Anna's Story
Thank you to @annagracef96 for sharing her breastfeeding story this month. I'm sure you'll all agree that Anna is amazing 🤍
"I’m on my second breastfeeding journey currently, my first fed for 20 months with no problems. Along came my second, at the start it seemed like everything was going fine, then he broke out in hives all over.
We took him to the doctors and they diagnosed it as CMPA (cows milk protein allergy), they advised we put him on formula as it’s easier, but I said I would rather cut dairy out of my diet. So I did but his issues continued, he developed horrible eczema all over his body, so we went back to the doctors. They told me I must’ve not cut everything out (I had) and really pushed me towards formula, which again I refused, they also referred him to the dietitian.
We finally got an appointment with the dietitian, but it wasn’t an appointment, it was an online zoom call where they read from a power point and that was it. At the beginning they listed off symptoms of non-ige CMPA and proceeded to say if they have ige CMPA symptoms then this wasn’t for us. Well my son has ige CMPA symptoms so we were discharged and sent back to the doctors.
We were back and forth pushing for allergy testing and dermatology referrals for months and months. At 5 months we were told he was referred to both so we just had to wait for the appointment, so we did. In that time when he turned 6 months and started solids he started having more severe reactions to things including eggs, anything with soy, and severe reactions (swelling to his mouth and face) to strawberries and bananas. So we went back to the doctors and told them about these new reactions which were more severe, again they just told us to wait to see the paediatrician about allergies, so we did. They also again strongly recommended we switched to formula and implied it was my fault for breastfeeding he was having these reactions. I told them no and continued to breastfeed with all of his allergens cut out.
We had a couple of times when he started crawling that my eldest son was eating bananas or strawberries and my youngest had some, so his mouth and face swelled up and we had to call an ambulance for him. We were asked repeatedly by paramedics why he didn’t have an epi pen if he was having such severe reaction and we had to tell them it’s because he’s waiting to see the paediatrician.
By 10 months he was no better so we went back to the doctors asking them to chase the allergy and dermatology referrals. We were then told there were no such referrals on his file! As you can imagine I was extremely upset, they then sent the referrals through. When we finally got the referral through we were given an estimated time of 9 months and I was not impressed at all. I spoke to his doctor and his health visitor about this but was just told that was unfortunately the wait times. When I said he would be close to being seen by now if they’d referred him when they first said they had it was just shrugged off as they can’t do anything about it.
He’s now turning 14 months this month and still going strong breastfeeding! He is eating more solids now but still very much prefers breastfeeding to foods. It has been so difficult with how poorly he’s been with his allergies, but now I’m pretty sure we have all of his allergies cut out he’s doing so well! So many people are so unaware that just because your baby has allergies that you can continue breastfeeding, well you can! Don’t listen to your doctors when they tell you to stop or that you’re the problem, because if it’s anything like how my son’s been you might be their only source of comfort!
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