Update: Some Progress Some Regression

[D-borealis]

About a week ago I posted about my toddler daughter and being exhausted by her behavior and various health problems. 

Well, we have now been gluten free for 2 weeks and after that absolutely horrid day last week  things have improved TREMENDOUSLY.  Her belly button infection completely vanished. She decided to potty train (even poop! even poop!) she has doubled her vocabulary, is giving us hugs and kisses for the first time, doesn't need me to hold her every second and HAS STARTED ACTUALLY EATING SIGNIFICANT QUANTITIES of solid food: she looks like she has already put on some weight. She is also laughing and smiling so much more. We are so excited and relieved and totally convinced that this has been the problem since birth behind so many issues we've had. 

There are a few puzzlers however and I'm hoping someone can shed the light on the mystery:

 

1. Her sleeping which has always been awful, has actually gotten quite a bit worse since going gluten free. Before she would sleep about 10 hours nightly waking up every 1 or 2 hours. Since changing her diet it has been only 7 hours nightly waking up every 45 minutes and she has been talking alot in her sleep. Her nap has also gotten shorter and more restless. This is been the one major downfall of going gluten free. Can anyone explain why this might be happening? 

 

2. Approximately one week into changing her diet, the skin behind her knees broke out into a very red, itchy rash. It is starting to go away, but still there. Is this related to the gluten leaving her body/detox? 

 

Thank you so much. Inspite of the knee rash and exceptionally poor sleeping, we are so glad we found out about the gluten issue she is siginficantly happier.

 

[mommy2krj]

Oh that is wonderful news!

On the other questions....

 

Sleep....none of us in my house are good sleepers....so I may be off in anything I say relating to sleep, just a forewarning. But I would give it some more time...maybe another week or two to see if things even out. It's a big change her little body is going through and everything is trying to get back to "normal" so that could be knocking her sleep even more out of whack.

 

The rash....I know there are some who deal with rashes as one of their main symptoms of Celiac here on the boards....I think in the related issues section (though I could be wrong) look around for posts regarding Dermatitis H (crap I forget the second word but it begins with an H) that might be a new reaction for her and she might have gotten glutened somehow in that first week.

I am so glad that, even with those two issues, she is doing so much better! I am glad the diet is helping! Here's to continued improvements!

[greenbeanie]

Overall, that's great! As for the sleep, is she seeming less rested, or is she just waking more frequently and sleeping less? If she seems rested enough, it may just take a while for her sleep patterns to readjust. (If she's waking more frequently, then YOU must be significantly less rested, which is indeed a big drawback...but hopefully one that will straighten itself out soon).

My daughter had the awful waking-every-45-minutes thing for six months before she was diagnosed, but her sleep improved after going gluten-free. However, it does sem like she (permanently) needs less sleep than she was getting before. Even at age 4 she used to take really long naps, and that stopped pretty suddenly after going gluten free. I think she just felt so awful before that she'd pretty much fall into a sleepy stupor for a few hours after lunch, and now that she feels better she takes much shorter naps. Of course, a lot of kids outgrow naps at this age anyway, so the timing could just be coincidence, but it really does seem like a result of the dietary change.

I've heard that the resolution of rashes is less predictable and can take a while. My daughter still has a pretty persistent "diaper rash" after a month gluten free (even though she only wears diapers at night). She had the rash before too, though, so that sounds different than your situation. But so much weird stuff happens when the body readjusts that not much surprises me any longer. If it's hot where you live, it could also be something unrelated like a heat rash, etc. It can be so hard to tell what's related to gluten and what's just normal kid stuff! It does get a bit easier when they have more verbal skills to explain how things feel (though that, too, is hard to interpret).

[pricklypear1971]

Sleep disturbance is a frequent gluten recovery phenomenon with adults - I'm sure it can occur with kids, too. Just give it time. It took at least a few months for mine to start normalizing.

As far as the rash goes, just give it time. All of her skin/hair care is gluten-free, right? If its DH you'll know soon...because it will happen after gluten exposure and it will be extremely itchy and probably weep a bit if clear fluid at night. DH is hard to diagnose, but skin rashes are not unusual in the gluten challenged...most are not DH. Just care for it however it likes best - moisturize, etc.