Its Been Suggested My Toddler Has Celiac Disease

[dj-rose]

First of all thank you for reading this.

My son is 2 years old and he hasnt grown in roughly 8/9 months. Health officials always told me he was just small despite my concerns. He has roughly 6 dirty nappies a day which as absolutly foul smelling and always loose.

We recently went for a hospital appointment and was told they were going to check for everything from downs syndrome, dwarfism, celiac disease, williams syndrome.

During my research on all these conditions they all seem to have celiac connections.

My questions really are

What tests do i need to make sure they do for celiac disease?

How long until the results are available?

Will my son grow if he is on a wheat and gluten free diet?

And whats it like to have a child with this condition?

Im slightly scared it seems huge and i did try and give him a gluten and wheat free diet until diagnosis to see if it would help with his tummy aches and then realised i wasnt helping as i didnt think about the hidden things like caking agents and starch.

Anyway thanks for reading this i hope i made some sense.

[ravenwoodglass]

First off do not take him off gluten until all the testing is done as that will insure a false negative. Make sure they do a complete celiac panel with testing for total IGA also. They may want to do an endoscopy on him so be sure to keep him on gluten until that is done. Children have an even higher rate of false negatives than adults so do a strict trial of the diet when all testing is finished. While you are waiting on the tests read as much as you can here to learn how to do all you need to do to do the diet as strictly as needed.

Here is a link to the NIH website about testing

Open Original Shared Link

I hope you get some answers soon.

[Skylark]

Celiac tests take a day or two.

Celiac isn't as huge as something like Down's. Yes, if the problem is celiac your son should start growing again on the celiac diet. Basically, the health problems go away from the gluten-free diet. The problems for celiac kids are mostly social. Kids don't like being "different" and the diet means they can't eat the same things as other kids.

[tarnalberry]

there are many cultures that do not eat wheat regularly - anyone can thrive perfectly fine without wheat, barley, rye, or oats. we have a culture that tends to rely upon these items for calories (and I won't say nutrition, because there are more nutritious foods out there), so it's a very hard habit to break, but there is nothing unhealthy about being gluten free if you otherwise eat a wide variety of healthy food.

(and everyone else's advice is spot on!)