg also.

so anyway a bit of a rant, but they will need to be armed with info.

Our little girl wasn't diagnosed until after 4 months as well. This was after battling to get her to drink (taking 1 1/2 hours and having to rock her to sleep to get her to drink) and being told that she was just a difficult feeder and had reflux. Her dry, patchy skin we were told was "typical baby skin" by the paed. After lots of complaining on here it was Cuppatea that came to our rescue with Neocate. After a few days on it she was back to drinking bigger amounts in smaller time frames and a week later her skin was looking really good. It is hard because you feel no one is listening to you and you don't know what to do. We went through 4 different formulas before Neocate and I also wonder now if she was so unwell on my milk in the very beginning because I was drinking so much dairy   Just hope your grandson is better soon