Advice on Diarrhea in a 2 Year Old

It def sounds like an allergy to something he's eating. I'd try to take all high-allergy foods out of his diet for a couple weeks. Then add one at a time back in his diet for about 2 weeks to see if any symptoms arise. Then slowly add another one in, and eventually you can find out what it is.

I doubt it's milk be3cause you cut out dairy and it made no difference. I would try cutting wheat out and see if that helps (celiacs).

I have a 17 month old who could not handle dairy and still cannot,(lacotose Intollerant)He had diareha and Vomiting. If your child is drinking regular milk you might want to try Lactose Free Milk. It come in whole milk as well. That might take care of it with out filling your child with unnecessary medicins and tests; However, the tests might be necessary if I am wrong, so do not cancel them. Also check allergies. My son at 1 yr old started all these different symptoms (reactive airway, Cough, Vomiting, Rash on buttox & Hives)and unknown to me he is allergic to eggs, Who knew.

Your child does not need milk anymore after age 1. There are so many other ways they can get their calcium becuase it is added in a lot of things, like juices.

Stop all dairy for 3 days, if the lose BM stop add in 1 dairy every 3 days, if it starts right back up.. try another dairy food. If it continues, then yes it is lactose intolerance. It could be sensativity to only certain dairy though.

ALSO it sounds like you need an new doctor, and an new gastro referral. Sounds like you have a couple of doctors who do not want to spend time on this so they pass it off to the other. Any doctor who doesn't have time for a sick kid, is a worthless doctor, and shouldnt get your money for not treating your child.

When my son was about this age and until he was 3 we had a problem with him having runny stool for weeks at a time and he was on nothing to drink except for Pedialyte for the longest time to keep him hydrated. The pediatrician we were able to access through our local Army hospital was not of much help and when reviewing his diet from the diary I kept told me nothing more than to give him nothing to drink besides water and keep him on a strictly BRATs (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) diet. The water part did not make sense to me as any normal kid could have a glass of juice and be fine and my sons juice is always watered down by like 80-90% as it is, no matter what kind of juice it is. They took stool samples after a visit to the ER when we thought he had blood in his runny stool. He also had excessive urination around this time and so they checked him for diabetes. All the tests came back negative. To this day, they never figured out what was causing his symptoms and he has since either grown out of it or we've gotten rid of the trigger without knowing what it was. His symptoms would occur every month for weeks at a time with no other symptoms and would cause him to get bad rashes. He is now 4 years old and I've noticed that since he's been potty trained at about 3.5, that it hasn't been nearly as bad and hasn't caused me concern in over 6 months now. I wish I could help you by giving you an answer, but I typed all this to say that it *may* just be a phase that he is going through that'll somehow work itself out, but I have been there and can sympathize with your situation! Given his allergy to formula as an infant though, I would suggest seeing an allergist to have him tested for food allergies and lactose intolerance. My son's diarrhea would also get worse with milk, it seemed, but now he can drink whole milk with no problem. We had tried Soy milk and lactose-free milk and that didn't seem to have an effect on the diarrhea either. Gosh, I hope this helps even a little! Sorry for the rambling! Goodluck!!

My son could not tolerate the milk or any milk products, when he was one, he had terrible stomach pains and diarrhea. We put him on the lactaid milk for almost 1 1/2 yrs. and slowing took him off. He was fine on that milk and it is expensive. We slowly introduced yogurt and ice cream and now at 3 1/2 he is fine. In fact when he had bouts of diarrhea, we would keep the soy formula in the house and use that but the lactaid milk worked great.

Stop giving him milk. If the problem goes away, you know it was the milk then. Here are some sites that can help you make sure your children eat right. http://www.vegansociety.com/html/people/lifestyle/familie...
http://www.geocities.com/khaganh/BF/cow.html
http://www.milksucks.com/
http://www.vegan.org/

I'd still follow up with the gastro doc, but I'd also think about getting a second opinion too. You may also want to question a wheat or gluten allergy as well as lactose. In the mean time you could also try Lactaid, or Silk milk, and try staying away from lactose products for a few days to a week and see if that helps. My son is 2 and a half, and going through a very similar situation right now, everything is giving him explosive diarrhea! Hope this helps, good luck :-)

My 2 year old boy has had chronic diarrhea, and I cut back his diet to very simple plain foods, and started adding things to see what he is sensitive to. It turned out that anytime he eats fruit, he gets the runs. Even 1 grape will do it. The way we were able to work with it, is I give him string cheese everyday, and let his body recouperate and get back on track. Then, I slowly have tried very small portions of different fruits. (even apples bother him.) The cheese seems to help bind him up. My Pediatrician had recommended a tablet you can get over the counter that helps replenish good bacteria in the stomach..I can't remember the name of it...You might ask your doctor. It's an enzyme like found in yogurt.
I don't know why your child has the runs, but I would try putting him on a mild diet for a while like rice, toast, etc...
Good luck!

If you suspect lactose intolerance, then eliminate dairy from his diet. It takes a full week for dairy to leave the system. See if there's improvement in the diarrhea. Check out the local children's hospital, and make an appointment with a pediatric gastroentorologist aka GI department. If you're close enough to use the Connecticut Children's Hospital in Hartford, CT, you'll meet with a GI Nurse for your first appointment, and probably later meet Dr Hyam. They're really good, and walking us through the process even though we're pretty certain it's lactose intolerance by giving her a lactose-free diet. If she has anything dairy, we try to get her lactaste supplements, which are basically Lactaid tablets, that are taken with teh first bite of food. HTH

Hi,

My son had problems tolerating dairy as an infant. We had him on soy formula. We tried milk at 1 also and he would vomit after drinking and also developed a horrible diaper rash. My MD told me to put him on soy milk and try regular milk at 2. At about 18 months or so he happened to get a virus and was vomiting up everything. Somehow he made an association between his vomiting and his soy milk and refused to drink milk at all after that. He is now three and is able to tolerate dairy after being introduced to it in small amounts. He still won't drink milk though so he drinks orange juice with calcium. My MD told me dairy allergies are common in babies and that most children grow out of them.

My daughter had lactose intollerant at 1. By the time I took her to the doctors she had diarrhea for almost 3 weeks. The doctor told me it was lactose intollerant and took her off all dairy products and he told me it should be better within a week or two and then to go back to giving her diary. When we did that the diarrhea came right back. It took us almost a month for the diarrhea to completely go away. Not taking a chance we slowly eased her back into dairy products. She drinks Lactaid milk and we give her cheese and yogurt. She's been fine now and it's been over a month. I will soon start trying to give her a cup of regular milk once a day and see what happens. This is what my experience with lactose intollerant. Hope that helps.

Hi I would switch him to Rice Milk and keep the other fluids flowing. You could also coat his bottem with some A&D ointment to form a barrier. Good Luck!

D.

I had to keep a food diary of EVERYTHING my oldest son ate, including quantities, for almost 2 weeks. After sitting down and actually reviewing what he was eating, we realized that something as simple as applesauce was the reason for his diarreah.
It may be of help to keep a food diary and see if there is anything in his diet which could be causing it. Keep in mind kids are only supposed to have 2-3 8oz servings of milk and 1-8oz serving of juice a day. Anything more than these could be causing it as well. Especially with it so hot, we give out kids more and more juice, which can cause diarreah.