Pregnant And Accidentally Ingested Gluten. Worried!

[DNAincubator]

Hi everyone

I am 10 weeks pregnant. I was diagnosed with Celiac disease almost 7 months ago. I'm a patient at the Celiac center at Columbia and I've been following the gluten-free diet for about 6 months.

Today I went to saladworks for lunch. I asked for nutritional info on the Caesar dressing and I was told the only dressing with gluten is the oriental dressing. I ordered the Caesar dressing. The salad was delicious.

When I arrived home I wanted to get some info online on their soups. I noticed they had a chicken tortilla soup so I wanted to see if that had any gluten. I then looked at the dressings and the Caesar dressing DOES contain gluten. It has wheat. This is the first time I've been accidentally glutened and I'm kicking myself that I was not more careful. I thought it was the most benign place to eat at the food court. I'm worried about this baby now. I've had five miscarriages in a row including a loss at 19 weeks to a cord knot. I want this baby to make it so badly and now I feel like this is going to negatively affect the pregnancy. I'm so upset! Any words of advice would be greatly appreciated.

Now the diarrhea has kicked in. This sucks.

[tarnalberry]

Deep breath. Once relatively small instance is quite unlikely to cause a miscarriage.

It happened, and the best you can do is move forward being even a bit more conservative (if you choose).

I will keep my fingers crossed for you, but continue eating healthy and gluten free, and like many one time "oops", things will probably be just fine. (A friend of mine was on a trip in Greece, awash in plenty of ouzo, not knowing she was pregnant the first three weeks of the pregnancy - the pregnancy and baby are fine. This is not an advertisement to do things that can harm the baby, but encouragement that "oops" will happen, and all you can do is pick up and carry on in a slightly different way than before.)

[Skylark]

I understand why you're scared, but you should be fine. As tarnalberry says, a single, relatively small incident may make you a little sick, but it's unlikely to trigger a miscarriage. It's nothing like your diet before the diagnosis, I'm sure.

I've gotten to where I always order oil and vinegar on salads when I eat out unless I can see all the ingredients of dressing myself or the place is very celiac-aware. It's so hard to find hidden gluten on labels (or even "wheat" buried deep in dozens of ingredients) that I don't trust anyone else to do it.

[lovegrov]

Stressing out about the gluten mistake will almost certainly be worse for you than the mistake.

[Zoodles]

Stressing out about the gluten mistake will almost certainly be worse for you than the mistake.

I agree, the stress of worrying about it could cause more of an issue. I feel for you, and i have started to wonder about my husband and I when we start trying (diagnosed three months). I was recently "glutened" by someone who did not fully understand how careful I have to be - cross contamination of chip hands from one bag to my bag at a family reunion. Talk about a lot of education.

I would think that becoming extraconservative in your food selections when eating out would be the best for me. Funny, I used to love eating out, and it was one of my favorite treats to myself. Now with being diagnosed i find it more of a pain...lost five pounds already (I blame it all on the gravy). I think that is what I will have to do.

Thanks for posting this so i have a bit more understanding about what can happen...