My Gluten-Free Girly

For the past few years, my daughter has complained of belly pains. At first we thought it was normal kid complaints, until it became something much more than that.

What started off as seemingly minor belly aches, developed into something so painful that my daughter would thrash around in her sleep, crying. It was awful. This landed us in emerg, with bloodwork, x-rays and nothing more than a note to give her Restorolax daily, until things improved. Her pains were always written off as constipation, but not once did a medical doctor suggest what might be the cause of the problem.

The routine of her being "ok", then minor pains starting, then the pain getting worse and then ending up back in emerg, became a regular routine. Every single time, the emerg doctor, our family doctor and a pediatrician, all said "give her Restorolax and she'll be cleaned out in a couple of days". This was true, but then the problem would start all over again and STILL, no one would get into what might be causing this.

After dealing with this serious problem, for longer than I would like to admit, I took matters into my own hands...since we weren't getting anywhere otherwise. I decided to do a food elimination with her. The first obvious choice was to remove gluten and see how she made out.

Initially, we were going to try two weeks completely off gluten and really closely monitor her reaction. Her biggest concern was, "What will I do at birthday parties?! I won't be able to eat any cake!". It struck me as funny that this could be her biggest concern, but at the same time, I felt sad that she was sad.

Do you know how many things gluten is in?! Even things like bouillon has gluten! I discovered this while making her a list of what she could and could not eat, just to make sure we were completely avoiding gluten. Anyway, in only a few shorts days of going gluten-free, her belly pains were gone. Not just improved, but gone. This stupid ingredient had been the culprit for causing my little girl so much pain for years.

My daughter is about a month in to being completely gluten-free. She goes to school with a smile on her face, not a frown because her belly is hurting. She stays in school every day, all week long, because she doesn't have any pains. It feels like such a weight has been lifted and other than bringing her own gluten-free cupcake to parties, there have been very few frustrations for her along the way.

If I have learned anything from this experience, it is this- medical doctors would benefit greatly from taking Holistic Nutrition studies during their medical degree. If their solutions to problems were more than just a band-aid approach, I feel confident that we would have a much healthier, happier population. Finally, mom sometimes DOES know best.