Hello! My almost 12 month son has a milk allergy/intolerance. We noticed it at 6 months and his pediatrician thought it was due to the stomach bug he had. He had a horrible diaper rash with blisters. We switched him to soy formula for a few cans and unfortunately he still was having issues so we went back to soy. I did notice he stopped spitting up as much with the soy formula. We tried again at 9 months with the same reaction. He is almost 12 months so I started introducing more foods with milk to see if that would be tolerated. Unfortunately he again has the blistered diaper rash and is spitting up. At his 9 month well visit his pediatrician said to give him almond milk if he could not tolerate cows milk at 1 year. She did not want him To continue with soy for the long term. Daycare will not let me bring Almond milk because he is in a nut free facility, only soy or rice milk.
My question is rice milk a good solution (I know it has less calcium and higher carbohydrate. I also saw a post about it and high levels of arsenic because of the rice)?
Rice milk is never an appropriate milk product for children. It has essentially no protein and is really just a carbohydrate and water mix. The best option for a child with a true cow’s milk protein allergy would be soy milk. If the child has a true soy allergy as well, then almond milk may be an option but it is not as good a source of nutrients for growing children as cow’s milk or soy milk. But a diaper rash and spitting alone may not be a symptom of a true milk protein allergy. So the first thing that I would recommend in this scenario would be an allergist evaluation to see if this child is truly allergic to milk and/or soy.