The proteins from foods that breastfeeding mums eat can pass into breastmilk and affect their babies. The sensitivity can show up as vomiting. Babies can be intolerant to cow’s milk, soya, nuts, eggs and wheat. These are the most common culprits.
My first baby was highly sensitive to cow’s milk and wheat. When I ate them, he threw up his breastmilk feeds constantly. It was distressing, he was my first and I was new to breastfeeding. I had to reduce my intake of dairy products and wheat. Note, I reduced but did not cut out these foods, there’s a very important reason for this which I explain below. Thankfully he outgrew the cow’s milk and wheat sensitivities when he was two. My second and third babies were sensitive to eggs, soya and almonds. Their reaction was an itchy red eczema rash on their scalp, but they didn’t have a gastrointestinal reaction. I reduced, but did not cut out, eating eggs, soya and almonds while breastfeeding my second and third kids. Luckily they also outgrew these intolerances pretty quickly, at around 10 months.
Should breastfeeding mums eat peanuts and other potentially allergenic foods that pass into breastmilk?
As a newly breastfeeding mum you might be grappling with this question. I had the same question when my breastfed babies reacted to almonds, eggs, soya and cow’s milk in my diet. The latest evidence is that breastfeeding mums who eat peanuts are in fact giving their babies greater protection from later developing a peanut allergy. By exposing their babies early to peanut proteins that pass into their breastmilk, they are helping to desensitize them. In a Canadian study, breastfeeding mums who ate peanuts themselves and fed their babies peanut products early after weaning onto solids, reduced their baby’s risk of developing a peanut allergy by 88%, more than any other group. The study’s senior author Dr. Meghan Azad explained, “If a mom breastfed, ate peanut herself and introduced it early to her child, the combined effect of all three exposures seemed to offer an enhanced protection against peanut sensitization and future allergy risk.” Please note that breastfeeding alone doesn’t offer increased protection from peanut allergy, it’s the triple exposure of ‘Mom eating peanut, breastfeeding and introducing peanut early’ that offered greatest protection.
The study also underscores other research findings that babies should be exposed to peanut products (not whole peanuts which are a choking hazard), eggs and other allergenic foods early once they are weaned onto solids from 4 or 6 months.
To sum up, if your breastfed baby develops only a mild or moderate eczema or mild gastrointestinal reaction to something that you ate, don’t cut that food out altogether. Keeping it in our diet while you breastfeed may help to protect your child from developing an allergy to that food, by desensitizingthem.
If your baby has had severe or persistent eczema, an allergic reaction or gastrointestinal intolerance when breastfeeding or eating solids, it’s very important that you talk to your child’s pediatrician first to best determine how and when to introduce the potentially highly allergenic complementary foods.
This excellent article by the American Academy of Pediatrics has more details on when you can start giving your baby peanut butter products.
The National Peanut Board shows four recipes in this video: peanut butter thinned down with breastmilk or formula, powdered peanut butter with apple sauce or with baby cereal, and mashed banana with peanut butter:
