Oldest'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.

We dropped oldest off at a week long sleep-away camp this past weekend - hard to believe our squishy little baby is already over half-grown and has no issue with going off for fun and games away from home for a whole week.  I'm not adjusting nearly so well.  We're really thankful the camp we send him to works really hard with us to be sure he's provided with wholesome gf food while he's there.  He was sort of their test case last year, and now this year there are at least 4 other campers with food allergies or sensitivities.  Plus, in a bit of irony, the camp chef was diagnosed with gluten intolerance so now she's a pro at fixing gf fare.  Woohoo!

Unfortunately for oldest, we didn't catch his gluten sensitivity until after we figured out youngest had an issue.  (I know, bad bad parents!)  As a baby and young child, he had relatively few issues that would raise red flags and being relatively uneducated about food allergies at this point, we didn't clue in to a possible food link.  Probably the biggest problem we dealt with was constipation, sometimes boarding on severe.  The year we lived in Slovakia saw this as a fairly major issue, probably because his diet, while high in fiber, was based on a lot of bread and wheat products as was part of the culture.  He would literally go up to a week, sometimes longer, between bowel movements and only after using large doses of fiber.  He also had sleep issues, often waking multiple times in the night.  We treated the symptoms but never found a root cause.

After we discovered youngest's severe gluten allergy and the whole family went gluten-free, oldest's issues cleared up almost immediately.  It was a big head-slap, light bulb moment for us.  Over time and a little experimentation we've found oldest can tolerate small amounts of gluten once in a great while - so for example if he stays at his grandparent's house or goes out of eat, he can choose to have a sandwich with gluten-full bread or one of his grandma's famous chocolate chip cookies.  His sensitivity seems to be more cumulative so if he eats gluten on a daily basis over a period of time he will experience stomach virus type symptoms such as throwing up or diarrhea (no fun).  As a result, he prefers to not eat gluten and save those little indulgences for special occasions.



Oldest's  symptoms:

• Seemed mild in nature, almost "sleeper" symptoms
• Severe constipation
• Multiple night-wakings