Blood in Baby's Diaper

When my son was about 2 months old the same thing happened EXCEPT I was not breast feeding. We landed up switching formulas, no soy or milk base formulas, to one called nutramigen. It was very expensive, but fixed the problem! So weather the baby is breast feed or formula feed, it sounds like change of diet is the answer! He's five now and handles diary fine!
I remember freaking out as well!

My little girl had the same thing, so I know how scary it can be to see blood in your baby's diaper! My doctor prescribed nystatin and advised me to cut out all dairy. The blood didn't clear up right away, but it did eventually and I am back to my dairy loving lifestyle! Good luck

Hi there,

We had the same issue when our daughter was about 5 months old. The doctor said to cut out all dairy from my diet (our daughter was exclusevely breast fed) and the bloody poops cleared up. When I introduced dairy one month later the blood came back, but after 4 days or so. I tried to reintroduce the dairy a few times but ended up waiting into she was over a year before she had out-grown the problem.

We just introduced dairy directly to her diet (she's 15 months now) and her poops are just fine. But her ears had some fluid in them and I read that dairy alergies can cause the delicate tubes in the ears to become inflamed, not drain, and lead to chronic ear infections. Haven't asked the pediatrician about that yet.

If you do find that your baby is suffering from the dairy alergy, it is really hard at first to cut it out of your diet, but you'll get used to it! I was off dairy for about 6 or 7 months. It was hard but I never felt so healthy, and lost a lot of weight.

Anyway, good luck!

H.

p.s. This is an allergy to milk protien and is not the same thing as being lactose intolerant. Even really small amounts of milk derived products can cause a problem, unfortunately.

Your son has a condition called allergic colitis. It is caused by (as the name states) an allergy to what he is eating. Fissures are very uncommon in infants that have not been constipated (usually caused from formula or solid foods--a breast fed baby will not be constipated). You need to eliminate all dairy, corn, soy, and wheat from your diet as these are the most common allergies. It won't be easy to do in the beginning but once you know the foods that you can eat it becomes habit. If your baby continues to have blood in his stool, please have him rechecked. Recurrent blood can lead to anemia very quickly. Good luck and congrats on your new son!

Dear G.,

My sister in law just had the same problem, and yes, it was a dairy allergy. But it also extended to anything soy! She has cut EVERYTHING out of her diet that has even the smallest dairy or soy in it. My nephew is 3 months old and baby #2. Tragically baby #1 died of SIDS three years ago so everybody was freaking out about the bloody stools, and this is what finally stopped the them. It took her about two VERY stressful weeks to figure out what caused it. It takes a few days to see if cutting things out of your diet is the reason.
GOOD LUCK and I will keep you in our prayers since I know how stressful this time is for you.

R.

G.,

I haven't personally had experience with this, but it sounds like you should get a second opinion. I am not sure how much blood you are talking about, but any amount isn't normal. See a different pediatrician and see what they say. Good luck to you~ and I hope you get this figured out really soon.

Molly

I had the same problem with my 8-month-old son when he was about 2 months old, and it turned out to be a dairy sensitivity, like the other moms mentioned. Our pediatrician told me to start by cutting out all dairy, which includes ANY product containing casein or whey. It's hard because nearly everything contains casein and/or whey. You have to read ingredients lists religiously! She told me it takes a week or two for your system to "detox" from the dairy, and after that I should see a big change...which I did. Then she told me to try adding dairy components back in IF I wanted, to see how it worked. I waited until about 7 months to even try it, and now he seems to do fine. I still don't eat mass quantities of dairy, but the occasional piece of cheese seems to do him no harm.

You can also try cutting out soy, wheat, nuts, etc., but I'll tell you that it's really, really hard unless you're happy just eating fruits and veggies and fresh meats. If your baby is indeed dairy allergic, our pediatrician said there's about a 1 in 10 chance he/she will also be soy allergic. That chance escalates if you or your baby's father were allegic to both dairy and soy as a baby. So you've got probably a 9 out of 10 chance that your baby will still be okay with soy...but it's just a matter of trying it out to see.

Also, about formula...my son couldn't handle Nutramigen or any of the dairy or soy-based formulas, so the doctor told us to get Neocate, which is PHENOMENALLY expensive. It's supposedly tolerable by nearly ALL babies. But, ours couldn't handle that one either, so we ended up switching to Baby's Only Organic Soy Formula as a supplement to my breast feeding. It's only available online, and it's pretty much the only formula out there that doesn't contain corn syrup solids. It worked like a charm for us, so we knew that the formula problem with our son was likely the corn syrup solids that are in 99% of them. BUT, Baby's Only is only approved as a toddler formula right now, so I'd advise at least TRYING the other formulas if you end up going the formula route. It's supposedly totally safe for babies, and we haven't had any problems with it, but we use it only as a supplement, as I'm still nursing. If it was the only thing we were feeding our son, I'd probably be worried that he wasn't getting enough nutrition as an infant.

Good luck! Feel free to email me if you have any more questions!

My nephew had the same problem, blood in his stool. The lactation consultant said that he was lactose intolerant. My sister-in-law was not able to eliminate all dairy from her diet so, she stopped breast feeding and now gives him similac alimentum which is lactose free. After about a month, my sister-in-law had his stool checked and they found that there was no blood.

My son had the same problem when he was between 1 and 2 months. It freaked me out when I first saw it. The first Dr. I saw gave me cream to treat the anal fissure.It healed but he still had blood in his stool so then another Dr. in the same practice suggested that I cut out dairy in my diet. I guess the dairy in my diet was irritating his stomach and intestines and therefore that is what caused the anal fissure. I also met with a pediatric specialist at Stanford Children's Hospital and he also suggested cutting out dairy as well as other known allergens like soy and corn or stop breast feeding all together and use a hypo-allergenic formula. I ended up staying away from dairy and all processed food that contained corn syrup, corn or soy. I was given a list of all the various names that corn and soy were given on canned or prepackaged food. Changing my diet made a huge difference for my son and me and I didn't have to change it forever. I really paid attention for about 6 months and then slowly reintroduced dairy and other things back into my diet. I found the plus for me when I changed my diet was really clear skin, my allergies cleared up and I lost the pregnancy weight easily. Hope that helps.

My daughter had an anua fissure when she was just a few of days old. She was premature and still in the Special Care Nursery when this happened. Luckily it was the nurses that noticed it and she got great care. It didn't really seem to bother her much.

I would definately keep an eye on it. If there is more blood I would go and see the dr. again. Most likely at that age if your son was uncomfortable and not feeling well...you will know it. He would be very fussy. I don't know how much blood there was when my daughter had one because it was the nurses who noticed it.

Hello! My daughter had blood in her diaper at 2 months of age also. I took her to the emergency room. The doctor checked her out and did not see any cuts on her anus and I did not have and cuts on my nipples from breastfeeding. So, the doctor said that sometimes breastfed babies swallow small amounts of blood from the mother's body through the breast milk. It was nothing to worry about. However, if your doctor noticed a fissure on your baby's bottom, even a small one will cause bleeding. I used bag bom on my children's diaper rash area to protect the area. Good luck.