What Would You Do?

[suziq0805]

My 14 month old is going through a few tests. We've suspected celiac disease for awhile, but no diagnosis yet. Through some recent testing we did discover he is DQ8/DQ8 for his genetic test. He also is not absorbing food well all the time so they ran some tests and said he has a low level of pancreas enzymes. He has an average of 3 dirty daipers per day (sometimes 4 or 5). Each dirty daiper has undigested food in it lately- the main foods he doesn't digest seem to be corn, peas, raisins, quinoa, brown rice, mandarin oranges. So they took a bunch of blood and checked vitamin levels and he was a bit low in vitamin D and everything else was good. They checked something called the typsinogen levels and that was fine. We have to do a 72 hour stool sample collection (which is disgusting!) to measure fat absorbtion and they're going to redo the test for the pancreas enzymes to make sure it was correct. They're doing all of this to look into a genetic condition. The doctor seemed to want to look into this first and then discuss celiac disease further depending on the results of these tests. In talking with him it seems like he would want to do a gluten challenge and scope/biopsy before an official diagnosis. He's been gluten-free for a few months (except for a couple days when we checked to see if he still had a reaction prior to a dr. appointment) and lactose-free for a few weeks. He used to vomit severely after eating wheat/gluten but doesn't anymore. I don't know if I want to do a gluten challenge when he's this young and not able to tell me if he's feeling any effects of a gluten challenge. Would you do a gluten challenge now or wait?

[Poppi]

I can't tell you because I am in a similar situation.

We've been doing a gluten challenge with my 2 year old which was supposed to end today with blood work but instead of running blood work today our family doc referred us to a pediatrician and wants us to keep up with the gluten.

Our problem isn't that gluten is bothering her very much, she seems happy but she has been eating drywall and dirt so there is something weird going on. Our problem is that having her eating gluten multiple times a day is making ME sick. 2 year olds are awful at containing their crumbs and short of putting her back in a high chair, washing the chair, changing her clothes and bathing her (including washing her hair) after every meal it's impossible to ensure crumbs aren't all over the place.

I'm not sure what to do at this point.