Hi. I have a 3 year old daughter. When she was between 1 and 2 years old she started having lots of yucky diarreha's every day. They started getting more and more watery and grainy... super hard to clean off of her. She also would cry every time she pooped. At first I thought it was a milk allergy because she had just transitioned from a bottle of formula to milk, but her formula was milk based and she never had a problem. The only other thing she had a lot of every day was wheat. So I (mostly) took it out of her diet and she stopped having so many "blow outs" and seemed to be in less pain. At her 2 year well baby check I mentioned it to her ped. and he did a celiac test on her, which came back negative. I'm thinking though.. that because she was mostly off of wheat/gluten that might have messed up the reading of the test. What do you all think? Should she be tested again? She has to go back to the doctor in March for a development check (she is behind in her language skills and slightly also in some motor skills), should I put her fully back on gluten before that and ask for another test? My only hesitation to that is she goes to preschool and I don't want her teachers to have to deal with the messy poop. (She is being potty trained, but the pooping before seemed to happen suddenly and with no control) She currently is not entirely gluten free. With the holidays she's been eating a few "regular" cookies.. some she's sneaked off the counter though, at Gramma's! She has been having a bit of running poop, but not sure if it's the gluten, or the cold she has. She's also a really picky eater, any suggestions for food would also be welcome. She lives on hot dogs, practically! She's very resistant to try anything that looks different.

Hope that makes sense... and thanks for any input.

Erin

Erin:

I have never had a child with this situation. It is just me and I'm 51. But.......

Try going gluten free for her and she will never know.

Kiddy food:

Hot dogs - Oscar Meyer, Hebrew National, Hillshire Farms sandwish meats (always check the labels)

Kraft Singles

Wheat Free Eggo's

Eggs

All Fresh Fruit

Yoplait Yogurt

Jiff Peanut Butter, All Smuckers/Polander Jellies

gluten-free Rice Cakes

M&M's

My suggestion is to try her on a total gluten diet. She will not be able to go to pre-school without a diaper. She is too young to handle her urges by herself as young and distracted as a two year old can be. She is so young, she won't ever know that she was on a specific diet. They she will eat what she is used to.

And be very specific about her caretakers about her diet. It truley will be beneficial to them as well

I know that other mothers in your same position will post, but I wish you well and best of luck with your baby sweet thing.

I think that the choice really is yours to make as far as testing goes. Do you need a formal diagnosis to motivate you to go completely gluten-free? It can be tough battling the urge to blow this off as a temporary intolerance or perhaps as something else entirely. My dd also tested negative on the blood panel, but like you, I had taken her off of most glutens (though not all and she'd had some the day of the blood test). Personally, once we went completely gluten-free, I didn't feel that I needed the biopsy to confirm anything as the result would have been the same....going on diet. But I struggle with that decision very often and can totally understand why someone would want to have that done!

As far as going back on glutens and dealing with preschool.....would you be willing to wait until summer to do all of this so that your dd wouldn't have to deal with a potentially embarassaing situation and the teacher wouldn't have the mess to deal with? Plus, you'd see for yourself just how strong the reaction was. Just a thought. It's hardly ever convenient to do this, is it?

And as far as picky eating goes.....that's a tough one. If your dd is not gluten-free and she is a celiac or gluten-sensitive, I'd imagine that she is making the connection between food and not feeling well. My dd did this at the age of 12 months. When the glutens completely came out, her appetite came back with a vengeance and she began to really eat! lol!! She eats almost anything we put in front of her now. So it can get better.

Good luck to you. Hope all goes well no matter what route you take!

I can not stress this enough....please, please, please don't put her back on gluten right now! I'm not trying to sound like an alarmist or anything, but if she is already behind in her language skills and motor skills, I would bet you anything it is because of the gluten. And it will only get worse the longer she is on it. The reason I am so adamant about this, is b/c we are dealing with major developmental delays in my daughter. She has been gluten free for 9 months, and has only made minimal progress in this area. Gluten takes up to a year to clear the body, and can be neurologically toxic to some children.

You have her entire childhood to try a gluten challenge....I personally think the best plan of action would be to keep her 100% gluten free, at least until she is past this critical stage of brain development. If someone had told me we would be dealing with such significant delays, I would have cut out gluten immediately, no matter what test results we had. I just hope our experience can help someone else........the physical symptoms are relatively easy to deal with compared to the neurological implications, but you don't get much info about that.

As far as the actual diet goes....your daughter will adjust amazingly well at this age. If you wait until she is older, it will be much more of a challenge. We don't spend alot of specialty foods, we mainly buy mainstream gluten-free food that you can get at the regular store. I do buy gluten-free Pantry mixes for cookies, pancakes and brownies though. My daughter is not big on bread, so I only buy that occasionally.

She eats alot of fruit (this may be hard on the tummy at first) and veggies, rice, potatoes and beans (Bush Baked beans are a fav). Breakfast is always pancakes or muffins, or eggs and bacon. For lunch and dinner, Emmie usually just eats a meat w/veggie and sweet potatoes or mashed red potatoes. I also make taco salad which all the kids love, or meatloaf. Every now and then we'll have spaghetti with Tinkyada noodles.

OH, Tinkyada elbow noodles are awesome for mac n cheese, we use Velveeta. And don't feel bad, my kids eat alot of hot dogs too! It's not the healthiest thing I know...but I figure since they eat pretty darn healthy otherwise, and hardly ever eat any fast food, it's allright!

Good luck with everything....I'm sure others will have excellent meal ideas, this board is a gold mine of information and a key to survival in the beginning stages of the diet. Even our pedi GI recommended it, which I thought was great.

Thank you to those who have answered my first post already! I think I like the idea of waiting a while (maybe even a few years!) before having her retested. I think the developmental delay issue is a valid point. Sheesh, nothing can be easy, can it? LOL I did get her to eat some gluten-free chicken nuggets I found. I was so excited, my mom laughed at me. Will have to try and scope out the gluten-free corn dogs too, that I saw on another post. I did just get a cookbook for Christmas, so hoping to try out some new things and hope that if she sees everyone eating them, she'll try too. She loves fruit, not too big on veggies, but I try.

Okay.. thanks again.. I look forward to learning a lot here.. in fact, I already have.

Oh.. one more question... how big of a deal is having non- food gluten free items..things you aren't going to be ingesting? I've seen some stuff on soap and make-up on the boards.. isn't it just about eating gluten? Or am I totally in the dark about another aspect of it?

Erin

Lisa,

Are you referring to gluten free waffles? I have never seen "Wheat-free Eggo's" before -- and even then, are they gluten free>

Also, when dealing with Peanut butter, jellly, really any jarred condomint, you have to have one that is "gluten free" and one that is not (knife contamination from spreading on the bread)

Just trying to help...

Hi Erin,

Lotion, hair spray, lipstick - anything that can get on your hands or hers and then into her mouth is a potential contaminator, including toys like playdough (which has gluten). At this age, basically everything gets into their mouths. Luckily for us, there are many mainstream (and not) gluten-free lotions and potions Just gotta read labels....

Merika