celiac disease In 9 Month Old?

[asdoodle]

I"m posting on here as a whim that someone might have some experiences like mine. My pediatrician is sending my 9 month old daughter to a GI doctor to rule out celiac disease. We have no one in our family with this... never even heard of it until her symptoms began.

At 5 months - we tried her on oatmeal for a week. She broke out in this mysterious rash two days later.(later identified and confirmed as hives). During this week her reflux was at it's worse. Finally realized the oat coincidence and stopped feeding it to her. At that point she started breaking out in these hives to any contact with oat after 24 hours of contact (Aveeno, etc). We were told to stay away from oat and did. However in December (at 7 mths) , we fed her Gerber puffs (again for a week before realizing symptoms). Her hives appeared and she broke out in eczema rash all over her body (before she had eczema it was very mild on her face only). After eading the gerber label realized the puffs have oat in them (reason for hives) and became suspicious about wheat. I waited a week or two to let her skin calm down some and them tried feeding her wheat cereal for the first time. Again her eczema all over her body flared up. THe eczema is extremely hard to treat even though we are off all oat and wheat. So at this point we are thinking allergies/intolerances to oat and wheat. Our ped wants us to be tested for celiac disease.

Is he jumping the gun? Her only symptoms is skin rash and vomiting with oatmeal. However, she's never consumed either grain more than 5 days and at small quantities, so if she had any GI upset we wouldn't know. I'm nervous. She's so young and don't want her having to under go unnecessary testing.

[nmlove]

I'd lean towards allergies myself. Interesting her doc jumped to celiac. Of course she could have it. But you also said she's not consuming that much so I'm wondering if the tests will even be accurate. Also, has she reacted to wheat in other things? Sounds to me, based on your post, she's reacting to oatmeal (as a cereal) and in a product (the puffs). Good luck figuring it all out!

[asdoodle]

I'd lean towards allergies myself. Interesting her doc jumped to celiac. Of course she could have it. But you also said she's not consuming that much so I'm wondering if the tests will even be accurate. Also, has she reacted to wheat in other things? Sounds to me, based on your post, she's reacting to oatmeal (as a cereal) and in a product (the puffs). Good luck figuring it all out!

She's definitely reacting to oatmeal as a whole. She's had hives for the oatmeal cereal, Gerber puffs and the Aveeno lotion/wash, which we've tried numerous times. Each time same thing happens. As for wheat, her first encounter was the puffs, which she had the 'eczema reaction.' I tried her again on wheat cereal a few weeks later with same reaction. I haven't tried her again on wheat but am thinking I might soon as her skin is pretty clear right now. If she begins breaking out on wheat cereal, I'll know for sure it was the wheat and not a coincidence. I also wondered how they would diagnos her if she's not consuming gluten. She wouldn't have the intestinal damage,etc b/c I haven't allowed her to have it in her diet. Poor thing is living off of rice cereal, four vegetables and two fruits. I did read that you can have a gluten intolerance/sensitivty but not celiacs. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that if anything.

[nmlove]

That sounds like a good plan to me. And the good thing is, if it is allergies/intolerances, she has a good chance of outgrowing them if you keep them away from her for the first few years. I still question the celiac testing (as far as accuracy) but that's something to go through with the doc.

By the way, do you breastfeed? I know it seems hard to believe - especially in today's world where everyone compares babies - but a baby can do just fine on breast milk (or formula) alone for the first year of life. It's something I keep telling myself. My 7 month old likes sweet potatoes and kind of likes peas and apples. But she doesn't like anything else and has had two bad reactions so far (horrible constipation from just a bit of bananas and throwing up after rice cereal). Oh, plus I have to eliminate dairy/soy from my diet because she reacts to it.

[laurensmommy]

I'm new here this is my first post and I could have written this topic myself. My daughter is 8 months. She has a dairy intolerance of some form so early on she was put on soy formula. She was also had colic and was diagnosed with reflux which was treated with prilosec. Things seemed to be going fine until we introduced finger foods and combination baby foods recently. We started giving her gerber puffs and cheerios. Additionally some of the combination foods we gave her were peach, pear, barley or other cereal and fruit mixes that has wheat in the ingredients. Since she started having finger foods we began noticing she'd eat then would end up spitting up a slimey almost vomit type mucus. Her skin is a mess she has patches of exczema on her legs, arms, and around her mouth. Her mood has been awful very cranky, whiney, and at times nothing would please her. She wouldn't eat much of her food at all. And she was growing but only gained a pound over 4 months...doctor said her weight gain had slowed increase calories. I started to think with all these spitups something was wrong as we'd never seen these before until recently and it was always after we had been feeding her but this hadn't happened prior to the introductions of finger foods. Over the past 2 days I have eliminated all finger foods, stop using any baby food that had grains and went basic again. Her skin has already cleared up alot, she is barely spitting up at all and if she does it's like her old milk spitups that we have seen since she was born, and my mom who watches her daily said she was in a better mood today then she has been in for awhile. And the child that never slept through the night always had frequent night wakings recently things became worse with us having to go in and pick her up and she'd burp slept through the night with no night wakings.

Am I crazy or could this be a wheat / gluten intolerance???

[lovegrov]

From everything I've read, there's just no way to determine celiac at this age.

[nmlove]

Correct me if I'm wrong, you had not introduced any grains prior to finger foods/mixed baby foods? I can't answer if it's celiac or not but obviously she's reacting to something - at least an intolerance or even an allergy. It's been awhile since I looked at the ingredient list of puffs or cheerios but is there any chance it's something else altogether (outside of the wheat)? If you want to know for sure, take her back to where she was at before when she was well. After her symptoms go away, give her just baby cereal with known items (i.e., barley cereal or a mixed cereal if she's already had rice/barley/oats). Just try to keep everything else status quo or you'll be questioning any reactions.

Going through this with my 7 month old. Except it's rice and gluten-free oats. Stinks.