Doing A Gluten/dairy Free Challenge W/ 7 Yr Old

[srall]

After 10 years of symptoms, and probably 2 years of severe symptoms, I self diagnosed myself as gluten intolerant and went gluten free (and dairy) in March of 2010. There has been a lot of trial and error but I'm learning and I feel so much better.

My daughter is 7 1/2. She has had digestion issues for years. I have always blamed her diet...but I think I've been blaming the wrong foods. Funny, I did the same thing with myself for 10 years and yet couldn't quite transfer it to my own daughter. I just thought if it took 30 years to show up in me, maybe my daughter wouldn't have issues for at least a few more years. She has missed 8 days of school already this year from illness. She is gassy all the time and has D almost every time she goes to the bathroom. The past few days she has even started complaining about joint pain. She has gone from being one of the brightest kids in her class to really lagging behind. She's mixing up her letters. I feel like an idiot because all this stuff should have been on my radar and I just kept putting pizza and mac and cheese in front of her.

Last night we were at a potluck, where I ate nothing of course, and my daughter had a piece of cake (we'd both already eaten). She immediately started having pains and sat in my lap the rest of the night. She nearly passed out when going to bed last night.

She is as desperate as I am to find a solution. We've already pulled lactose and most dairy, but it hasn't made a difference. If nothing else doing a gluten/dairy challenge for a month won't hurt. I am nervous about a couple of things.

First I'm wondering if I'm doing her some disservice by not getting her a formal diagnosis. I just can't bear the thought of one more day of this roller coaster and I think she needs to start feeling better RIGHT NOW.

Second is that I'm really worried about getting her to eat. She's always been picky and has mostly turned up her nose at my food. Last night I told her when she wakes up that she cannot have pancakes but will need to eat some eggs (without cheese). Well, she woke up as I was typing this morning and I told her I was making her eggs she informed me she wasn't eating them. I asked her what she was planning on eating and she said she'd figure it out.

I'm going to Whole Foods later for some Udi's bread (I don't eat bread). I really don't want to replace her diet with a bunch of gluten free junk food, but I can't see her drinking green drinks and eating salad and fish for every meal. Any advice would be hugely appreciated!

[Dixiebell]

Can you call her Dr. today and get an apt for at least the blood tests? I know at our Dr. office they can usually get us in the same day. Maybe ask for the newer DGP test too.

[Mizzo]

Since she is over 7 get her in for a blood test as fast as possible to see if her numbers indicate Celiac's. I say this as a piece of mind for you, and she is old enough the numbers should be accurate.

Then start her Gluten free.

Make a list of all the things she does like (REALLY MAKE A LIST)

Sit down with it and see how creative you can be with mixing it up.

Don't worry too much about it for now] , so long as she is getting her vitamins, maybe omega 3 and fiber supplements also if needed. Her tastes will most likely change once she goes gluten-free, nothing you can do about it just go with the flow.

Their diet doesn't HAVE to be wildly varied that's what we would like, just so long as you are getting basics in thru the WEEK, not the day. Talk to a nutritionist at her Dr's office, sometimes they have idea's we don't think of, and they get the kids motivated more than we can.

[cassP]

agree with above posters- get her tested now while she's still eating gluten..

my theory (and from what ive read) is that the disease is expressing itself sooner and sooner these days just because there are more and more triggers--> our diet is worse, the food is more genetically modified and more glutinous than before, and a bunch of other controversial things i wont get into..

anyways, i know if she needs to go gluten free- it will be hard- but just in the beginning- people's tastes can change, and it's all about creating new habits

[my3monkees]

When my dd went gluten free, she hated most everything! LOL For the first month I think she lived on eggs and Envirokid bars! But as she got used to things,her taste changed. She now insists that gluten free things, taste better than regular. I think its more that she can now eat without pain! LOL

As far as testing, my dd doesn't have an official diagnosis. I believe her chart says "probable celiac". Neither myself or the pediatrician wanted to put her thru the challenge, when she was just starting to feel better. She had been miserable long enough. If she wants to challenge when she gets older, then it will be her decision. HTH

[srall]

Oh everybody, thank you so much! I remember how much I hated the food I was eating when I first started this diet. Now I love it. She is so committed to wanting to feel better I don't think she'll be tempted by what she can't eat. It's convincing her to try what she can eat that will be the hard part. But I'm comforted by the idea that if she gets hungry enough she'll eat what I'm eating...and it's not like I'm eating rocks. My food is pretty delicious.

