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

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

Why?

My father has developed a theory ~ he believes gluten-free qualifies as the new fad, the current rage, the "it" diet of the moment.  Sort of like low-fat, high-carb was in the the '70's (for those of you who remember) and low-carb, high-fat was in the '90's.  At the risk of sounding sacrilegious in the GF community, I tend to agree with Dad.  I know, I know how could I possibly think gluten-free eating is a fad, especially when I'm feeding a family where 3 out of the 4 people and the dog all have issues with gluten?  Please bear with me in this thinking: our culture does tend to be fad eaters, jumping on the current newest and coolest eating phenomena, and as gluten-free has gained traction in the last couple of years, it tends to fall into the "newest eating craze" category for a lot of people.  And all I can say is, THANK GOD!  As GF living has stepped into the lime-light it's resulted in more eating options for people who, for the sake of their health, HAVE to eat gluten-free.  It's also caused more people to really examine their diets to see if their health issues might be related to something they are ingesting.  And it's resulted in more knowledge about the very real problem of gluten-sensitivity in all it's forms which has led to the beginning of more tolerance and understanding.

In my humble opinion gluten-free eating is good for everyone even if you don't deal with a gluten-sensitivity, intolerance or Celiac's Disease.  Eating gluten-free forces you to be more intentional about your food choices, to consider the ingredients in the food you consume.  Out of necessity, you tend to eat a more whole-foods diet and less empty calories when you're gluten-free.  Can't really see the bad in any of that.

We've been a gluten-free family for almost six years.  Not by choice, no.  Heck, six years ago we were clueless about gluten-free living and were fairly uneducated about food allergies and intolerances.  Oh, we'd heard of them, of course, but they were something that happened to OTHER people, not something we grappled with on a daily basis.  But when our youngest son started having health and behavioral issues after being introduced to solid foods, the search for a possible food culprit began.  Thankfully our amazing nautropathic doctor zeroed in on gluten being the possible cause, and after several weeks of an elimination diet, we confirmed youngest had a severe sensitivity to gluten (possibly Celiac's). As we made the transition to GF living we discovered my husband and oldest son had sensitivity as well.  In fact, I strongly suspect my husband's 20+ year old Crohn's Disease diagnosis is potentially incorrect and instead he's Celiac.  Personally, I do not have issues with gluten but choose to eat gluten-free because it's easier than preparing a separate, gluten-filled meal, makes it less likely to cross-contaminate my guys' gluten-free food, and frankly, I just feel a whole lot better when I stay away from the stuff.

Whatever your reason for eating gluten-free or for investigating the gluten-free lifestyle, welcome to the journey.