Help With Dd

[nitu-752002]

Hi

My DD is 27mths old. She has intolerance to dairy and soy milk, was tested +ve for milk allergy via the scratch test, nothing else. She has been off of dairy and soy milk for a very long time. She is a happy kid, was tested for celiac using blood test at 12mths and it was negative. She has the following symptoms that make me feel something is not right:

- Low weight gain (22lbs at 27mths) but she is a picky eater and doesnt get a lot of fat

- Constipation

- When not constipated, Stools are not always formed and mucousy. Sometimes she has normal stools but sometimes the mucous comes back and wont go away like now!

Her diet mainly consisted of the following:

- Infant rice ceral

- Fruit puree

- Nutrios (made with oats) and fruit loops

- Chicken leg (salted with dairy free margarine and olive oil)

- Rice

- Fresh fruit

- Potatos, carrots, and some other veggies

- Some wheat products like pasta, crackers

- Loves potato chips, plain

- Vanilla flavored rice milk

- calcium fortified orange juice

- Dairy free chicken strips, occasional sausages and fries

- Eggs

In the last week, i have decided to take her off of gluten and switched her heinz baby cereal with healthy time which is gluten free, added salbagrain to her diet which is also gluten free. Because of her low weight gain, the doctor felt she wasnt getting enough calories and started her on duocal (Hydrolyzed Cornstarch) and also tried gluten free millet.

From all this, do you think she might have gluten intolerance or is there something else I am missing? I often wonder if the rice milk is upsetting her tummy as she went 100% on rice milk stating around 24mths, she was on mainly breastmilk prior to that? I also wonder if her constipation was due to lack of drinking water, too much rice milk and the fortified rice cereal (iron)? Could hydrolyzed cornstarch cause problems? I am so confused and frustrated. I am in Canada and havent seen a GI specialist as of yet.

Thanks

Nitu

[ShayFL]

If she is sensitive to corn it sure can. Try Hemp milk. It tastes good and has the nutrition she needs.

It might be worthwhile to try 100% gluten free diet. But that means NO oats unless certified gluten-free (Bob's is one). No Wheat, Rye, Barley or Oats.

[nora-n]

Constipation is also a common celiac symptom.

Blood tests on small children under three years are not so accurate as they do not produce much IgA yet (immune system not so developed yet)

and one has to consume a lot of gluten in order to test positive, since the labs have set very high cutoff limits for the tests.

Even in grown-ups, the tests are very variable, there was this article here on celiac.com about scientists who sent the same blood samples of diagnosed celiacs to different labs and some labs only detected only half of the patients.

nora