slee

I agree with you. I'm sorry

My son likes the Dayia cheese-

He's been dairy free since 18 months- so it is very "normal" to him. He's almost 6 now.

He also likes the tofutti slices for things like grilled cheese, or on crackers, it's like the velveeta slices (to him anyway)

He also likes Veganella (sp?), it comes in a brick and you shred it yourself. The texture is kind of funny- so I'd recommend it only for things you are going to melt- like pizza. It melts better than most dairy free cheese though- and then the texture seems more normal.

He likes all of these, but I do agree- none of them taste like cheese we are used to. It takes some getting used to. Depending on how old your daughter is she may adjust quickly, or it may take longer.

We haven't had anyone think of it as just a cute bracelet. People notice it, because while it has cute beading etc., the plate you put info on is obviously a medical alert. It's worked out really well.

My son who is almost 6 wears one- and loves it. He thinks it's like his grandpa's. They even wear it on the same wrist.

They have lots of cute ones kids would love at Open Original Shared Link

My son has the cowboy one- it is super cute, has held up well, and he feels good about wearing it, and I feel better too.

I can't give you any good feedback on this one- but just wanted to say that we are facing the same decision. My son is due to start kindergarten in the fall and I'm just pulling my hair out- unable to decide what to do. We are considering all choices, public, private and homeschool. So- although I can't offer advice, I just wanted to say I am with you on this, and I'll be back to read people's replies. Oh- we're also considering the online public school option- my brother works for one. So it's interesting to hear that too.

Kids Kitchen makes those little microwave cups- and the beans and wieners are both gluten and dairy free.

Early on, I read a study that suggested 4-6 months was the ideal age to introduce gluten to reduce the risk of celiac. Others have quoted 6-9 months. You may want to do a little research into this and discuss it with her doctor. I have no advice for baby foods, but I'm watching this thread for ideas when my little one gets here.

I have never heard that, do you know where you heard it, or why it would reduce the risk?

And oh very nice that you have a good, breast feeding friendly doc! That's always a very comforting thing, when the doc knows what's going on, phew! We started out with a good one for our first baby, but then had to move and our second doc didn't have a clue. He was telling us completely incorrect things, like the fact that my baby was born big somehow meant I'd have to stop breastfeeding after a couple months.

Grrrr.

w

Thanks guys. You've all had great suggestions!

My little one really loves to pick up little pieces of things... it's so cute to watch her do this. She's not crawling yet, and doesn't even make an attempt, but boy, she's figured out the pincer grasp quite well, and is she ever proud of herself!

We are very lucky to have a great doctor for her it does make a huge difference!

I very much appreciate your ideas, experiences and knowledge! Thanks so much!!

Great post!

Wow- Thanks a lot guys!

I had thought that iron stores only lasted about 6 months... is that not true?

I am pretty lucky that my babies doctor is also a lactation consultant, and she's really great about breastfeeding...

Thanks so much to both of you for taking time to post I really appreciate it. I also love the ideas about the grains, and crackers! I'll have to give it a try!

Hi-

I've got a seven month old baby who loves to use her fingers to feed herself. We are not aware of any problems related to gluten just yet, however, due to celiac in the family her doctor would like her to wait until 12 months to eat anything containing gluten. We are having trouble coming up with good foods for self-feeding. Many small diced foods such as cooked carrots, bananas etc. are to slippery for her to pick up just yet. She likes "mum-mums" but we're looking for something smaller, so she can keep working on her pincer gasp. Thanks.

On another note- any ideas for foods with iron for her? Infant rice cereal makes her very constipated, and other baby cereals seem to be out due to gluten... infant cereal seems to be the best source of iron, so we'd really like a good source- she is breast feed, so doesn't get iron from formula.

I have been told that gluten does not travel through breast milk.

My son absolutely had trouble sleeping, waking up 8-10 times at night prior to diagnosis (18 months). After diagnosis he started waking up 3-4 times a night instead, and now sleeps through.

My 2 yr old is in the process of trying to figure out a diagnosis (gluten sensitivity vs celiac). He has GI symptoms but the issue that really got me started looking into all this was sleep. He was still waking 4-5 times a night at 18 months. I asked my pediatrician if it could be food-related and he said no, but I felt like I was seeing a connection and started googling. Anyway, as soon as I took him gluten (and dairy) free, he slept through the night. Instantly. But my pedi still says (as recently as 2 weeks ago) that he doesn't think sleep problems are a celiac/gluten-sensitivity symptom. He's more focused on the GI stuff. So I wanted to ask -- did any of your kids have sleep troubles before they were diagnosed?

