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When our second son, Lucas, was born, we had lots of problems with him. He didn't gain weight, he cried 80% of the time and he was covered in angry red eczema.

It turned out he was allergic to the proteins in the cow's milk in my breastmilk. I had to cut cow's milk out of my diet to stop him suffering.

Do you know how difficult that is? My first trip to the supermarket took 2-3 hours of reading labels on everything. I found milk in bacon, sausages, salt and vinegar crisps, bread, ketchup, all kinds of things. I had to write down everything that I ate/drank to try to prove that it was the milk that was causing the problems.

When we weaned him, it turned out he also couldn't tolerate the proteins in goat's milk, or other animal milks, or even soya milk. I had to completely change the way I cooked for my family. Slowly he began to thrive, and slowly I began to learn what I could and couldn't buy for him, and what alternatives were available to add calcium to his diet and let him have treats like other children.

CMPA Support is a small charity which exists to help people who suffer from CMPA (Cow's Milk Protein Allergy) and parents of children who do so. We were lucky, we found out relatively quickly what was causing Lucas's pain and were able to remedy it. We are also very lucky that his reaction is relatively mild .... my heart goes out to the parents of children whose reaction is to go into anaphalactic shock. How scary everyday life must be for these families.

CMPA Support helps to support the families and raise awareness which will hopefully make diagnosis a much easier and speedier process in the future.

They are raising money to improve the information they provide and increase its reach. They also hope to fund allergy nurses in the future and set up 'safe' playgroups for allergic children to attend, like other children do.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.