So, I've been meaning to write this for a while, but here we are, November already. Around April or May Nadia started complaining that her stomach was hurting. This was nothing new. We've been giving her chamomile tea for that since she was about 1 here and there, and it always seemed to help. When she started complaining more frequently, I thought she just wanted more tea because she really likes it, but she would usually say "No, my tummy really hurts, I don't just want tea to drink". I started trying to figure out if it was something new she had eaten or if she had gotten dairy somewhere. I couldn't figure it out. Meanwhile, she had worked up to needing "tummy tea" every day. Then is was several times a day. Then it was all day every day and she didn't want the tea any more. I had asked a few people about their experiences with gluten intolerance and Celiac disease. It seemed like that COULD be the problem, but it seemed strange that the symptoms would appear so suddenly. Finally one Friday afternoon, after the all day every day thing had been going on for about a week, I told Ricky I was going to put her on a gluten free diet over the weekend and if she wasn't better by Monday I was taking her to the doctor. Sunday morning she asked for tea because her tummy hurt--ONCE.
The rest of the week she got better and better. She stopped having borderline diarrhea all the time (literally). She was eating better. She was eating more. We decided to do GF for Aidan, too, just to make life easier since they eat all the same things. One day after being gluten-free for a few months, they both unintentionally had something that had gluten in it. They BOTH got sick. So, now we know both kids need to be gluten free. And we also know that I'm relearning how to cook.
The picture is Aidan eating gnocci (little pasta-like balls) with chopsticks, right before we started doing GF with him. I think this was his last meal before.
