Poor weight gain/ Blood in stool

My doctor is a little worried, that is why he refered us to the Gi.
Luckily he is very pro-BF. So he at first thought my son was just slowing down weight-wise. He said BF babies "front-load" their weight.
However, since he has the bloody/mucousy stools he wants to double check.

I have only eliminated dairy from my diet.
I guess I will have to eliminate more.

I am interested in the yeast infection. I have had thrush off and on from day one. Ds has never shown any signs of it though so I never worried.

How did you know for sure it was yeast?
What did you do to combat it?

Thanks to everyone for replying.

Evan was 6mos yesterday and is 14#15oz. This is the time when they really slow down which worries me. I'm currently dairy/soy/egg free and my toddler is dairy/soy free. Are you eliminating all dairy, or just obvious ones. There's a whole list of things that mean dairy that you would never know. I have a great list of dairy ingredients and a starter shopping list if you want to pm me. I also have soy and egg lists too and info on wheat and peanuts.

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I did every elimination diet under the sun and realized that dairy made it worse, but the blood and mucus never went away, despite me eating practically nothing, which clued us in that it was something more than food allergies. I was on a rare foods elimination diet where I was eating nothing but malanga, water chestnut, and taro root (um, seriously...) and the problem still existed. (!!!) Therefore we knew it was not *just* a food allergy problem- because I had never eaten these foods before and therefore DS had never been exposed to them before, and they are "hypoallergenic" foods. Second, the GI probe showed some inflammation but no evidence of food allergies... there are certain cells they look for when they take a biopsy that confirm allergies and DS did not have those. (again, this is all done without sedation and DS was none the wiser that anything was going on)

To treat, I started giving DS 1 capsule of Culturelle probiotic supplement per day- I opened the capsule and poured the contents out into a little expressed breastmilk and spoonfed the breastmilk/probiotic mixture to him.

Some doctors prescribe 1 course of Diflucan, which is supposed to eradicate yeast from the system and is supposedly safe for babies, but I never went that route.

Eventually probiotics + time got us over the problem.

Dairy is inflammatory and allergenic to many babies, and in DS' case he wasn't truly allergic to it, but the yeast infection had made his intestines so reactive that dairy was making things worse... kind of like when kids get bad diarrhea sometimes they are intolerant to dairy for a while... When his problem finally cleared up I was able to introduce dairy back into my diet with no issues.

And when you eliminate dairy its not just milk + cheese, but whey, casein, sodium caseinate, sodium steroyl lactylate, etc etc... you have to become a label reader.

But I wouldn't just pick and choose things to eliminate. If you are going to go the elimination diet route, do a *true* elimination diet so you can identify triggers... do a google search or Dr. Sear's covers elimination diets in his Baby Book.

good luck
take care

You mama's are great!
I can't thank you all enough.

I will focus on probiotics and strict elimination diet.

nfpmom---since you discovered it wasn't a food allergy what DID you eat?
"malanga, water chesnut, and taro root" you may be the strongest woman out there :LOL
That is crazy!

I guess what I am asking you is did you slowly reintroduce foods back into your diet, so you could tell which ones irritated his intestines?

I feel so much better, more focused now in what I need to do.
Again,thank you for your help.

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I did the Special Foods rare foods rotation diet when we were trying to figure out if it was a food allergy or not:
http://www.specialfoods.com/rotationdietexample.html

and when this hypoallergenic rare foods diet didn't make any difference, combined with the biopsy results, I was pretty sure it wasn't a food allergy issue. That said, I knew that *something* was bothering DS' intestines and therefore when I reintroduced foods, I started by leaving out the most "allergenic" foods- dairy, soy, gluten.... and then slowly reintroduced those and watched for worsening signs.

Yes it sucked and in retrospect I don't think all the "deprivation" I went through was necessary, although I definitely know that eliminating dairy was necessary for reasons I pp. During the rare foods days, I simply ate to live and there was no joy or anything in cooking. But there was *much* joy in BFing DS, so it was worth it, even though it turned out not to be an allergy issue.

I hope you get this figured out and I have to say that now that those days of elimination diet and deprivation are long gone, it was such a short time in retrospect and worth it... and DS is strong and healthy and eats a normal diet and still BFs...

take care