Day 1 Gluten Free

Today is Caroline's first full day on her gluten free diet. Joel went to the grocery store last night and bought all manner of gluten-free items, some of which are ready to use (waffles, Chex cereal, bread, chicken fingers), and some of which are less ready to use (pizza dough mix, chocolate chip cookie dough mix, etc). Her first gluten free lunch involved gluten-free chicken fingers, gluten free graham crackers, and fruit. Whether or not she liked it/ate it remains to be seen when I pick her up from day care later. Tonight we might see what she thinks of gluten-free macaroni and cheese ;)

We met with her GI doctor and a nutritionist this afternoon, the main purpose of which was to go over the lists of things she can and cannot eat, what to look for on food labels at the grocery store, etc. It turns out there is a lot more than the obvious bread/pasta kind of stuff that may contain gluten -- canned soups, salad dressings, marinades, seasoning packets, lunch meats, chewing gum, etc. So pretty much everything we buy that's not a fresh fruit or vegetable will require reading the label carefully and perhaps calling the manufacturer  to ask, for example if the "dextrin" listed on the label is wheat dextrin or corn dextrin. Ugh.

Besides that, there is not much to do. She needs to have a follow-up blood test in 6 months to make sure her levels of gluten antibody have gone down. Otherwise, as long as she remains on a gluten free diet her symptoms should all go away and she should start gaining weight again and be perfectly healthy. As long as she's having no more problems and doing well on the diet, she only needs to be seen by the GI doctor once a year.

I also ordered a couple of books from Amazon -- Real Life with Celiac Disease and Gluten Free Recipes for Kids which I hope will be helpful.