What’s the Deal With Dairy Reintroduction?
Let’s talk about dairy reintroduction!
If you’re new here, I’m Susanna Sauers, Certified Nutrition Consultant, mama of three food-reactive babies and founder of Fed Well Baby, a support platform for moms who have babies with reflux, eczema and digestive issues often related to food.
Today we’re talking about adding dairy back into your child’s diet if you have been avoiding it for awhile. This is also super relevant for you if you have been breastfeeding and avoiding dairy!
Maybe you’re wondering if your child has outgrown yet.
You are probably ready to get back to eating cheese!
Should you utilize a formal reintroduction process or just go for it with some cheese or yogurt? We’re going to dive into this today and specifically talk about reintroduction dairy ladders and whether you should utilize them or not.
Sometimes a child passes with flying colors, but more often than not, I find that there is some uncertainty about whether something is a reaction or not. Or maybe one step of the dairy ladder went great, but then your child refuses to eat another type of dairy, gets sick, or you get stuck trying to also figure out the timing of trialing other foods you cut out.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to cover every single detail on this page, but I want to give you the basics which I know is why you are here! In my Reintroduction Roadmap course, I can go much deeper into teaching my method of reintroduction with or without a ladder.
If you have never heard of a “dairy ladder” before or maybe you’ve heard it thrown around in a Facebook group, but you don’t really understand how this works, we're going to start here!
A dairy ladder is a way to essentially reintroduce dairy in a very broken down protein form before you give an actual cup of milk. This is almost always given directly to the child, even if the reaction was previously through breastmilk.
So we start at the bottom of the ladder with baked milk, and work our way up through a variety of dairy products that contain higher levels of food proteins including butter, yogurt, cheese, etc. Heat breaks down food proteins, so we're moving from more heated/processed to less heated/processed.
The beauty of this method is that it is very possible for your child to pass one step but maybe not pass another and gain more variety in your diet. If you can pause at a particular place on the dairy ladder and happily consume, let’s just say, butter for a while, but have issues with cheese, that still allows you to open up your diet.
Unfortunately, many of the reintroduction methods for dairy that float around the Internet are actually designed for IgE allergy re-introduction (children who tested positive on allergy testing). We need to be very careful not to get sucked into complicated reintroduction methods that are not applicable to a child with IgG allergies (or food sensitivities). When it’s less severe, we don’t need to be as extreme.
If you choose not to utilize a dairy ladder and just pick a form of dairy randomly to reintroduce, like cheese or milk, you don’t really have a basis for whether other forms of dairy higher or lower on the dairy ladder are a pass. This is a much “quicker” way to know if bigger forms of the dairy protein are an issue, but it can still leave you with many questions.
“Is this actually a reaction? What about other forms of dairy? Are they a pass?”
Not only that, but there are some viewpoints that utilizing a dairy ladder may help sensitize the body to dairy when you have been avoiding it for so long. In a sense, this is good practice for any new food…slowly ease back in.
Think about it - if a body has not been exposed to a particular food, it can be a shock to the system to suddenly have a large portion of something it is never had before, particularly if that was a problem in the past. This would also apply to YOU if you have been avoiding dairy for a long time of your child.
I find that during this process, one of the ways to also be intentional is to determine whether YOU actually had problems with dairy before you even cut it out for your baby and perhaps didn't realize it. Did you know that there has been scientific research that connects moms eating foods they are sensitive to during pregnancy to babies potentially having issues with foods after birth?
“This is a HUGE reason why it’s so important to be intentional and invest in this process especially if you hope to have more babies! .”
The Reintroduction Roadmap not only addresses reintroduction for babies and toddlers but it also helps mom reintroduce dairy back, so that you can ease back in with minimal issues. It also helps you figure out whether you have foods sensitivities that need to be addressed in other ways instead of just falling back into the old pattern of eating something that is actually causing inflammation in your body.
When a child does react to dairy or another food trial, this is where things can get a little tricky because sometimes it's just a body adjustment vs an actual reaction. In the Reintroduction Roadmap course, each day there is a prompt to click on to help you troubleshoot and determine if the food is a pass or a fail based on a number of criteria and symptoms.
Do you have to do a dairy ladder?
No.
But as I mentioned before, it can be a helpful way to figure out if there are certain forms of dairy that your child may tolerate versus others.
That being said, if you never confirmed that dairy was actually actually a problem in the first place and you just cut it out… It can be a waste of time to spend so long reintroducing dairy with the dairy ladder.
Choosing to do a dairy ladder is not a “1 week trial and pass” process. You’re going to stay on EACH step of the ladder for almost a week.
Then, if you have other foods to reintroduce as well, this can become a delicate dance of making sure that you are not restricting your diet and your child's diet for too long but also making sure that it's clear as to which foods may still be an issue.
