Enfamil Nutramigen and milk/soy allergy?

[swan01]

Does anyone use Nutramigen? My ped. suspects that my DD has a food allergy and wants me to try it. I am going back to work in a month and was hoping to BF in the morning and evening and supplement with formula during the day once my stash of EBM runs out (unless I have to donate or dump it all - ugh.). I am going to try going on an elimination diet and will start to introduce formula in a week or so.

Will she take the Nutramigen easily? We have been giving her a bottle of EBM every day or so and she is OK with it. I hear the Nutramigen is really stinky and tastes pretty bad. Should we start with ready-to-use liquid? Or can we start immediately on the powder?

Any tips on where to buy it? I am shocked at the cost!

Thanks!

[proggoddess]

It definitely smells and tastes kind of cheesy/bitter. But I successfully mix it with EBM, sometimes up to half the mixture. Any more and DD won't drink it.

We just got powder. The ped gave us a couple cans to start. And every time you go to the ped, ask for more and they're happy to give it to you.

We bought ours all at once when our supermarket had a "15% off your entire order" special going on, and we had the checks/coupons from Enfamil. So it came out to be around $15 a can instead of $20. But really, there's no good place to buy it.

'Tis expensive stuff! Which is why I am still nursing even though I am really tired and the non-dairy elimination diet is driving me crazy, especially with all of the tempting holiday goodies. Luckily DD's teeth have not come in yet, so it isn't as inconvenient as it could be.

Good luck!

[sntm]

One more piece of advice -- don't dump the milk from pre-elimination diet! You can store it in a long-term freezer for 6 to 12 months (or even in a regular freezer for 3-6 months) and may be able to use it if she outgrows the allergy.

If I remember, your DD was 2 months old? I know the EU docs are now not recommending powdered formulas for babies under 4 weeks old, since it cannot be sterilized and may contain bacteria. An older baby would be more able to handle a contamination, but I would talk to your doctor about it. I know RTF formula is more $$ than powdered, and since Nutramigen is already more expensive, it may not be feasible to buy RTF.
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shannon
not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
trying-to-conceive :)
PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
mama to Jack 6/6/03
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Breastfeeding 17 months and counting

[rachels1976]

My son is on Nutramigen. This is his thrid kind of formula, and he is doing great. He had severe gas on the other two. I think that his system was just too immature to digest it yet.

When we switched, he had no problems at all. I was concerned becasue I heard about how bad it tasted, and it does!!! It also smells so bad that I buy the RTF so that I don't have to mix it. I have the powder for when we are out, but the smell seems to stay on him when he drinks the powder. Despite it's smell, my son takes it fine and his belly is so much better.

I looked around and priced it. I live in the Pittsburgh area, and the lowest price was at Walmart. I even looked at the Enfamil website to see if it was cheaper to order in bulk. Currently, I pay about $7.49 for a 32 oz. can of RTF.

By the way, when I was BFing, my son had no problem switching between nursing and the bottle of formula.

Rachel
Mom to Nolan

[lilycat88]

I lurk here a lot and read a lot and finally can contribute something!

My 5 month old daughter has been on Nutramigen since she was about 4 weeks old. We tried and tried breastfeeding but she could never get the hang of it. She was delivered a few weeks early in a pretty traumatic C-section and because of her severe weight loss and jaundice had to start supplementing with formula. I pumped for about 6 weeks but it just wasn't going to work in the long term for us. We went from regular Enfamil Lipil to the LactoFree Lipil and finally to Nutramigen. The difference was dramatic and almost instant. She went from being almost "frantic" with jerky movements and a general "unsettledness" after a feeding to being totally opposite. She never had the classic milk allergy symptoms you read about...just the behavioral issues. Her doctor doesn't think she has a milk allergy, just that her digestive system was having a difficult time with the milk based products. Hopefully, she will outgrow it.

Yes, the Nutramigen is nasty...smelling and tasting. She never seemed to mind, though. She would alternate EBM with Nutramigen with no problem. We used powder for a while until I realized that with all of the coupons you can get (have friends and family sign up as well) that it would actually be cheaper per ounce to buy the concentrate. A $2.00 coupon on a can of Nutramigen at $5.69 a can brought it down to about what the regular concentrate would be. Because of her feeding issues at the beginning we were at the pediatrician every couple of weeks and ALWAYS asked for coupons when we were there. They also gave us powder samples as well. It is only recently that we had to buy some without a coupon. We were lucky as well that Susanna didn't seem to have a preference between the powder and concentrate.

We just started a challenge test yesterday to see if she can tolerate soy formula and hopefully, get to the regular milk based formula. So far, she is doing fine. We tried about 6 weeks ago to move directly to a milk based formula and she had some problems with it so we went back to Nutramigen. So far, the soy is fine. I don't want to keep her on soy for the next 7 months but I'm fine with using it as a transition.

Good luck!

[saschalicks]

DS went through regular, soy and Nutramigen before we switched to Similac's Alimentum. Although Alimentum and Nutrimagen are basically the same, DS did slightly better on Alimentum. It does stink, and poop is nasty, but he was better almost instantly. It was horrendous before that. Where we are it is $25/can. We started buying it in bulk on e-bay and it is GREAT! We are paying no more than $17/can. It's still a lot, but at least we save that way. I find the e-bay sellers list the expiration dates on their listing so I've never had any problems. HTH

[heatherlynn]

the best places i found to buy it were bru w/ coupon (you can use tru ones), one of our grocery stores (go figure), and target when it's on sale which is rare (i paid $5 per rtf can 32oz!). i also use formula checks when i buy and i really stock up when it's on sale.

good luck.

h-
Heather
dd 3/98
ds 8/04