Anybody With Kids Who Has "accidents"?

[abjhenson]

I am having a hard time finding anybody who has kids with symptoms/reactions are constand and incocsistant potty accidents. My daughter is 5 and started kindergarted 2 weeks ago. I have been a mess. All I think about is her making it through the day without an accident.

My daughter as a toddler had runny and incosistant BMs and sometimes explosive. I didn't know it was not normal. She was diagnosed as celiac in November 2008 by endoscopy. Negative blood tests for any allergy but damage to her intestines. The gluten free diet worked like magic and it seemed like everything was great UNTIL a month later when slowly it all came back. So after a year of not knowing what to do or where to go I heard about probiotics and the same again. No more digestion problems for about a month. The gluten free diet did make a diffrence as well as the probiotics so I got completely into trying to find something to help her.

I can not afford to take her to her GI to run test after test and I am a single parent. Dad is involved but knows nothing about our daughters "issues" he just does what I tell him and I pray he doesn't mess it up. Well dad is moving to another state in a week so that solves that.

In June I did a lot of research on elimination diet and prebiotics and this and that. I took my 5 year old daughter off of EVERY SINGLE FOOD except chicken, rice, zucchini, sea salt, almond milk and artichokes. YES I really did it and she felt great with the combination of vitamins, prebiotic, probiotic, oxybutinin (prescribed by her urologist)and strict diet. WELL I can't starve my kid forever. It lasted about a month and here I am. Things are better but not great or perfect and my daughter needs to eat real food.

I have figured out there are other foods causing some of her issues like bloating and inflamation so the "strict" diet was and is very helpful but now I am scared to give her more options thinking it will be the wrong choice. I have determined that it is not dairy. I have given her some in moderation the last few weeks like parmesean cheese on a salad or beef or small amounts of sugar or small amounts of potato starch. Her bloating has gone away completely. She dropped a whole pant size just from bloating. I think the "problem food" is either corn, tomato or potato if not more foods. Since most gluten free food has one or all of the three I am stuck.

The doctors keep putting her on miralax for her constipation and it seems to do absolutely nothing so any help there is greatly appreciated. I just want to feel that my daughter can make it through 1 week of school with out a "accident" or "leackage". Her school and teacher have all been great. Once she is on a normal gluten free diet they do have a gluten free school lunch menu that includes kinikinik products (yes very amazing) but I can't even get that far. The gluten free meals have no extra cost and I probably qualify for free lunches so that is even something to look forward to.

So are there any other parents going through this also???

[dilettantesteph]

My son hasn't had accidents, but I do. When I get trace gluten that is what happens to me. It makes it hard to leave the house in the morning. It usually clears up by afternoon. I suggest that you look into cross contamination carefully. That might be causing her problems. Add new foods one at a time, one per week, or at least every few days. It can take a few days before you notice a reaction. My son has been having symptoms again and I know what you mean about starving your child. It feels terrible when you know that it is something that you are feeding your child that is making them sick. He went on a very restricted diet too, and got better. Then, he wanted to eat more foods. It was terrible to watch him seemingly starve too. Then as we added new foods he kept getting sick again. We've finally figured out the latest problem and he is recovering again. Soon we will be able to try new things again. When they are in school it is even harder because you don't know if it is something that you gave them, or something that they got at school. It requires so much patience on your part and on your child's part. I wish you all the best. I hope that you have a good support system.

[Skylark]

Hi there. You're doing a great thing for your daughter. I did the same kind of diet to figure out my own gluten intolerance.

You need to think in terms of groups of foods. Tomato and potato are nightshades. If she reacts to one, she's reasonably likely to react to the other, along with eggplants and peppers. Cruciferous veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli) are another group people find hard to digest if they have GI issues. Citrus fruits are another group.

Here's a web page with lists of foods that cross-react to pollen. If she's allergic to one food on the birch or grass list for example, she is more likely to react to another. Open Original Shared Link

Taking someone off an elimination diet, you add one whole food at a time, with at least three days between foods. Always leave at least three days between new foods to watch for delayed reactions. It's better to test potatoes by giving her a potato, not a complex food like a kinnikinnick bread or processed potato starch. Test corn with corn on the cob or grits (hot corn cereal), not tortilla chips that also have oil, and so forth. Also, if you are too cautious, you might not pick up mild reactions. You can always go back and see if she tolerates "a little" of something later as childhood intolerances are notorious for changing. (I lost a LOT of mine in my teens.) It takes a while to get good information as coming off a proper elimination diet and she's going to have to bring her lunches for quite a while yet.

I'm sorry to tell you, but there WILL be wrong choices. Perhaps you could add one new food a week on Friday afternoon and evening (let her eat a good amount twice to be sure of what's happening) so her system is sorted out again for the school week.

You want to be particularly careful with the "big 8" allergens. That's milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat. They are the most troublesome foods as far as both allergy and intolerance.