Lactose Intolerance – Feeding Your Baby Without Risk
Posted by Knowledge Guy in Home and Household, tags: baby cries, Breastfed Infants, Enzyme Lactase, Enzyme Production, Feeding Your Baby, Hydrogen Breath Test, Insta, Intestines, Intolerance Lactose, Irritability, Lab Tests, lactose intolerance, Lactose Intolerance In Infants, Large Bowel, Medical Intervention, Medical Tests, Misunderstandings, Proper Diagnosis, Reducing Sugars, S System, Weight ReductionThe topic of lactose intolerance has been often up for debate in recent times, specially when it comes to newborns. Apart from its interest, lactose intolerance is terribly perceived today and you can find many misconceptions and misunderstandings concerning it. Let’s take a look at this significant matter of parenting and look for some helpful remedies for the instances when your baby cries for no reason.
What Exactly Is Lactose Intolerance?
Lactose is actually the sugar from the milk. Lactose intolerance is the inability to break down lactose and it occurs when a person’s system can not create a sufficient amount of lactase (the enzyme that’s required to break down lactose). Therefore, the lactose cannot be absorbed and it remains in the intestines. When getting into the large bowel, it generates unpleasant acids and gases.
Babies with lactose intolerance display some of the following symptoms: liquid feces, irritability, winds passing, weight reduction, dehydration, and so on.
How do you know if a baby is lactose intolerant? Normally the medical tests like ‘hydrogen breath test’ and tests for ‘reducing sugars’ in the feces will be positive if a baby presents lactose intolerance. Such lab tests can as well be positive for most normal breastfed infants younger than 3 months, so proper diagnosis of lactose intolerance in young babies is frequently questionable.
There are two types of lactose intolerance in infants.
Primary lactose intolerance is also called true lactose intolerance and it’s a rare anatomical condition which requires medical intervention. A newborn with primary lactose intolerance won’t start to put on weight and may require a particular diet shortly after birth.
Secondary lactose intolerance can be the result of certain factors that can harm the gut lining, due to the fact that the enzyme lactase is made in the microscopic folds of the bowel. Specific conditions may reduce the enzyme production, for instance food intolerance or allergy.
Secondary lactose intolerance is only temporary, so if the cause is removed, the gut will repair, even if your baby will be breastfed. Children might be allergic or intolerant to some allergenic chemicals in the breast milk. In such a case, just taking the allergenic foods out from the mother’s diet will resolve the problem.
Lactose Intolerance Options
Even when your child presents lactose intolerance, you can continue nursing as long as he or she is feeling good and growing normally.
Often times it is suggested that the mother might alternate nursing with feeds of lactose-free artificial baby milk. In some rare cases, the baby with lactose intolerance can be taken off the breast. Make sure you remember though that human milk remains the optimum food and may aid in the normal bowel healing.
It may be useful for mothers to change the nursing program for a short while. The main focus is to slow the rate at which milk goes through the baby, and you may do this by feeding one breast per feed, or by ‘block-feeding’. In simple terms, you need to set an interval (for example 4 hours) and use the same breast anytime the baby demands to eat during this time period. Then you can use the other breast for the next 4 hours, and so on. By using this method, each time your baby feeds on the already used breast, he gets a lower quantity of high fat milk that can help slow the system down. In block-feeding, you should ensure that the unused breast doesn’t get overfull.
As a complementary option, there are numerous types of drops containing the enzyme lactase which you can give to your baby in order to cure the lactose intolerance symptoms. Even though such drops don’t appear to have much benefit, many reviews show that large doses can be often useful for babies.
Final Note on Lactose Intolerance
As explained above, it is essential to remember that there are several types of lactose intolerance. An important aspect is that you don’t need to stop breastfeeding your baby because of this condition. There are extremely rare instances of primary lactose intolerance. Getting to know the precise cause of lactose intolerance is the vital thing to fixing the problem and soothing the symptoms for your baby.