Youngest's Story

In our family's war on gluten, the members are represented by two distinct but equally important sides, the mother who makes the food and the boys who eat it.  Here are their stories.

Thought last into the family, youngest with his more obvious signs of distress was the first to alert us to our gluten issues. After a glorious six-months of chowing from the mom buffet, we started introducing a few solid foods to youngest's diet. Being as he was satisfied with his exclusively breast-fed gig, he resisted. Plus he's an independent soul and having a spoon with gooey mush of undetermined origin shoved in his face was not his idea of a satisfying meal. Around 8ish months solid foods finally took off but he ONLY wanted finger-foods he could feed to himself, thankyouverymuch. Cheerios and small toast pieces, being among the first finger-foods oldest had mastered, started regularly showing up on youngest's highchair tray. And almost immediately our sweet, happy, willful little guy changed into a cranky, unhappy baby that was difficult to console. In addition, his formerly excellent sleep patterns became erratic which meant our baby was becoming crazily sleep deprived as were mama and daddy ~ not a happy combination. We chalked it up to teething or a growth spurt or just a stage, but when the eczema skin rash appeared and quickly started spreading, it finally dawned on us that we might be dealing with a food allergy.

Our amazing naturopathic pediatrician agreed the first place to look would be foods; she suggested investigating dairy, gluten and possibly eggs as a starting place.  Since we don't do a lot of dairy in our family, youngest had yet to be exposed to any (whew!) which made the task of figuring out what the culprit was that much easier.  We decided to start with wheat/gluten and did a three-week elimination diet, a period of time long enough for his body to completely cleanse itself of the gluten and the side-effects to disappear.  Within a few days of being gluten-free his rash dramatically improved and he was sleeping better.  At the end of three weeks we re-introduced gluten by allowing him a single slice of bread and that night he woke up EVERY hour fussing and the next day an eczema rash reappeared on his leg.  Obviously gluten was the problem. 

As a result, we made the tough choice to go gluten-free as a family.  We considered making youngest separate gluten-free meals using gluten-free substitutes while the rest of us continued eating our gluten-full meals, but the thought of creating multiple dishes at every meal and successfully avoiding cross-contamination was daunting (and exhausting) to contemplate.  By going gluten-free as a family we could insure his continued health and make my job as head chef less complicated.  It ended up being the best (accidental) health decision we ever made as it led to the discovery that the husband and oldest also had gluten issues.

We'll share their stories in the weeks to come.


Youngest's symptoms:

• eczema skin rash, rapidly spreading
• change in temperament from happy & content to cranky & sometimes inconsolable
• Multiple night wakings, often hourly (*yawn!*)
• Occasional stomach upset