Celiac Disappeared With Pregnancy

[JMCurtis]

This is my quick story:

as a young kid i was always getting sick, especially with the gastrointestinal issues. i used to sit in the bathroom crying at age 6 asking god to kill me because the pain in my stomach was so bad. doctors diagnosed me with lactose intolerance. so when we'd eat pizza, i would only eat the bread...and still get very sick. or if i wanted the cheese too i would take the lactose pills. same results. i could never do a lot of running as a kid because i had really bad knee pain, even at age 10 i would ice them because i just wanted them to go numb so i could sleep at night. things got a little less severe but still very painful after i hit puberty. i have stress fractured my hip twice before i turned 19. i did not figure out i was gluten intolerant until i was 20. process of elimination. my mom (eye doctor) had a patient tell her about their celiac and she immediately told me to research it. i had 12 of the 14 symptoms listed on celiac.com. i immediately went on a gluten free diet to see what would happen. within 3 days my knee pain was gone, and my stomach had never felt better. i was able to start exercising and i lost 15 lbs within weeks..i guess from cutting carbs. i did very well on a gluten free diet, never felt better. when i would accidently have something with gluten i would get a headache within 15 minutes, my knees would ache unbelievably for the next 24 hours and then 12 hours after eating it my stomach would swell up like i was 5 months pregnant...and i couldnt convince the waitress taking my drink order that i wasn't...and then the usual stomach ache/diarhea. i got pregnant at 23 and a girl at my work told me her daughter was celiac and was able to eat gluten in small amounts during her pregnancy but it came back after she had the baby. i decided half way through my pregnancy that i was going to try it. i would have a bite here and a bite there with no problem...then one morning i ate a whole bagel...nothing happened so i started eating all the gluten stuff i could get my hands on, which was probably a good thing because i was real bad about taking my folic acid and vitamins. now here i am with a 1 month old healthy baby and i have no celiac symptoms..eating all the pasta and bread i want. and i'm definately not lactose intolerant. My thought was that maybe the hormonal change of being pregnant subsided it?? (since it got a little less severe with puberty)...whether its permanant i don't know, we'll find out soon enough i'm sure. Anyone else had this happen to them?

[kbtoyssni]

It's not uncommon for your intestines to fully heal and for you to be able to eat gluten for a while without any known symptoms. BUT - you are still doing damage!!! Eventually eating gluten again will catch up to you in the form of cancer, osteoporosis, mental illness, etc. Please go back to the gluten-free diet. You do not want to set yourself up for major health problems in the future.

[mommida]

Your immune system partly shuts down during pregnancy. If the immune system was in a normal state it would attack the fetus for being a foreign body. (That explains why it would seem you weren't having any reactions.)

One month after delivery, your body still has enough pregnancy hormones to be affecting your immune system.

I would get back on a gluten free diet for your body to heal after delivering your baby.

[pugluver31902]

Ok, no offense...but are you nuts! If you really do have celiac, you are doing your body an amazing amount of damage. Celiac is an auto immune disorder, not an allergy. I have celiac and I have absolutly no symptoms. I could eat an entire loaf of wheat bread and feel fine. But my blood work and intestinal biopsy says otherwise. I also am on the verge of osteoporosis. Having celiac and eating gluten also gives you a much higher chance of getting cancer and other autoimmune disorders. Did you know that most celiac's do not have symptoms? If you really want to do what is best for your body and your baby, you need to see a doctor and get an official diagnosis done. Celiac is a genetic condition that parents can pass to thier children. You could be putting your baby at risk also. It is very important that you see a doctor. Most celiac's do not show gastrointestinal problems until thier gut has been damaged. You may have been off the gluten enough to let your body heal, and now you are damaging it again. You may not have any symptoms until your intestions get damaged again.

[dbmamaz]

I just wanted to say that, after three kids, I was realizing that I could handle dairy when I was pregnant (not that I was totally off it or anything, i was assuming i was lactose intolerant). I actually wondered if my kids were producing the enzyme that digests the lactose FOR me, since lactose intolerance usually doesnt show up before the age of 7. I didnt know anything about celiac or gluten intolerance at the time (my kids are 15, 11 and 4).

However, the other thing I would be concerned about is if you passed your celiac on to your baby. If you are nursing, you are passing both the gluten and possibly some of the immune issues to the baby through your milk. If your baby is on formula, you still need to be very vigilant watching for signs of colic, failure to thrive, diahrea and rashes.

jmho

[pugluver31902]

Like a previous poster had said, pregnancy will slow down your immune system which may be why your body is not reacting to gluten. But be very careful. Celiac is not the same as other food intolerances. While intolerances can make you feel quite ill, celiac is an autoimmune disorder that can lead to death if not treated. Please be careful for your sake and your baby's. Having a baby is such a wondeful thing, you wouldn't want to raise your cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes risks now, as I'm sure you want to be around that baby for a long long time!