This is why if you have not confirmed dairy to be a true problem, it can be a bit of a waste of time to spend a weeks on a ladder. It would be better for you just to go ahead and trial dairy (with some strategy of course) but not starting at the bottom of a ladder.
The reintroduction process is a big investment of your time, energy and resources but it has really great payoff to do it intentionally.
“One HUGE consideration: how does this process of reintroduction specifically tie into concerns about nutritional deficiencies, gut imbalances, etc.?”
If you are itching to trial dairy, but you have concerns about your child's status health wise, then it can be smart to utilize a dairy ladder more slowly while also working on lifestyle, diet, and supplement protocols to help increase the chances of dairy being a pass.
I work 1:1 with families all the time during the elimination process to troubleshoot digestive issues, reflux and rashes. But many times I find that families have cut out foods for months but never really addressed the root cause of “why”? Why DID your baby start reading to dairy? What is the source of the issues and how can we really make sure that is resolved before we jump back into dairy?
“It’s very possible to reintroduce dairy or any other food and still not address the underlying inflammation in the body can can continue to cause health issues well into adulthood. ”
Let me say it louder for those in the back, this MUST be addressed if you want to set a good foundation for lifelong health!
So what if you think you’re in this situation?
Typically when I’m working with babies and toddlers, we’re focus for a few months on gut health or mineral balancing – I typically see progress within 3 to 4 months, both for gut health and mineral imbalance improving. This doesn't mean that everything will be 100% resolved during that time in all situations, but definitely significant improvement! If you were to do mineral testing with me, typically we retest at the 3 to 4 month mark, same with gut microbiome testing. This doesn't mean that you have to re-test before trialing dairy, but this is just to show that this 3-4 month window is considered a good length of time to get a gauge on progress made.
As a nutrition consultant, I am always weighing the pros and cons of certain protocols based on whether or not it’s going to get somebody closer or further away to a more nutritionally nourishing diet.
So if the dairy ladder or soy or egg ladders, and or any other other food trial is going to prevent you from widening your diet as quickly as possible, then I would be more inclined to suggest that you take a different route.
“We just have to weigh the risk of jumping right into a food vs doing a ladder for your specific situation. ”
If you haven't realized this already, every situation is extremely unique. This is why it’s very difficult for me to give general recommendations twithout knowing more of the backstory of what is going on. This is why the Reintroduction Roadmap course was created to be a “choose your own adventure” of sorts where YOU as the mom can take the driver's seat and decide what is best for your family. I teach you exactly how to implement your reintroduction path and I hold your hand through that process. The Reintroduction Roadmap covers all ladder reintroduction vs non ladder vs direct trial vs breastmilk trials.!
So to wrap this up, let’s recap:
1. Some dirty ladders and the Internet/Facebook groups make this way too complicated and certain methods are not needed for IgG allergies (if your child hasn't tested positive on allergy testing - if your child tested positive on allergy testing, you need to work directly with your allergist for reintroduction and same with any FPIES child).
2. You don’t really need a dairy ladder if you never confirmed it was a problem.
3. BUT you need to be aware that if your child is dealing with gut imbalance, nutritional deficiencies, or even unknown environmental toxins such as heavy metal exposure, jumping right into dairy without prep likely won't set the best foundation for passing.
4. If you’re actively working on gut health and mineral deficiencies, you can usually see some really positive change in 3 to 4 months. This doesn't mean your child will automatically pass dairy at this point, but the foundations will be better set to see ongoing health improvement.
5. In the meantime, you may want to test out dairy just to see what the current status is while you work on those other things, choosing a quality source of dairy that is gentle on the body.
ACTION STEPS
This phase of considering WHEN and in WHAT WAY to reintroduce dairy is a huge investment into your child’s future health. If we take the time to invest right now, we can save so much money down the road for your child to avoid medications, doctors appointments or even surgeries!
Answer these three questions:
1. Did I ever confirmed the dairy was truly a problem by testing it a few weeks after I cut dairy out? Or maybe a slip up eating dairy that definitely caused a reaction?
2. If I NEVER confirmed the dairy was a problem and just continued to avoid it, is there anything actually holding me back from grabbing some cheese or yogurt and trialing it directly right now? Or have circumstances such as antibiotic exposure, vaccine reactions, reactions to other foods or ongoing symptoms for my child tell me that I need to invest in testing and support to get answers first?
3. If I HAVE confirmed that dairy was a problem in the past, are there circumstances such as antibiotic exposure, vaccine reactions, reactions to other foods or ongoing symptoms tell me that I need to invest in testing and support to get answers first?
Nothing in this article is medical advice, this is lifestyle and nutrition focused. Please contact your doctor before making any changes! Fed Well Baby and Susanna Sauers are not responsible for any health implications related to anything you read in this article.
I don’t want you to get stuck, feeling overwhelmed with everything we’ve just talked about and it’s SO important that you have the tools needed to practically get moving!
If you would like some specific resources for your situation, email me below!