About the time we discovered Jake had food allergies, I started having problems of my own.  I was very excited one weekend when I successfully made Jacob a loaf of focaccia bread that did not have milk or eggs in it, just yeast, olive oil, and water along with sage from our garden.  It was the first loaf of bread I’d ever made and it tasted really good.  Jeremy and I both ate quite a few pieces.  A couple of days later I started having stomach issues, and because it runs in the family and I had just eaten a lot of bread, I immediately suspected I had celiac disease.

I started researching the symptoms of celiac disease which for some reason I had never done before.  For those of you who don’t know anything about celiac disease, it is an autoimmune disease that is triggered by eating gluten that is found in wheat, barley, and rye.  When someone with celiac disease eats wheat, barley or rye, their body’s immune system damages the lining of their small intestine causing inflammation and malabsorption of vitamins (if you would like more information see http://celiac.com).  I knew celiac could cause stomach problems and vitamin malabsorption but beyond that I did not know the symptoms.  When I started looking into it in the middle of the night while I was up with stomach issues, I was shocked at all of the symptoms that I have had at one point or another over the course of my life.  Things that I thought were just funny quirks about me were actually symptoms of celiac disease.  I am clumsy and accident prone, I bruise easily, my extremities “fall asleep” easily.   I’ve never had as much energy as some people I know, I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning and don’t usually feel rested when I do, and I was anemic when I was pregnant with Jacob.  I am sick often, I have had both bronchitis and tonsillitis that several rounds of antibiotics failed to cure. Just recently after having Jacob I was hungry and eating all of the time but continued to lose weight, which I attributed to breastfeeding, but I am now thinner than I have been since high school.  Even this is just a partial list of symptoms I have had.

The more I looked into celiac disease the more I was sure I had it.  I eventually found a gastroenterologist in Longmont and made an appointment with her to get checked out.  I stopped eating gluten for a few days and started feeling better, but when I made the appointment they told me to keep eating gluten so the tests they did on me would be accurate.  When I started eating wheat again, I started getting sick again.  When I went to see the doctor she thought there was a good chance I had celiac disease and ran a genetic test, antibody tests, as well as blood tests for vitamin deficiencies on me.  She also went ahead and scheduled and endoscopy for me which they use to confirm that you have celiac if the antibody test comes back positive.  I had the endoscopy before we even knew the results of the blood test and was then able to stop eating gluten.

Meanwhile Jeremy, Jacob and I attended a friend’s wedding in upstate New York.  While I was there I tried to avoid any food that obviously had wheat in it, but somewhere along the way must have ended up eating some.  The day we were supposed to fly back to Colorado I woke up with diarrhea, stomach cramps, abdominal pain, and nausea all at the same time.  My doctor’s appointment to go over the test results was the next day so I really wanted to make it back but it was a very rough day flying with a 15 month old on two flights and a short layover while feeling that sick.

The next day I went to the doctor and was not at all shocked when she said, “well, you have it.”  I have celiac disease, a vitamin D deficiency, and a vitamin B12 deficiency.  It may sound strange, but I was actually relieved to know that I had celiac disease.   Although changing my diet is tough, it is a disease that requires no medication, and when you change your diet the other symptoms for the most part disappear.

I have now been gluten free for about two weeks and I am already feeling a lot better.  There have been some ups and downs, but some days I wake up and have more energy than I have had in years.  I am excited to see what life without gluten will bring.   I have never known myself without my “quirks” like being clumsy and sleepy all of the time, and I am looking forward to seeing what I can do when I’m actually a normal healthy person for the first time ever.

Many of you have been wondering where we have been lately and what has been going on, so here is a two part story.  After Jacob turned one in July we were ready to wean him to cow’s milk.  We were very excited to start the process and I think the night we got home from our one year checkup we gave Jake a sippy cup full of it.  He spilled it on himself but drank it down like a good boy.  About 10 minutes later we noticed a rash on his hands, we thought maybe it was the cow’s milk, but we also thought it could be from the chicken pox vaccine he had also had that day.  Then he started getting very fussy so we decided to go on a walk to cheer him up.  About 30 minutes after he drank the milk he threw up.  That is when we really started to suspect he was allergic to it.

I called our pediatrician and made an appointment with an allergist.  Jacob did not get any dairy after our discovery while we waited a month and a half to see the allergist.  When we finally had our appointment, they did a skin prick test for Jacob.  I went by myself because Jeremy had an important meeting that day, and was horrified when not just one of the pricks on his back turned red, but half of his back was welted up.  The allergist came back and read his skin test and told me Jacob was not only allergic to milk, but was also allergic to eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish.

The good news is milk and egg allergies are usually outgrown, the peanut, tree nuts and fish allergies were small reactions and she thought they may not fully develop.  The one that she thought would stick with him for sure was shellfish, but living in Colorado, avoiding shellfish is not too hard.

So now we are just waiting to see what develops and trying to figure things out until then.  This means replacing butter with olive oil, adding cheese last minute to Jeremy and I’s food, and not eating dishes that are centered around dairy or eggs.  We have been avoiding pesto because of the nuts and cheese as well as fish dishes.  We have also been experimenting with various “milks” to give Jacob.  Unfortunately, they are fairly pricey, but he is starting to like some of them.  We buy him a variety of oat milk, soy milk, and rice milk, along with combinations of the three.  The challenge of weaning him with his food allergies and figuring out what to feed him has been taking up a large portion of our time along with some other issues we will tell you about in part 2.