Confused, What To Do Next..

[mom2fiveblueyebabes]

I posted last week about my 19 month old w/ failure to thrive. He weighs 20.5 pounds, has a bloated belly on some days, can be very irritable and clingy most days, eats constantly, his iron was 11.1 about two weeks ago. His pediatrician order blood work. So far, from what i have been told, it has come back in the normal range. We are still waiting on total IgA. Here are the levels. I apologize in advance if I wrote something down wrong the nurse gave me the info. over the phone. It was kind of confusing as to what she was saying.

IgA 10.1

IgE not sure

IgG 17.6

IgM 0.5

Does this look normal to you? I know that the test can give a false negative. Should we schedule the biopsy? Can I have a blood test to help determine if he could possibly have this? A little family history. I have been diagnosed w/ IBS. My oldest son that is 20, has stomach issues. His stomach get upset a lot after he eats. He is very thin. He is 6' 2" and about 130 pounds. My 15 year old daughter is being treated for ADD. She has been on medication for about three years. My four month old baby has had diarrhea for about three weeks now. But, she is happy and gaining weight. My mother has asthma, my dad has bleeding ulcers, his sister colitis and his brother chrohns.

I am just at a loss right now. Any advice would be helpful. Thank you all so much!

[AndreaB]

Am I correct in assuming your 19 mo old has been eating gluten? If you can afford it I would recommend the stool test that enterolab runs. If your doctor would run the biopsy it could still be negative (they may miss the damaged spots). My family used enterolab and found that 3 out of 4 of us had gluten intolerance. My husband and I also have soy intolerance. I higly recommend the enterolab as you can be gluten free on it and it catches intolerance before major damage is done (if its caught soon enough).

It really depends on what you want. You can go gluten free with your 19 mo old and see if there is any improvement. If you decide to eliminate gluten and see some improvement but there are still some problems after a month or so, then try eliminating soy and or dairy, separately and give time to note whether there is any improvement.

[celiacgirls]

I agree that if you can afford it, Enterolab is the way to go. My younger daughter was a suspected (by me only) of being a celiac by 1 year old, but all of the blood tests were negative. She's been tested 3 or 4 more times and all were negative. She's now 8 and I recently had her tested by Enterolab and it was positive.

If you don't want to do Enterolab, you could always try the gluten free diet and see if it helps. It it helps, then you have your answer. It did help my daughter, but I was doubting myself because of the test results.

[Guest nini]

the tests can be highly unreliable in children, and if you can't afford Enterolab, why not just go ahead and try the diet... get your pediatrician's support on it if you have to, tell them that you insist on doing a dietary trial to see if it makes a difference, If it does then you know what the problem is. That is how my daughter was dx'ed at age 3. Her blood work was negative, did not do a biopsy, just did the diet and wow, miracle of miracles! Her symptoms ALL went away and she immediately started putting on weight... She is now such a happy healthy six year old, and she has no interest in eating gluten foods because they make her feel terrible when she accidentally gets exposed to gluten.