Gluten Free Mamas, UNITE!

[lemurkinsmommy]

Originally Posted by crystalanne79 A question for you Americans.....do you know what brand of hot dogs are gluten free, if any? We used to have a brand up here but now they have changed and are no longer gluten free. I'm planning a trip to the US in August and would love to bring some back for the freezer for when we have camp fires.

We're Canadian too apparently the Angus beef topdogs have no fillers in them, we got a pack and tried them and I didn't react to them. They might be a limited time thing or something like that, we haven't really looked for them again lately but worth looking into

[Doodlebrainette]

Well, if dd2 continues to sleep, I'll try to get my story done.

I've had problems with eating out as long as I can remember. If I ate out more than 2-3 meals, I'd get sick on my stomach and then spend the next day in the bathroom. At home, I ate a fairly whole foods diet, still loaded with wheat, but not the grease. We all assumed it was the grease related. Fast forward to about 4 years ago, I noticed that every time I ate out, if it wasn't a salad, I would get sick.

I had an online friend that told me it might be gluten, but I was determined that didn't make sense. I took soy out of my diet and improved some. Then dairy seemed to aggravate me. So out came dairy. I started getting better when gluten started in. I can still remember the weekend I decided to go gluten free. I literally sat on the toilet (TMI here) crying for about 3 hours. Not because I was going GF....because I was in so much pain. Going GF wasn't hard after that.

I started the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to give my body time to heal. Worked like a charm. Within weeks, I was feeling great and losing weight. Eight weeks into the diet, I found out I was pg with dd2. I wasn't sure how I would do with such a limited diet and pregnancy, since among other concerns, I'm diabetic during pregnancy. So I went back to normal eating and avoiding gluten as best I could. Then the nausea hit me. The only thing that temepered it was sourdough bread. I did my best to eat the "low gluten" gluten foods for my pregnancy and did fairly well. Of course, that just made my day. I decided that I would be able to always be "low gluten."

After dd2 was born (Feb), that all changed. Within a few weeks, I was at my worst again. I toyed around with how much gluten I could tolerate until that May, when I realized I had to give it up for good. June 1, I did just that. In August, I realized I couldn't eat dairy either. So out that went. I just celebrated my 1 year GF anniversary this past June and am coming up on my 1 year DF anniversary next month.

I'm still getting sick, but not as severly or as often. So now I'm working on getting gluten out of my life....cosmetics, handling it, etc. I really hope that does the trick. Some days are really hard, but I don't regret it for one minute. Now if I could just get a real tasting GF/DF pizza.....

And I only had to nak for the last 2 paragraphs!

[Jewelgurl137]

Hi....I'm a most likely gluten free mama. My DS barely ate any food as a baby. He would only nurse. At 2 years old when he weaned he started eating but got diarrhea more often, tummy aches, and really quit growing. He went from 98 percentile to like 25 percentile in weight and height. Anyways, I took him off dairy cuz I knew it affected him, then soy milk made him REALLY sick so we took him off soy. He was still having problems though so I took him off gluten too really as a fluke. He finally started growing, sleeping at night, and etc. The dr. THEN did blood tests for allergies and celiacs but he'd been off of gluten for 3 weeks at that point. They all came back negative. We kept him off it all for over a year though, but he got back on it while we were in limbo living with family while closing on our house cuz he kept eating dough while my dad baked bread. We all tried to keep him from doing that, but he didn't seem to have any issues. NOW he is again though, so I'm going to take him to a pediatrician who deals with lots of kids with allergies and etc to get an answer. I'm hoping to get him a skin allergy test and a blood test for celiacs again (while he is on gluten) before he starts preschool this fall, cuz he has lost 1 pound in the last 7 months and grew only 1/2 an inch. I think it isn't ok but everyone else just says he is a petite boy. No....I know he needs some help. Diarrhea 1-2 times a day isn't normal. ((SIGH))

Any advice from you mamas?

[The Fancy Pansy]

Julia - Definitely sounds like gluten might be the cause of your DS's troubles! Just know that a negative blood test doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's very common to have a negative blood test. Mine was negative, so heaven knows I don't put much stock in them.

[artemis33]

Originally Posted by crystalanne79 A question for you Americans.....do you know what brand of hot dogs are gluten free, if any? We used to have a brand up here but now they have changed and are no longer gluten free. I'm planning a trip to the US in August and would love to bring some back for the freezer for when we have camp fires.

Applegate Farms - a variety of GF meats
Some of Hempler's meat products

I am only recently GF due to a sensitive nursling, though I have been aspiring to a mostly GF/grain free/primal lifestyle for a while...so it is better this way! This website has great info for grain free living, which is helpful even if you still incorporate some GF grains (as I do, at least for now )

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

[BerryBlues]

Hello everyone! I'm not celiac, but wheat allergic. Never the less, I'm gluten free just the same. Nice to see a thread dedicated to us GF families.

[The Fancy Pansy]

[momtoGcubed]

Thanks for all the links, ladies! I'm just starting to work on cutting gluten out of DD's diet (and the rest of ours at the same time). She was recently diagnosed with Sensory Integration dysfunction, and a lot of research points towards a GF diet helping with that.

[justineybean]

Hi mamas,
Until I discovered my son's sensitivity to gluten and soy shortly before he turned 2, he had never had regular solid poops. He also threw up, not just spit up, a LOT as a baby while I was nursing him but since he was growing, no one mentioned to me that he might have a sensitivity to something I was eating. I feel so guilty. Why could I have not figured that out on my own?

I was amazed to see how quickly his digestive issues could resolve if I stuck to a good GF/SF diet for him. I would like to cut back on dairy as well but his sensitivity to soy is much worse than dairy (found this out trying to give him soy milk which made his symptoms much worse and then switching back to cow's milk which helped). Here is a good, pretty comprehensive GF/CF/SF site related to ASD:

http://gfcf-diet.talkaboutcuringautism.org/index.htm

They have information about getting started, staying on a budget, eating healthy, recipes/menu planning, and why it can be helpful for kids with ASD and digestive issues (I think it would be helpful to anyone though).

Thanks for starting this thread!!

[The Fancy Pansy]

Originally Posted by momtoGsquared Thanks for all the links, ladies! I'm just starting to work on cutting gluten out of DD's diet (and the rest of ours at the same time). She was recently diagnosed with Sensory Integration dysfunction, and a lot of research points towards a GF diet helping with that.

Originally Posted by justineybean Hi mamas, Until I discovered my son's sensitivity to gluten and soy shortly before he turned 2, he had never had regular solid poops. He also threw up, not just spit up, a LOT as a baby while I was nursing him but since he was growing, no one mentioned to me that he might have a sensitivity to something I was eating. I feel so guilty. Why could I have not figured that out on my own? I was amazed to see how quickly his digestive issues could resolve if I stuck to a good GF/SF diet for him. I would like to cut back on dairy as well but his sensitivity to soy is much worse than dairy (found this out trying to give him soy milk which made his symptoms much worse and then switching back to cow's milk which helped). Here is a good, pretty comprehensive GF/CF/SF site related to ASD: http://gfcf-diet.talkaboutcuringautism.org/index.htm They have information about getting started, staying on a budget, eating healthy, recipes/menu planning, and why it can be helpful for kids with ASD and digestive issues (I think it would be helpful to anyone though). Thanks for starting this thread!!

Thank you for the link!