Elimination Diet Help!

[lizziebits]

Hi All,

OK, my DS is 1 and has had symptoms of an allergy pretty much his whole life. Unfortunately, I didn't realize they were such until a few months ago and have just started to research it.

Yesterday, after his 1st birthday, I finally started an elimination diet for both he and I (as we are still nursing). I'm not going to lie -- it's really really hard for me. I've just started becoming more of a natural mama (since DS was born -- funny how they will do that to ya), and it has not yet hit our diet. So, we still eat a lot of processed foods, sugar, dairy, etc. It's only been 24 hours and I feel like I'm in withdrawal -- headaches, crankiness, gas pains. (Also, I think I've just ovulated for the first time post partum, so I'm sure that's not helping.) We're doing the elimination diet from Dori's Rapp's book "Is this Your Child". It seemed to allow more than some of the others, and I think it's about as restrictive as I can handle at this point.

Anyway, sorry for the life story. Just wanted to give you some background/context for the questions:

1)Are oats OK? She says they are (and I have some oats that are calling my name to be made into oatmeal), but I don't want to do all this and have it for naught if by chance he is sensitive to all gluten. I seem to be finding mixed researched in the "are oats a gluten" department.

2) Sleep is one of the issues, among others, that point to an allergy. DS has always been an awful sleeper. I don't know if it was a coincidence, but last night was seriously the worst night of his life. He was up every 45 minutes, and usually the boob will settle him. But last night he was up crying in pain, and having trouble falling back asleep. At one point, he was up for like an hour. I know that is normal for some kids with sleep problems, but while DS has always woken very frequently, he hasn't been up for hours since he was tiny. Could any of this be related to the new diet?

Thanks for your input! Any advice, tips, suggestions are really appreciated. DS is handling the new diet very well, except for he keeps finding these really old Cheerios in the strangest places and eating them. (Yummy, right?). I'm like noooooo not the gluten!!!

[thepeach80]

What are you eating? I would say no oats, they can be contaminated w/ gluten and if that's a problem you might have issues w/ those. I would stick to mild grains like rice, amaranth, millet, and qunioa. His body may be detoxing in a way and it may take a few days. I know when I started Evan on rx formula (as a supplement) he had the worst 3 days ever and then was doing so much better!

[kjbrown92]

We used that elimination diet as well. Oats in and of themselves do not have gluten, but they are contaminated with gluten-containing grains unless you get the ones that are specifically gluten-free that they are processing differently. That diet also allows white potatoes which are pretty allergenic (two of my kids cannot have them).

You often crave the things that you shouldn't have, so I'd say that's probably what's happening with you. But make sure you do a food diary as well, while you're on the elimination diet because there can still be triggers even on that diet (my dd turned out to be intolerant of all fruits except bananas, and the food diary revealed that one), so if you take out a ton of stuff, but give your ds a lot of something he shouldn't be having, you'll get more symptoms. My ds and dd have sleep as their main symptoms, and it's amazing when you take it all out and they start sleeping through the night. And then start getting nice growth spurts because they're getting the growth hormone while they have sleep.

Keep plugging along. It's worth it.