I dairy and vegetables usually can cause gas, thats 2 major food groups...what can i eat other than grain, meat, beans maybe, fruits and other ideas? i love dairy but i will cut down to see if its making her really gassy. is lactaid ok or is that just the same as the regular milk

It's actually pretty unusual for a baby to "react" to foods the mother eats. The blame for a fussy baby often gets laid on the breastfeeding mother, but study after study does not show that this blame is accurate.

There are occasionally babies who react to dairy or other foods in their mother's diets. If you eliminate all dairy, it can take up to 2 weeks to see an effect. Dairy is lurking everywhere...many processed foods have dried milk solids in them.

I went off of dairy when my first child was a few weeks old. He was very gassy, and I also had a foremilk/hindmilk imbalance. Now that I have learned more about diet and breastfeeding, I believe it was the excess foremilk that caused his upset tummy, not the dairy I was eating. After I cut the dairy out of my diet, he did better, but I was also instituting better breastfeeding management techniques at the same time. Either way, I reintroduced dairy when he was about 9 months old, and at 5 years old, he can eat and drink tons of dairy without any problems.

Also, keep in mind that you do not have to "drink milk to make milk." That's an old wives tale. I would be hesitant to cut out veggies completely. They are some of the best things you can eat as far as nutrition is concerned.

Sometimes, just giving the baby a dose of baby gas drops (generic are fine) right BEFORE breastfeeding will help tremendously.

Most of the "gassy" babies I have worked with have one or more of the following things going on: colic, which will resolve itself eventually, a mother with oversupply and/or foremilk-hindmilk imbalance (easilly remedied with different breastfeeding management), a latch that allows air in while they are nursing, a fussy temperment that leads them to screaming fits that get the baby gulping air down, or a combination of these things.

Very rarely, I have come across a baby whose mother consumes tons of dairy and who does not handle it well. Often, these infants have caucasian mothers and fathers of a different background. Caucasians are much less likely to have lactose intolerance compared to individuals with an Asiatic or African lineage. Even in that case, it is pretty rare. It's not normally even lactose intolerance (there is lactose in breastmilk and formula, after all). It is an intolerance to other proteins in dairy that can cross the barrier into the milk.