My daughter turned 2 over Christmas. She is still breastfed, and most of her milk has come from cereal or soups. She loves cheese, eats bagels with cream cheese, and yogurt. When we started her on yogurt, she seemed to have a messy diaper within a half hour, but that is no longer the case, and she LOVES yogurt. I have mild issues with milk; mostly, I can't drink a glass of milk straight and I get mild diarrhea (like once or maybe twice) after ice cream where cream is the first ingredient (in other words, the really good stuff...bummer). Anyway, we had either influenza or a nasty virus over Christmas that seemed to kind of affect the stomach a little bit--zero appetite, and an agitated stomach. She had diarrhea during that, which I assumed was a combo of huge drainage and a smidge of stomach upset that came with the illness. But it's continued. She's had a few regular diapers, but mostly they're pretty runny. My kids tend toward the soft stools; they eat a LOT of fruit. :) But it's been off and on for three weeks now. We have backed off the milk a little--like no more straight milk to drink. I don't necessarily want to blame milk immediately, esp since she's been tolerating other forms of dairy for a while now. She never vomited. She did complain of her tummy hurting, but she says a lot of things are "ow" so it's hard to say how seriously we should take that. Thoughts??? For those of you whose children avoid dairy, what were the symptoms? How did you know? Are there other things we should be looking at? She's had a vaguely sensitive tummy since birth--we had her on reflux meds, but I'm not positive that was the right problem. She still spits up occasionally, like when she drinks water and bends over. Help?!?! ETA: We did NOT have a stomach flu. It was an upper respiratory illness that has lasted almost three weeks, with a high fever for a number of days, cough, body aches, chills, etc--the stomach component was quite small, but I wanted to mention it because it seemed to be the start. Mostly, the illness was congestion and fever and aches and coughs.
I agree with Missy - gut flora issue, which milk might aggravate, but milk doesn't cause it. Try a probiotic. I'm sure there are many that kids can take, but my ped recommended culturelle. We took an adult capsule, pulled it open, and put it in their food. For an infant (under age 1) 1 adult capsule would last about 3 days. For a 2 year old, I'd say use 1/2 an adult capsule per day. Try it for at least a week.
I wouldn't blame milk as causing this diarrhea, but more likely her gut is just off kilter still from the virus she had. Often in kids, stomach viruses can mess up the natural balance of bacteria in the digestive system and seem to linger through continued symptoms. Give her a probiotic to reintroduce good bacteria into her system, more yogurt, less milk to drink temporarily, easy to digest foods. When the diarrhea clears up, go back to milk as normal. This isn't a milk problem, especially since she does well with other dairy.
How about trying something a little old school? When my kids were little the doctor use to put them on brat to help stop diarrhea. Brat stands for bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. It usually only took a couple days for the diarrhea to clear up.
One of the kids I care for (I'm a part-time nanny), who is 1, had this virus. It's been 2 weeks now and she still has diarrhea. She had the full on throwing up after eating or drinking ANYTHING virus for 2 days, and is now feeling somewhat better but has continued to have diarrhea. Her parents aren't sure if it's because she is also on anti-biotics (She fractured her toe and it got infected) or if it's still part of the sickness.
I caught the virus from her and had one horrible day where all I could do was lay in bed and not move because as soon as I moved I threw up. But I didn't have diarrhea.
My kiddo hasn't been acting sick at all, but has had diarrhea for about a week now.
I think that it's just related to this virus.
I agree with Missy and Diane C. In addition to probiotics, you may want to have her eat some sauerkraut, natural pickles, etc to help balance things out, too. If it is a milk issue, my kids had diarrhea and also excema. My son gets it on his cheeks and behind his knees, and my daughter just gets it behind his knees. My oldest son, however, becomes slap-happy whenever he eats dairy, so we don't give it to him any more. (I found that out because I had a suspicion that dairy wasn't doing him any favors. One day, he asked for cottage cheese for a snack. So I gave him some. He asked for more. I gave him some more. Pretty soon, he was running in circles in the living room and couldn't stop! That was accompanied by maniacal laughter. Turns out he can't have the milk protein casein.)