[HappyMomof5]

Hey,

I wanted to say I had a similar experience during my pregnancies. (All five of them.) However, I didn't know I was a Celiac, all I knew was if I ate certain things I would throw up. So I avoided them, and unknowingly put myself on a gluten free diet the first half of my pregnancy. (I remember telling my husband right before I was diagnosed with Celiac, "I feel so good when I'm pregnant. I should just get pregnant again." Ha, ha. Thankfully I persued a diagnosis.) Anyway, I would begin to feel really good toward the last half of the pregnancy and begin to eat those things again. However I was still (unknowingly) doing damage to my small intestine.

I credit my 5 children as keeping me more healthy than I would have been otherwise, however, I was still doing more damage than my body could repair afterwards and it eventually caught up with me. That's where you are now. It will catch up to you in a big way. Please don't let it get that far. I know it probably feels really fun to not be on a "restrictive" diet, but you are harming yourself and possibly your baby through the breastmilk if she has it, too.

So look at your Gluten Free diet as a choice you make for the good of your baby. Like heath insurance or life insurance or any number of other things you do, only this is so much more important.

Once you are Gluten Sensitive you are never miraculously NOT Gluten Sensitive. You are just not feeling it right now. Ride the crest of that "good feeling" and those lovely pregnancy hormones and heal up for the both of you!

I hope you can tell the people on this forum are concerned about what you're doing because they care how it impacts your life. Make some good decisions!

Blessings,

~ H Squared

[darlindeb25]

Are there any others out there who didn't have this reaction? I was so sick while pregnant. Actually, I think pregnancy triggered my celiac disease, or at least threw it into full gear! I always had a very touchy tummy, yet my 2nd pregnancy seemed to be the trigger, I was 21. I too, have 5 children, well, they wouldn't like to be called children--ages 25-33. I was so sick with my last baby that I lost 40# while pregnant. I now realize I must thank celiac disease for my having a daughter, if celiac disease was not preventing me from absorbing my birth control pills, I may not have Holly. I still can hear my doctor saying, "99% safe, and you have to be the 1%!"

I had to be careful of everything I ate and I still would be sick most of the time. My last 2 pregnancies were the worst. On top of the celiac, which I didn't know about yet, I had motion sickness. By the time I was pregnant with Holly at 27, I had become very vitamin deficient, I'm sure, add to that, the fact that my body had not recovered from my previous pregnancy, Joe was only 5 months old when I got pregnant with Holly. Some celiac's have a lot of trouble getting pregnant and carrying a baby, some have no trouble getting pregnant, but have trouble carrying to term, then some have trouble having a healthy baby. There really is no true text book celiac--they just do not know enough about us yet. My daughter was born with a birth defect, no hip joint on the left side and I know that was because of my undiagnosed celiac disease and my health at the time--I can never change that.

I do know, I loved feeling the baby inside of me, feeling the movements, knowing what a miracle a baby is and when I was growing up, what I wanted most was to be a mom. I wanted 6 kids, and I have 5. I didn't have the energy to have anymore, I was so sick. I do know, being celiac and pregnant was not easy for me.

[dbmamaz]

Well, I could digest milk, but that was the only positive thing for me!

I was sick as a dog during my first trimester of my first pregnancy. I was actually living on a commune, and there was a midwife they always used. I was immediatly put on prenatal vitamins, and started having awful stomach response. They then told me to eat oatmeal with psyllium in it ... i felt like they were trying to kill me lol - psyllium showed up on my orange list of bad foods! I finally figured out the vitamins were making me sick and I quit them, and the midwife always forgot that. At one pt i was craving spinach and ate frozen spinach, and she gave me this long lecture about how she'd rather i ate nothing but organic grains and vitamin pills, rather than eat non-organic food. I refused to listen (good thing, too). Still, I ended up with toxemia.

The other pregnancies were not as bad. I focussed on eating tons of protien. But still, i always gained 45 lb, was so exhausted by the end I kinda just sat around and moaned the last 2 weeks. One woman told me, early in first pregnancy, when I'm pregnant i feel like a garden in bloom - i wanted to throw up on her. The mere thought of eating made me want to cry then . . .

It did get easier each pregnancy for me - but raising kids didnt. I was more and more tired and depressed - when people suggest i have more kids i look daggers at them. I feel like such an awful mommy now, i was so much better with my first

My kids are 15 yo dd, 11 yo ds, and 4 yo ds.

[Respira]

Be Careful..

My story, svere allergies as a child, 18 yrs old diagnosed with sever gastroenteritis, 25 had first child a boy..alergies disappeared..a miracle, 28 yrs. second child born, a daughter, allergies came back with a vengeance, 31 yrs old (prayed entire pregnancy for a boy in hopes the allergies would go away again) had a boy and sure enough no sign of allergies. 40 yrs old "blank hit the fan!" Was diagnosed with severe enteritis, then Crohn's disease, had surgery where they removed part of my small intestines and large intestine and ileocecal valve. Docs confused though because I didn't exactly fit neatly into Crohn's slot. Did my own investigating and went gluten free and am now trouble free.

[jayhawkmom]

Are there any others out there who didn't have this reaction? I was so sick while pregnant. Actually, I think pregnancy triggered my celiac disease, or at least threw it into full gear!

Same here! The third (and final) one did me in.