Struggling with bowel issues in DD, can anyone help?

[justme&my3+1]

My dd is 4 1/2. For about a year she has been experiencing strange GI issues that her doctor can't seem to figure out and I am at the end of my rope.

She has many days when she wakes up vomiting and will do so most of the day. She will be tired and won't want to get out of bed. This happens about 3-4 days a week. The other days she is a perfectly normal 4 year old.

Her ped thought she might be lactose intolerant so we took her off milk and dairy products (cheese etc.) and put her on soy milk. That seemed to help and reduced her bad days down to once a week or so. 5 months later it all came back.

Now she has a new symptom. Her stools are almost white and float strangely. She complains of her belly hurting a lot but doesn't vomit as much as she used to.

She is VERY pale and thin (she is 30 lbs.) yet she is not a picky eater and seems to eat ok. She just LOOKS ill. Dark circles under her eyes etc.

Also this past year she has become a very difficult child to say the least. Her behavior has done a complete 180. She has a very short temper and just doesn't seem to care about respecting people anymore.

She had a CBC ran and that was fine. Her ped finally referred her to a ped GI specialist. I just hope this new doctor can help in any way as of right now I think her ped thinks I must be crazy.

I am just looking for any suggestions on things I can do to see if she is having an allergic reaction to something she is eating or what.

Could this possibly just be normal?

I appreciate any insight on this.

[deditus]

No, white stool on a regular basis is NEVER normal. I suspect the first thing the ped gi will do is test for celiac disease.

[mamafish9]

Yup on celiac. Often people with celiac who have inflamed guts react to dairy/soy as well, but gluten is the primary irritant (and once that is removed, sometimes they can go back to dairy, etc).
Here's a couple basic links:

http://pediatrics.about.com/od/disea...celiac_dis.htm
http://www.e-celiacs.org/2-Celiac_Di...n_Children.htm

[justme&my3+1]

Originally Posted by mamafish9

Yup on celiac. Often people with celiac who have inflamed guts react to dairy/soy as well, but gluten is the primary irritant (and once that is removed, sometimes they can go back to dairy, etc).
Here's a couple basic links:

http://pediatrics.about.com/od/disea...celiac_dis.htm
http://www.e-celiacs.org/2-Celiac_Di...n_Children.htm

The first link said that testing for celiac are blood tests. Doesn't a CBC include everything? He said the CBC was fine (although he did say "there is nothing on the blood tests that are too alarming").

Thank you for the links. I really hope it's not celiac because it seems there is gluten in everything!

Does anyone here have a child with celiac?

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by justme&my3+1

The first link said that testing for celiac are blood tests. Doesn't a CBC include everything? He said the CBC was fine (although he did say "there is nothing on the blood tests that are too alarming").

Thank you for the links. I really hope it's not celiac because it seems there is gluten in everything!

Does anyone here have a child with celiac?

Celiac isn't included on a CBC - that's a separate group of tests. The pale floating stool is classic fat malabsorption, which is very likely caused by celiac or other gut damage.

My dd doesn't have celiac that I know of, but she reacted to gluten through my milk and has never eaten it directly. Gluten is a really, really common trigger even without celiac disease, so most of us here are gluten free.

[justme&my3+1]

Originally Posted by whoMe

Celiac isn't included on a CBC - that's a separate group of tests. The pale floating stool is classic fat malabsorption, which is very likely caused by celiac or other gut damage.

My dd doesn't have celiac that I know of, but she reacted to gluten through my milk and has never eaten it directly. Gluten is a really, really common trigger even without celiac disease, so most of us here are gluten free.

ah I see. Is it hard finding foods without gluten? Is there a list of what can be eaten lol

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by justme&my3+1

ah I see. Is it hard finding foods without gluten? Is there a list of what can be eaten lol

celiac.com has some good resources. We cook most stuff from scratch, and so it's not hard at all to find GF stuff. Once we're trying to buy packaged stuff it gets more complicated, but really, there are a LOT of options out there once you know what brands to look for and such. The hard parts comes when you pile a million other intolerances on top... You could see if you have a ROCK group (raising our celiac kids) nearby, they might have some great resources for you.

The trick about the celiac blood tests is that you need to be eating a significant amount of gluten for them to be accurate - something like 2 slices of bread (or equivalent) every day for 2 weeks or thereabouts. Chances are, you'll see a big difference by pulling gluten, so you might want to make sure to get the tests before you do so - it could be hard/impossible to put her back on it if it is the cause.

[mamafish9]

Eating gluten free will be a piece of cake compared to a child that doesn't want to get out of bed 4 days a week and is challenging behaviorally. Truly - it was a big learning curve for about a month, but you'll get the hang of it - and your DD will likely feel a lot better pretty quickly.

[mombh]

I agree with everything everyone has said, just wanted to add that white stool indicates a lack of bile and is never a sign that everything is .ok.. there is a reason for it and it could very well be caused by gluten. I would also ask for a liver panel and check the enzymes.
hope she starts to improve once you take the gluten out.