Dealing with allergens while breastfeeding quickly becomes immensely frustrating. Suddenly, you are tired, exhausted, overstimulated, and on top of everything forbidden from eating your comfort foods. If you are dealing with food eliminations while breastfeeding, I hope this list of snacks we found tasty can give you a tiny bit of added joy.

After we had our son, my wife was fortunate enough to be able to breastfeed. Not every mom can so we were stoked that she and our baby had that connection.

When we found blood in his stool, we were naturally terrified and rushed to the pediatrician. It wasn’t a lot but they confirmed that it was in fact blood and the likely cause was a sensitivity reaction to something in the milk. Most likely residual proteins from dairy or maybe soy. The recommendation: Eliminate dairy from your diet and wait a few weeks to see if the bloody stools persist.

That started our journey with CMPA (cow’s milk protein allergies) and slowly eliminating dairy, soy, eggs, wheat, and tree nuts. Almost all the way to 6FED (6 food elimination diet). Here are some snacks we actually found scratch the itch.

The snacks are ordered matching a typical elimination diet for CMPA. Starting with eliminating dairy, then soy, eggs, and wheat. Those four, make up 4FED (4 food elimination diet). After that, it’s 6FED, adding tree nuts + peanuts, shellfish/fish and your patience.

That means you should go to the section without any of the allergens you are eliminating and everything below you can eat.

Snack list

Dairy-free snacks

  • Lay’s Classic — contain Soy
  • Oreo’s — contain Soy and Wheat
  • Tostitos Original/Scoops + Milk Chunky Salsa — contain Soy

Dairy and soy-free snacks

  • Simple Mills Dark Chocolate Almond Soft Baked Almond Flour Bars — contain Eggs and Tree nuts
  • Simple Mills Nutty Banana Bread Soft Baked Almond Flour Bars — contain Eggs and Tree nuts

4FED: Dairy, soy, egg, and wheat-free snacks

  • Cocojune Dairy-free Yogurt — contain Tree Nuts
  • Once Again Graham Sandwiches Peanut Butter — contain Tree Nuts and Peanuts
  • Pocket Chocolates — contain Tree Nuts
  • So Delicious Ice Cream — contain Tree Nuts

6FED: Dairy, soy, egg, wheat, peanuts + treenuts, shellfish + fish-free snacks

  • Boomchickapop popcorn — contains no common allergens
  • Once Again Gluten-Free Graham Crackers with Dark Chocolate — contains no common allergens

These are some of the snacks we found really helped. You can find more in my interactive tracker here. There are for sure more but this might help get you started without having to spend hours in the grocery store reading ingredients lists.

And remember, this is a phase. You are doing amazingly. You got this!

PS: The obligatory disclaimer - This isn’t medical advice and I am not a doctor. Please talk to your pediatrician about how you should handle your child’s CMPA.