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Hi,

My 3 year old son's pediatric GI is not 100% certain my son has celiac.
He has been gluten free since he was 13 months old.  The GI was
extremely pleased with how well my son has been doing in the past 6-12
months.  There is no history of celiac in the family and my son did not
initally respond to the GF diet.  In fact, it has taken him nearly 2
years to get back to where he is on the growth chart.  He is thinking my
son may not necessarily have celiac but rather that he has significant
food allergies which created so much damage to his villi that it
mimicked celiac.  He is saying that the only way to find out if it is
celiac or not is to reintroduce wheat/gluten back into his diet and see
how he fares, and run some lab work a month later to see if anything has
changed.

While this is exciting to me, it is scary because I know what we went
through to get my son back to where he is now.  I'm afraid of making him
feel ill again and have him slip health and growth wise again.

My question is... has any of you been in this position before,
especially with such a young child?  We already know he does not do well
with dairy...he can tolerate small amounts of cheese and soft serve ice
cream from Mc Donald's and Dairy Queen. But given on a regular basis,
forget it.  He had chronic colds and ear infections as an infant on top
of the diahrrea and vomiting.  The vomiting, colds and ear infections
cleared when he was taken off the milk based formula at 12 months and
placed on a soy based formula.  The stools didn't resume normalcy for
quite some time... even on a gluten free diet.  Now he's fine for the
most part and nothing has changed in the past 2 years diet wise (aside
from his digestive system maturing further)...

Can you share with me what your experiences were like?  How do ou go
about reintroducing gluten?  Do you just go back onto gluten cold turkey
or do you do it gradually?  And how do you know if the reaction is
celiac related, food allergy related or just a reaction because his body
has not had gluten in 2 years?

Any information/advice would greatly be appreciated!

Thanks!
Robin in CO, USA
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