Chakra2

Hi-

My son has also has ADHD. He was gluten free prior to medication. Although the gluten free diet helped a small amount, it didn't help very much, I think he just felt better. He's now been gluten free and on medication about 2 years. He also takes medication to help him sleep, due to a suspected sleep disorder, so it's not a bad idea to at least talk to your child's doctor about that. We did recently need to change medications, because he was doing worse on the old medicine. Now he's like a different child. I was so resistant to the idea of medication for so long, but now that we've found the correct medicine for him, he's still himself, but as odd as it sounds, even more himself. It's not the ADHD getting in the way. His conference we had last week was amazing, it's made such a difference in his life. People who don't know of this change keep commenting on the changes in him lately. I can see why you would want your son off medication, but it may not be related to the celiac at all and perhaps he's not on the right medication for him yet. It's worth finding the right one, and the right doctor to help. So, I guess my answer is that the gluten free diet did not change my child's need for medication.

First off - congrats on the upcoming little one!

Beyond that... I don't know of any cookbooks that cater to the gluten free bulk cooking method - but in the last little bit I HAVE been working out a few 'big cook' ideas that may help.

First off - if you haven't been there before Open Original Shared Link is a wonderful gluten free site (and I bought her resulting cookbook the day it came out) that is strictly crockpot cooking. I remember when my sil was pregnant how the crockpot kept my brother and she from starving! I've also found that once you find a recipe you like, it is often easy enough to put all the ingredients (barring pastas, rice, and potatoes) into freezer bags and keep those in the freezer ready to pop into the crockpot later. I made a LOT of bags of chicken dinners and the like for them - all they had to do was make some rice to serve alongside and possibly a salad.

Next - if you have a favorite baking recipe, its a cinch to make your own mixes of all the dry ingredients. One of the biggest time consumers I've found in gluten free baking is getting all the myriad of ingredients located, poured, and put away. When a recipe can have 15-20 ingredients it can be a serious pain! But if you are already dragging out the ingredients - go ahead and make baggies of more to keep in the cupboard (remember to include what it is, and the wet ingredients required!). Now that I have gotten into the habit, I can have muffins going into the oven 5 minutes after the craving hits.

Last (sorry to be a chatterbox) but the biggie really - most freezer meals really ARE easy to switch over to gluten free. Think casseroles: enchilada's made with corn tortillas freeze beautifully. You can even make your own home version of those fancy freezer bagged meals the store sells. For a simple stirfry kit? Easy peasy (takes a little time, but after the first its easy to go assembly line fashion!) Cut up the veggies you like - lay them out on a cookie sheet and flash freeze. Slice the meat or meat subs (thin strips of chicken, beef, tofu) and flash freeze those next. Mix the two sheets of goodies once everything is hard but seperate and store in dinner sized amounts in a freezer bag (I love my vacuum sealer with an unholy passion). If you sliced things thin, you won't even need to thaw before stirfrying, just dump into the pan. A simple sauce can be made after the food cooks - or you can go ahead and make batches of that, place in small bags inside the big main meal bags, and be ready to roll when the mood strikes.

Really the last, I promise. But somethings to keep in mind - freezing can dampen some flavors (you might want to ramp up the garlic and the spice) while others can go wonky (onions get stronger, oddly enough). Also - home freezers are not really set up for potatoes. Why? I have no clue. BUT if you want to make a freezer meal that needs potatoes (beef stew for example) you can either add them at the point in cooking OR buy a bag of the appropriate store bought potato goodie.

Hope this helps... and again - congrats on the baby!

Thanks so much! These are great ideas, and thanks for taking the time to pass them all on!!

This sounds so familiar! My son has been gluten-free about 2 years, but this started just before 18 months for us. His doctor suggested going gluten-free, which we did, later another doctor said we should not do this without testing- because he "needed" gluten in his diet. They tested him (off gluten) said he was fine- negative test.. because he was off gluten, at this time we hadn't realized how that worked, he got much worse, took him off again, then they wanted to retest, so we had to put him back on, I want to say it was 6 weeks, but it could have taken longer, he just got SO sick we couldn't keep doing it. They did the blood test in the ER because we couldn't get in to GI fast enough, they said we could now take him off gluten, so we did, once we got into GI they asked us to put him back on gluten for a couple of weeks (he'd only been off it for 2-3 weeks this time) in order to do an endoscopy/bioposy. When this was done, the results were inconclusive, but he did have low levels of all dissachradise enzymes, which doesn't happen without celiac, but wasn't enough for a true diagnosis, even though the doctors all have said they are convinced he's got it, but can't classicly diagnose without a conclusive endoscopy. They said the villi could have been healing which is why it didn't show up with a conclusive result... so, 2 weeks wasn't long enough. They told us had we not done the testing at this point he would have had to go back on for 6-12 months later in order to get the correct result (which if he were retested now would be what we would have to do), so I would suggest making sure you've given it enough time, otherwise you'll still end up in the spot of not really knowing. If my son wants to later confirm this the doctor said she would help him do so- but that she saw no reason to do so now. Anyways, guess that is a round about answer, but I think it varies by the amount of time off gluten in the first place, how quickly he may be healing (and negative results in kids under 3 can be very difficult to trust), I'd ask more than one opinion I think, it's hard to put your kid through this...

