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Pica?

Poppi

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Poppi Enthusiast
Poppi
Posted

I'll preface this by saying that I have made a doctor's appointment for Lily but I have to wait more than a week and I'm wondering if anyone else has any similar experiences.

Lily is 2 and seems to be perfectly healthy, she is a bit small for her age but active, happy and rarely gets sick. Her bowel movements are normal and she doesn't appear to be in pain.

She is an incredibly picky eater. She likes baked goods, fruit and yogurt. That's pretty much it. 90% of the baked goods she eats are gluten free because I obviously can't bake with wheat flour. I just passed her picky eating off to being 2.

However... she eats other stuff. She's obsessed withe eating felt tipped markers and sidewalk chalk and her brother has this little plaster statue of an ice cream cone that she has actually eaten chunks out of. Today I found a spot behind the living room curtains where she has apparently been eating the drywall right out of the wall. It looks like she's been picking the pain chips off and then using her teeth to scrape drywall out.

So I looked up Pica and discovered that it can be a symptom of celiac. Celiac runs in my family but can pica be the only symptom? Anyone else have a kid with pica?

Thanks

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Roda Rising Star
Roda
Posted

Get her iron checked. A lot of time pica can be a symptom of low iron. Make sure they do all of the iron tests including ferritin and not just go by her hemaglobin and hematocrit which is in a CBC. I was told for almost a year that I was not "anemic" because I had normal hemaglobin and hematocrit. All the while I would eat crushed ice chips all day long. I couldn't get enough! I even had coworkers comment on how pale I was and wondered if I was anemic. I kept telling them the doctor said I wasn't (this was before I knew any better). Eventually the H & H (a year later) was low indicating a problem. It wasn't for another 6 months that anyone bothered to check my actual iron and ferritin. They were rock bottom! It took a total of 2.5 years before I got diagnosed with celiac. You may want to get other vitamin and mineral tests done, since she possibly could be deficient in something else. My oldest son, given the opportunity is an ice eater, and is a little pasty also. I did have his iron/ferritin checked once and at that time they were normal. Funny now that my iron stores and ferritin are finaly normal, I have no desire to consume ice anymore.

sa1937 Community Regular
sa1937
Posted

My daughter chewed ice constantly and she is anemic, too (as well as diagnosed with celiac in late Aug.) Next time I talk with her, I'll have to ask if she still does.

ETA: She's also hypo-thyroid but I don't think that has anything to do with the ice chewing.

Darn210 Enthusiast
Darn210
Posted

Don't know if you saw this . . . a previous discussion of pica:

lovegrov Collaborator
lovegrov
Posted

Looking back to when I was a kid this was very obviously one of my symptoms. I ate chalk, soft rocks, dirt and so on. At various times as an adult I had the same compulsion. It disappeared completely after I went gluten-free.

richard

Poppi Enthusiast
Poppi
Posted
  • Author
:( I'm so worried about her. I don't mind having Celiac, I'm a grown up I can deal with it. I was hoping my kids being half Asian would protect them since it's so uncommon in Asians. Well, I'll request the Celiac bloodwork along with the other vitamin/mineral stuff next week.
mommida Enthusiast
mommida
Posted

You might want to add in the testing for Pernicious Anemia.

As for your "picky eater", does your little one chew food and then spit it out? That is another symptom of PICA.

I had pica when I was pregnant. Only stuck to the ice though. The crunchier ~the better, was the feeling that I was going for.

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Poppi Enthusiast
Poppi
Posted
  • Author

You might want to add in the testing for Pernicious Anemia.

As for your "picky eater", does your little one chew food and then spit it out? That is another symptom of PICA.

I had pica when I was pregnant. Only stuck to the ice though. The crunchier ~the better, was the feeling that I was going for.

Holy cow! Yes! She has always chewed her food and spit it out, ever since she was just starting to eat, it drives us crazy!

mommida Enthusiast
mommida
Posted

Funny, I just knew when you said picky eater! I just had a flashback of my daughter spitting dinner back on her plate after she worked so hard on chewing it.

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