We've been dealing with some major tummy issues with Mattie Leigh for a while now...since early March at least. After being told to try a few things to help her feel better and several tests that came back normal, we were not closer to an answer at the beginning of the summer. I decided to try a few things on my own to see if I could figure out what was going on. The main thing I did was take gluten out of her diet as much as possible. We noticed positive changes to how she was feeling within 48 hours. We kept her off gluten for almost a month before letting her have some early in July...all the positives disappeared within 2 days and she once again felt terrible. I KNEW then that gluten was somehow involved in her stomach issues and took her off it again. Since then, we've kept her off for a few weeks and then challenged her system by letting her have a couple meals with it.
We were scheduled to see her GI in August, but her appointment was rescheduled to September 19. The nurse asked how she was doing since we last saw them and I explained what changes we'd made and the improvements we saw. The doctor came in and was surprised at how much better Mattie Leigh looked. In a few months time of being off wheat, her hair and nails are growing well again, her skin isn't so pale, the dark circles have nearly disappeared from under her eyes, her appetite is better, she's gained almost 3 pounds, her attitude has improved tremendously, and her stomach rarely ever hurts like it was for a while. The doctor decided right away that Mattie Leigh did have some form of gluten intolerance (even though the markers for celiac disease came back normal) and said that we need to keep her mostly gluten free for the next year when we can really challenge her system and reevaluate.
I *think* part of her stomach upset comes from her nerves. Kid is REALLY high-strung and gets upset very easily. I think she may have picked up more on the months that Kevin wasn't teaching than we thought she had at first...pretty sure that added to her already high-strung nerves and made her stomach issues worse. We shielded her from as much of it as we could, but since she's so smart, she still picked up on more than I wanted her to.
All that to say, that I'm so glad we finally have some answers to what was going on for so long with her stomach. Now I'm working on figuring out things that will help her learn how to let us know how she's feeling (other than losing it and throwing a fit).
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