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Do Gluten Mistakes = Miscarriage?

fweenyp

By fweenyp
in Related Issues & Disorders

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fweenyp Newbie
fweenyp
Posted

I was diagnosed with celiac disease in August after having two miscarriages - for me it was finally the answer to why i could not carry to term. I am now 13 weeks and things are going well, however this weekend i by mistake ingested gluten through cross contamination and had a terrible reaction. i am now panicked that it will affect the baby and cause damage or a miscarriage. does anyone know if the baby is harmed from gluten in small doses?

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KayJay Enthusiast
KayJay
Posted

First congratulations on your pregnacy! I hope you don't have any problems with this one. I don't know how much gluten it takes to hurt the baby. I was told not to eat out and I really don't unless I know it is gluten-free for sure. But I am sure I have had some gluten it is almost impossiable not to. I am 31wks and the baby is doing great.

I would just be very careful especially in the beginning and talk to your doctors a lot.

Good luck,

Carriefaith Enthusiast
Carriefaith
Posted

It would not be a good idea to eat gluten on purpose while you are pregnant (or any time!) but I think that one accident should not cause much harm. I think (and this is only my opinion) infertility and miscarage happens when the villi are damaged and the body cannot absorb nutrients. Essentially, if there are not enough nutrients to support a baby then, infertility/miscarage will occur. Although it appears from your post that you have been gluten free for almost 1 year, so your villi would probably be back to normal by now. I personally don't think one mistake would cause enough villi damage to stop noticable nutrient absorption to cause a miscarage. However, I'm not a doctor and you should consult your doctor if you are concerned.

Guest nini
Guest nini
Posted

I too had two miscarriages prior to carrying my daughter. I was gluten-free only during the first trimester with her because I hadn't been officially dx, and I let my OB/GYN talk me out of the gluten-free diet because he thought it was "all in my head" and said going gluten-free was "bad for the baby"... HA! Anyway. I did manage to carry her almost to term. She was born pre term and I did have complications, but I was also consuming gluten daily. I think if you are being as diligent as you can be with your diet and your dr. is aware of celiac and the prior miscarriages, then as long as they are monitoring you closely, a few "accidents" shouldn't be enough to cause a miscarriage. Congrats on your pregnancy and heres hoping all goes well!

MommyMegan Newbie
MommyMegan
Posted

I remember being TERRIFIED when I "got gluten" early in my pregnancy. I suspect that the high number of miscarriages in my family is partially due to undiagnosed celiac disease. When I got sick in my first trimester I took a couple of days off of work and really focused on hydration and nutrition as well as sleeping to let my body heal as fast as it could. My doctor, who admits he doesn't know much about celiac disease, thinks that stress -physical, mental and emotional - is the worst thing for a baby in the womb. His theory is that modern societies pressures and pace make it harder to feel justified in slowing down and listening to your body.

As hard as it might be to try to "breathe through it", remember that you are doing the best you can do and that is what matters. Life happens - you were trying to avoid gluten and ended up sick anyway - and once it does we just have to pray and smile our way through to the next day.

Good luck to you. You will be in my thoughts!

  • 3 weeks later...
hapi2bgf Contributor
hapi2bgf
Posted

Hi,

My baby is now about 4 months old. I was told gluten ingestion or contact reactions would NOT affect the baby. HOwever, I know for a fact that everytime I had a reaction - I had about 6 during the pregnancy and I am careful - but everytime I had a reaction the baby "Freakedout" in the womb. For me, about 24 hrs after ingestion the baby would kick like crazy. Then the next day the baby barely moved at alll. Very scary. I had extra sonograms to check on the babies status.

Even now, if I ingest something bad for nursing, I pay for it with fussy bad day.

Be extremely careful to avoid gluten while pregnant, Learn your reaction, and count kicks. If you have problems, demand a sonogram to check the baby is ok.

That's my two cents. Best of luck!

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    • CC90
      Coeliac or not coeliac

      By CC90 · Posted

      Hi Cristiana   Yes I've had the biopsy results showing normal villi and intestinal mucosa.  The repeat endoscopy (requested by the gastro doc) would be to take samples from further into the intestine than the previous endoscopy reached.      
    • Wheatwacked
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      Transglutaminase IgA is the gold-standard blood test for celiac disease. Sensitivity of over 90% and specificity of 95–99%. It rarely produces false positives.  An elevated level means your immune system is reacting to gluten.  Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) does not typically cause high levels of tTG-IgA. Unfortunately the protocols for a diagnosis of Celiac Disease are aimed at proving you don't have it, leaving you twisting in the wind. Genetic testing and improvement on a trial gluten free diet, also avoiding milk protein, will likely show improvement in short order if it is Celiac; but will that satisfy the medical system for a diagnosis? If you do end up scheduling a repeat endoscopy, be sure to eat up to 10 grams of gluten for 8 - 12 weeks.  You want  to create maximum damage. Not a medical opinion, but my vote is yes.
    • trents
      Coeliac or not coeliac

      By trents · Posted

      Cristiana asks a very relevant question. What looks normal to the naked eye may not look normal under the microscope.
    • cristiana
      Coeliac or not coeliac

      By cristiana · Posted

      Hello @CC90 Can I just ask a question: have you actually been told that your biopsy were normal, or just that your stomach, duodenum and small intestine looked normal? The reason I ask is that when I had my endoscopy, I was told everything looked normal.  My TTG score was completely through the roof at the time, greater than 100 which was then the cut off max. for my local lab.  Yet when my biopsy results came back, I was told I was stage 3 on the Marsh scale.  I've come across the same thing with at least one other person on this forum who was told everything looked normal, but the report was not talking about the actual biopsy samples, which had to be looked at through a microscope and came back abnormal.
    • trents
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      My bad. I should have reread your first post as for some reason I was thinking your TTG was within normal range. While we are talking about celiac antibody blood work, you might not realize that there is not yet an industry standard rating scale in use for those blood tests so just having a raw number with out the reference scale can be less than helpful, especially when the test results are marginal. But a result of 87.4 is probably out of the normal range and into the positive range for any lab's scale. But back to the question of why your endoscopy/biopsy didn't show damage despite significantly positive TTG. Because they took the trouble to take seven samples, it is not likely they missed damage because of it being patchy. The other possibility is that there hasn't been time for the damage to show up. How long have you been experiencing the symptoms you describe in your first post? Having said all that, there are other medical conditions that can cause elevated TTG-IGA values and sometimes they are transient issues. I think it would be wise to ask for another TTG-IGA before the repeat endoscopy to see if it is still high.  Knitty kitty's suggestion of getting genetic testing done is also something to think about. About 35% of the general population will have one or both genes that are markers for the potential to develop active celiac disease but only about 1% of the population actually develop celiac disease. So, having a celiac potential gene cannot be used to definitively diagnose celiac disease but it can be realistically used to rule it out if you don't have either of the genes. If your symptoms persist, and all testing is complete and the follow-up endoscopy/biopsy still shows no damage, you should consider trialing a gluten free diet for a few months to see if symptoms improve. If not celiac disease, you could have NCGS (Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity). 
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