When Joey was about 3 days old, he got a horrible diaper rash. Like bleeding, scream anytime you touch it diaper rash. Mix that with a super emotional, hormonal mom, and you have a recipe for tears (from both mom and baby).
We tried EVERYTHING: wiping with cotton balls soaked in water, vinegar-water, natural wipes, zinc oxide creams, petroleum creams, etc., etc., and NOTHING worked. He still had this ridiculous diaper rash.
Fast-forward by a couple weeks, and I started noticing that there was a little bit of mucus in his stools. I knew that wasn't normal (thanks to this book...it's pretty much saved me), so I called the doctor and got Joey in.
After talking to the pediatrician, we decided to try eliminating dairy from my diet. Apparently, the protein that's in dairy (and soy products) can really bug some infants. When mom eats dairy there are small traces of the protein in her milk. Most infant formula is made from dairy. So, if you have one of these infants that is bothered by the protein, you have a very unhappy baby. (I guess I'd be unhappy, too, if I were shooting boogers out my bum). He's supposed to grow out of it at some point.
So, after eliminating dairy, his diaper rash went away. (He still had mucus, but we later figured out that he got salmonella not too long after I stopped eating dairy which caused the mucus to continue).
Making things without dairy has been quite interesting, but we've found that almond milk makes a good substitute. Every once in a while I try adding dairy back in to see if he's grown out of it yet. The last time I added it in he was still fussy and spit up a lot, but he didn't get the diaper rash, so I'm hoping that's a step in the right direction!
Why do I post this? Because I'd hate for another mom to go through the super fussy, bleeding diaper rash, spitting up, screaming baby unnecessarily. I'm SO grateful that we figured this out early!!
It would probably be really hard to find, but goat's milk is another good substitute. It's easier to digest and can even be given to preemies. We were all allergic to cow's milk as infants and children, but goat's milk was fine. Unfortunately my mom didn't figure it out when we were infants so she struggled with at least a year of "colic" with each of us.
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