[weluvgators]

It took me a bit to realize that my oldest is almost the same age as your daughter - she just recently turned 7! I can't believe I have a 7 year old already.

I let me kids guide me in feeding them. They are the ones that have to learn to live with this, and I really respect how well they have navigated it so far. We were unable to get a formal diagnosis, and I don't think that it has mattered one way or the other. . . mainly because I think our condition would not have been enough to register as "celiac" with where we were. We went gluten free for our child that was unable to orally tolerate gluten and had permanent damage from the gluten she was exposed to through my breast milk in her first year of life! Health care professionals don't know how to help us for the most part, and they all agree that they can't "diagnose" us as celiac . . . and they are unwilling to do a gluten challenge with us. We now have lots of medical documentation with all kinds of notes that indicate that they don't know if these are celiac issues or something else . . . that they have been unsuccessful in turning up in two hospitalizations now. Anyway, the "diagnostics" of this beast are merely in their infancy IMHO.

As for food, have you tried making smoothies for breakfast? You can using frozen fruits (or fresh if available) with nut/seed/rice milks or just ice. You can do potatoes or sweet potatoes (add maple syrup if you want!). We have to be cautious in sourcing our meats, but we enjoy bacon, sausage, pork chops, chicken, beef, lamb and fish. My kids are somewhat reluctant with eggs, and I respect that (they can be allergenic for some). My one daughter prefers leftovers for breakfast. She eats pasta (this can be spaghetti squash or carefully sourced gluten-free pasta) with sauce or rice with beans. They both love ribs. They also enjoy eating fruits. I am working to get more veggies in and feel that getting some good bean dips figured out will go a long way in getting more cut veggies eaten for snacks. We also enjoy soups that we make - starting with homemade broths. I do like to make a double batch of gluten free pancakes over the weekends to have them on hand to reheat during the week. We use carefully sourced gluten free flours combined with nut meals and have used coconut flour as well. I usually limit the grains to only 2/3 of the "flour" mix.

Good luck, and I hope that she is feeling better soon!

[tarnalberry]

There's a lot of space between gluten free junk food and fish and salad. I had eggs on refried beans for breakfast (maybe she'd eat just the beans - perhaps with some avocado on them?) Fruit smoothies are also good. It may mean experimenting with other foods, but there will be something that everyone will eat.

[twohokies]

I would suggest getting the bloodwork now while she is glutened. You don't want to have to re-gluten her when/if you want to test for celiac down the road.

We experienced something similar, but with my 3 year-old. We thought about putting my 7 year-old son on a Gluten-free Casein-free diet to help with his Sensory Processing Disorder, but only went CF when a peptide test came back negative for gluten intolerence. My 5y.o. went CF too just to test her and lo and behold her illnesses (4 x pneumonia in 1 year) and skin issues, cleared up. We added the 3y.o. to the list of CF as well to address her tummy/poop issues.....no such luck. At her 3y.o. appt, our ped ran a celiac panel to rule it out so that we could move on and try to find the reason for the GI issues. She's now back on milk :-) and doing great off of gluten.

We have not found that eliminating gluten in the kids' diets has proven to be as difficult as we thought. My older 2 still have bread and bagels but 99% of everything else in the house is gluten-free - pasta, pretzels, chips, cereal (i.e. chex), cookies, etc. All things that complement naturally-occuring gluten-free foods - meats, fruits, veggies, rice, rissoto, etc. The only issue we have are with chicken nuggets since we can only get Ian's in our area. And my celiac disease girl loves her gluten-free donuts and waffles.

HTH!