Night waking in 22 mo. Dairy? Gluten?

[mamaheids]

Just thought I'd pick your brains since you are all so knowledgeable.
DD is 22 mo. She really has never been a good sleeper, started fighting sleep at 4 mo. and has always woke up multiple times at night. She is bfed and we co-sleep. I had night-weaned her (before a recent GI virus), and though she understood that we wouldn't nurse, she still woke frequently. Several times she has wanted me to rub her tummy- not sure if it was a comfort thing, or if her tummy was really sore...which got me thinking, maybe it is an allergy/intolerance. (She wakes 4+ times/night.)
We have tried chiropractic, and are currently having Cranial-Sacral therapy done (without much success, except that naps are better.)
She was sensitive to dairy in my breastmilk until we re-introduced it at 6 mo., and has mild eczema. Both her father and I are atopic- mostly season allergens. DH has an unspecified (we think bean sprouts?) food allergy. DD was put on claritin for seasonal allergies this past fall. She also has dark circles under her eyes-especially when she is tired, or when her seasonal allergies are bad.
Do you think she has a food allergy, or is she just really smart, active, and doesn't like sleep. I was thinking maybe dairy or gluten?
Any thoughts/advice?
I'm so tired...and feel like we are constantly blaming the sleep issue on teeth, new developmental stage etc. but it NEVER gets better. She also asks to nurse a ton during the day. I sometimes have to say no, but most of the time we do nurse.

[lovinglife]

Trust your hunches

If had a hunch for a long time that some of my DS's struggles (eczema, poor sleeper, fussiness, constantly needing to nurse) were food related, but I didn't follow my intuition at first. And I regret that now! I'm not beating myself up or anything, but if I could go back, I would act on my feelings and eliminate those foods I wondered about right away.
When I finally did trust my feelings, we found that the little guy (15 mo.) has a number of food sensitivities, with dairy being the main offender. It didn't completely change his personality or sleeping habits, but it has made things BETTER for him.
If you have suspicions, why not try eliminating those foods for a couple weeks and see if it helps? For us it seems to take about 2 weeks to see a full recovery...but even after a couple days we can usually notice a difference.
I hope that you and your DD will be able to sleep better soon! Lack of sleep is SO hard to cope with! You're doing a great job of being a Mom!

[kjbrown92]

From my experience, kids don't "outgrow" intolerances, they just change symptoms. DS went from vomiting with dairy through my breastmilk, to screaming all night long, then switched to a red rash on his butt, now if he has it, he screams in the night and wets the bed. He's 7 now and we kept thinking he outgrew the intolerance, and he'd be okay for about 6 months, then he'd get another symptom. We'd take out the dairy again, and viola, it was gone. So I'd say if she was intolerant of dairy through your breast milk, she didn't outgrow it, she just changed symptoms, and if you try taking it out again for 2 weeks, I would probably be shocked if she didn't start sleeping. Though if she's been intolerant of that, and still ingesting it, she might have developed more intolerances. But hopefully it's just the one, for your sake. Good luck. Start a food diary!
Kathy

[Vaquitita]

i was just going to ask a similar question. ds was intolerant to dairy in my bm (milk and cheese mainly, i could eat butter and yogurt). he'd get a rash on his cheeks, a stuffy nose and a red butt. so i cut out dairy. when he began really eating around 14mo i tried adding small amounts of cheese and he was ok, i was able to give him some too without him reacting and i slowly began giving him more. once i got pregnant again, cheese was such an easy snack. ds is now 28mo and i have so much trouble getting him to sleep at night, naptime sometimes too though not as bad. it can take an hour or more for him to go to sleep. this has been going on for over a year, though he will have occasional periods where it's easier. he slept great the first year or so of his life. he still nurses once a day. we cosleep.

a light went off in my head yesterday, could this be just a new symptom of milk intolerance? now that i look back, it did start around the same time he began eating dairy.

fwiw, 5mo dd also reacts to dairy in my bm though with different symptoms. she spits up and her whole diaper area gets really red and sometimes rashy.

right now the only dairy i'm eating is butter and goat cheese. dd seems ok with these though i wonder if i should give up the butter too for a couple weeks and see what happens. i wonder if she would sleep better? though i think her sleep problems are more related to a noisy bouncy toddler. :-) it would be really hard to give up butter though. i'm considering trying N.A.E.T. to see if that would rid the kids of their milk allergies.

[tallanvor]

When my son was a baby, he couldn't handle any dairy -- milk and yogurt would make him puke and cheese would make him constipated. By the time he was 2 (maybe earlier, I don't remember for sure) he could handle small amounts of cheese and yogurt. When he was 2 1/2, we found he could handle raw milk. Up until then he had been on lactaid, as he seemed to do fine on that. But we moved right before he turned 3 and couldn't get raw milk anymore. So, back to lactaid. Right around when he turned 4, the baby sitter gave him regular pasturized milk (my fault, forgot to tell her not to, as he so rarely asked for milk to drink) and he didn't throw it up. We switched him to regular milk at that point, thinking he had outgrown his problems. Nope, he started having night terrors. Took me a good 6 months to figure out it was the milk. Not sure why it took so long (I had night terrors as a kid and they took me off milk, so I should've suspected it), but once we went back to lactaid the nightmares stopped. He also seems to do fine on goat's milk, so sometimes we get that.

[babygrant]

My son is 24 1/2 months and still wakes up at LEAST 3 times. I just found out yesterday he has an allergy to all dairy except butter, wheat, eggs, pear, lemon, and oranges. Personally I would eliminate dairy first and see what goes on because IME dairy is much easier than wheat.