Mother-infant dining partners can enjoy a bountiful menu. But some babies are sensitive to certain foods in mother’s diet (See What’s Colic? Does Your Baby Have Colic? How to Tell) Colic-causing foods can enter your breast milk and upset your baby as early as two hours after you ingest the  colic-causing food. A clue to food sensitivities as a cause of fussy, colicky behavior is a pattern called twenty-four-hour colic – a definite episode of hurting that occurs within twenty-four hours after the breastfeeding mother eats a suspect colic causing food(s) but that does not recur until the next time she eats the same food.

Potentially allergenic proteins in dairy products enter the breast milk and produce colicky symptoms in babies.

Soft drinks, chocolate, coffee, tea, and certain cold remedies contain caffeine. While some babies may be more caffeine sensitive than others, usually a mother must consume a large amount of these products to bother her baby.

The most allergenic of these are wheat, corn, peanuts, and soy.

Your milk may have a distinctive taste after you eat spicy or garlicky foods. Salads, pizzas, and a binge at your local ethnic restaurant introduce baby to these foods. Occasionally they may evoke a gastric protest from your baby, causing them to refuse to feed or be colicky.

Broccoli, onions, Brussels sprouts, green peppers, cauliflower, cabbage – these vegetables in the raw state can bother babies, but they are less likely to be offensive when cooked. Personal breastfeeding experience validates what veteran breastfeeding mothers have known for a long time – gassy foods make gassy babies.

This simple three-step technique for identifying colic-causing foods in your breast milk that may be upsetting your child is virtually identical to the approach to take in identifying food allergies that may arise after your baby is no longer consuming breast milk exclusively.

From the preceding food possibilities, keep track and list the foods in your diet that are most prone to being colic-causing foods. Cow’s milk is the most common culprit in the colic-causing foods list. Across from these, list your baby’s upsets, usually fussiness, crying and colicky episodes, bloating, severe constipation or diarrhea, a very gassy baby, unexplained night waking or a red ring around your baby’s anus.

One by one (or all at once if severe), starting with cow’s milk, eliminate the most suspect colic-causing foods from your diet for 10 to 14 days. Observe your baby to see if the symptoms of upset diminish or disappear. If they do not, try eliminating a different fuss food. If they do disappear, go on to step three.

If some or all of the troublesome symptoms subside (this may take a week or more to happen), challenge this result by reintroducing the suspicious colic-causing food(s). If your baby’s symptoms reappear within 24 hours, temporarily scratch this food off your menu. Though mothers are often wise detectives, the reintroduction challenge keeps your more objective. Love for your baby and hurting when your baby hurts make you vulnerable to quickly labeling a certain food as the culprit of your baby’s problems, which may unnecessarily deprive you and your baby of a valuable source of nutrients. Even if you do pin the problems on a particular food, most babies are only temporarily intolerant of certain colic-causing foods, allowing you to eventually reintroduce your favorite foods.

While some babies are exquisitely sensitive to drops or crumbs of an offending nutrient, others are bothered only if mother eats or drinks larger quantities of the colic-causing food daily. Wheat products and citrus foods are examples of this: Too much may bother the baby, but a small amount may be tolerated.

If you find yourself eating fewer foods, yet your baby is fussing more, consult a lactation consultant to be sure your breastfeeding technique is not the problem. You may also want to consider consulting with a nutritionist to be sure you are consuming a balanced diet, and most important, consult with your baby’s doctor for non-food-related causes of your baby’s colic-causing food problem. See our Fussy Baby Book (Little, Brown, 1996) for tips on eliminating colic-causing foods and on comforting and coping with unhappy babies. For food lovers, let’s dangle a final carrot; Don’t let fear of food restrictions discourage breastfeeding. Often these intolerant babies also have serious problems with some or all formulas. For most breastfeeding pairs, what a mother eats does not upset her baby.

For more tips on identifying colic-causing foods, see our Three Steps for Tracking Down the Cause of Colic.