When our infant son was diagnosed with a dairy allergy, my first thought was what will he drink after I'm done breastfeeding? There are very few formula alternatives out there and after they turn a year old the alternative milk options don't have much health value. This led me to search for options. This is when I stumbled upon other mammalian milks. What I found exciting about camel's milk is that it lacked the same component my son tested positive to. Just like human milk (which explains why I didn't have a problem while breastfeeding), the allergenic milk protein β-lactoglobulin is also absent in camel's milk. Camel's milk is also the most similar milk to breast milk. At first, I was concerned about safety of introducing Camel's milk to my 8 month old, but when I read about various formulas in the works based off of camel's milk I was more comfortable with the idea.
We decided to challenge camel's milk in our allergist's office and we passed! Between the time we challenged camel's milk to the time my son was a year old we only gave him approximately 2oz a day as a supplement to breast feeding. Once he turned 1, we started giving him increasing amount gradually until he got up to 10-12oz a day. We continue to give him this much milk each day (he is 14 months now). There are so many health benefits associated with camel's milk aside from the fact he is being exposed to the milk proteins he isn't allergic to every day, which we hope will help with some tolerance in the long term.
Further, research shows that many dairy allergic babies tend to have problems with weight gain and to be smaller than their non-allergic peers. We were concerned about this and hope that camel's milk will help our son grow to his full potential.
I hope this post will give some directions to someone with a new baby with a newly diagnosed dairy allergy, but please don’t try it at home and please don’t try it without your doctors permission. However, ask about it! It might just be the answer you are looking for.
Read more about camel's milk for a dairy allergy here:
Grab some camel's milk to try for yourself here!