Hi-

I am expecting a baby in the next couple of months, and would really like to do some mega cooking/freezing prior to the birth. Prior to our family being gluten-free I had done this on several occasions with a very helpful cookbook that laid out the process, ingredients etc. Is there such a thing for the gluten-free diet that anyone knows of, or suggestions of how to do this. We also need to avoid egg and dairy due to allergies in the family, but I think I can manage those adjustments without a specific cookbook. Thanks.

Hi-

I've been wondering about a few things lately, and maybe someone can cast insight.

First, after being gluten free for awhile (my 2 year old, 6 year old and I), I'm noticing some more things I hadn't thought about at first. First off, shopping carts! When I put my 2 year old in a cart, very often I see crumbs from the cookies they give out in the bakery... so many stores do this, and if they don't, kids are often eating things the parents are buying. How do you keep your kid safe from this??

Second, we just bought a fish. I told my kids they could feed it... but didn't realize that fish food has gluten in it... any suggestions? Which leads to the guinea pig, I know that gluten free dog and cat food is out there, but what about guinea pig food? Can a guinea pig live on fruits and veggies, or is that bad?

Third, I'm having a heck of a time finding sunscreen! My little one is very sensitive and has many other allergies. Many that I know of that are gluten free would irritate him... I need something natural, so I searched out the burts bees kind, and it has wheatgrass in it, even though it says it's gluten free, I know it might really be considered so, but this scares me, so I don't want to use it. ANy suggestions?

Thanks.

I do think she could have another type of gluten intollerence other than celiac, and it is not impossible that she could have celiac itself, but unlikely... we have just finished testing here for our family, including genetic testing. Some of us had the genes, some did not. The doctor that developed the genetic tests is a GI doctor at our hospital, so I think the doctors here are more familiar with what it all means. We were told that it is "unlikely" that one would have celiac without the major celiac genes... however, unlikely doesn't sound like impossible to me! One of my sons had negative genes but they did a bioposy anyways because of all of his symptoms. It came back unconclusive, but they still haven't ruled it out because of some things that could have indicated villi healing in his bioposy... anyways, to make a long story short, celiac is not impossible, but unlikely, another type of gluten intollerence is a definate possibilitiy...

Just wondering if anyone knows a safe bubble bath. My 21 month old keeps saying "bubble" and pointing to the tub... I was told vitamin E is often gluten, and it's in a lot of bubble baths. Considering he often drinks the water... I certainly need a safe one Thanks.

I wish I could rememeber what they are called... but a parent just told me the other day (I'm a parent educator) that they not make underwear that is a step between pull-up and underwear. It looks like underwear but has a disposable liner... it might be an option. If he has a problem he can throw the liner, and put in a new one, and no one would know it wasn't regular underwear... like I said I wish I remembered what it is called, but look on the internet if interested and see if you can find them. Or see what the good-nights boxers are like.

I just wanted to tell you how this has worked out for my son... he was on and off gluten several times during testing, because he saw several different doctors, each who said when their test was complete he could go off gluten... in the end he had been off gluten for 3 weeks, the doctor told him to go back on for 2 weeks to do a bioposy (since he'd only been off 3 weeks) He was miserable the whole time. She said if the diarrhea came back they should be able to see it on bioposy, but in the end things were inconclusive. The bioposy itself looked okay, but his disaccharidase levels were down, which can indicate healing of the villi. I think that this was due to him being gluten free until just 2 weeks before the bioposy. My son is 21 months, so not to far off the age of yours, it's such a hard call... my son showed positive dietary response 4 times on and off gluten, and got sick right away each time back on... I wouldn't be convinced 1 week is enough... I might look further into that.

My son just had a bioposy 2 weeks ago, and they also tested his disaccharidase levels, which were all low. They said this can indicate healing of the villi, or it could be a primary problem in itself.... the disaccharidase eneymes are lactase, sucrase, maltase and palatinase. These enzymes can affect how one digests things such as sugar, lactose etc. My son's doctor says we need to watch carefully because they could heal as the body heals, or it could be a seperate problem... so to answer your question it could be he is lacking the normal amounts of a specific (or all) of these enzymes, or it could be that they are low yet due to the celiac and they will get better. My son's doctor said to avoid any large amounts of sugar, and if he keeps having trouble off the gluten it could be also an issue with this. They can take a sample while doing the bioposy, I think that is the only way to do it. You can look for more info online about disaccharidase deficiency.