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Food Allergy
Introducing gluten to diagnose celiac?
This is my first time posting here.
LO is just over a year old. My DH and his mom (LO's dad and grandma) both have celiac disease. I do not have celiac, and as such do not eat an exclusively gluten-free diet. I breastfeed LO (and plan to continue for a while longer). But when it comes to solids, she has only eaten gluten-free foods. Our pedi said she has a 10% chance of having celiac, so we wanted to err on the side of caution.
We're at a point now where I'd prefer to have a firm answer on LO's celiac status. However, our pedi said we need to feed her gluten-filled products for 3-6 months before we can have her tested. She hasn't had a single health issue in her whole life, so I'm hesitant to possibly introduce a problem where once currently doesn't exist.
But, then I realized (and I don't know why I didn't think of this before now) I don't know if gluten pass through breastmilk. Could she already be exposed to it? If so, does the gluten in breastmilk affect the body differently than gluten directly digested from food?
I'd love to hear anyone's experience with diagnosing an infant or toddler with celiac disease. Thanks for your input!
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Re: Introducing gluten to diagnose celiac?
A baby with Celiac, or with non-celiac gluten intolerance, may or may not react to the breastmilk of a woman ingesting gluten. So that one's a tossup. Here's a recent article about this exact topic:
https://glutendoctors.blogspot.com/2012/08/when-is-it-safe-to-introduce-gluten-to.html
DS is 15 months and he was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance at 9 months. At that point the only gluten he was exposed to was via my breastmilk. Like the PP said, it depends on the child, and breastmilk can actually protect a potentially celiac child from the effects until they start ingesting it on their own. So, it really is a toss-up.
However, if you start feeding your LO gluten, and she does have some kind of sensitivity, you will know it within a week or two based on my experience and research. We first discovered it with DS when he was diagnosed "failure to thrive" because he stopped gaining and actually started losing weight. All the tests for allergies and sensitives came back negative, but I cut gluten out of my diet entirely and his stomach aches, diarrhea and weight loss stopped within 2 weeks. He gained 2 lbs in two weeks after that and kept going until he was back on the weight charts.
But, another problem is that celiac can be asymptomatic, or the person can carry the genes but the disease doesn't become "activated" until later in life. It's a rough road.
I hope this helps! GL to you!
Baby #2 | BFP 5.18.12 | "Baby January" lost to us 5.30.12
Baby #3 | BFP 7.25.12 | Peter Timothy due 4.7.13
My niece has Celiac. She didn't have any problems with BM as far as anyone knows of.
We found out she has celiac when she was 4, that was after lots of testings that they couldn't find the solution to. She was having pooping issues. Finally they went to the hospital due to stomach pain and that's what got them looking in the right direction to find out what exactly was wrong.
BFP #1 on cycle 19, 6/13/09, blighted ovum discovered on 8/3/09
BFP #2 3/1/10 yay for seeing the baby and seeing hb at 6w! Found at on 4/26/10 that the baby had stopped growing at 7w
BFP #3 11/19/11
Baby Boy Bruce born 7/21/12
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Strangely enough, the same for my neice. She never went to the hospital, but after seeking numerous medical docs she went to a nutritionist who took her off gluten. Sadly she is 9 and lived with stomach aches and chronic constipation for all of her life. Huge difference in the 6 months she has been off gluten.