The pluses have been that there really are a LOT of things out there that are gluten free. My favorite so far was found at Walmart....gluten free cereal bars. Ethan LOVES cereal bars so this was an immediate YES for us!
We have been making subtle changes, but we haven't made it to completely off gluten just yet. But I keep hearing that this takes time & trial/error.....so I'm giving us a break & just doing what we know we can do at the moment. Ethan seems to really like the waffle/pancake mix as well as some gluten free frozen french toast sticks. We learned that Rice Krispie cereal and Trix are gluten free, and Ethan is really liking rice krispie treats! Tonight we are going to try spaghetti with gluten free spaghetti noodles. So....we are trying, but we are still learning. Our biggest hurdles will be.....chicken nuggets, PopTarts, Chef Boyardee products, and pizza. But I've gotten a few hints & tips on these as well....just all in good time. We are so lucky that bacon, popcorn and fruit snacks are gluten free!!!! Those are DAILY foods for our Ethan!
Although we have a long road ahead of us in the gluten free genre, I still want to continue in case our GI doctor tells us to do so at our appointment in a couple of weeks. This way, we will be ahead of the game, so to speak. However, we tried something......
Recently, I discovered that I have seasonal allergies.....to the point of taking a daily medicine for it. But this is not my long story...this is about Ethan. Through my own discovery of this, we realized that Ethan has similar issues with allergies. So, recently we put him on a generic version of Zyrtec. We tried once before to take Ethan off of this medicine to see if it helped his bathroom issues, but it did not work. So, we scratched that off as the cause. However, we do remember the pediatrician mentioning that a bug was going around during the same time that we took Ethan off of his allergy medicine. So.....we decided to try it again. However, instead of taking Ethan off allergy medicine completely, we would just switch to a different brand. We decided to try Clariten. Well.....Ethan's bowels got better! Not completely but enough of an improvement for us to further investigate this avenue. He wasn't on the Clariten very long because it wasn't helping his allergy issues AT ALL, so we went back to his former medicine.....just at a lower dosage.
So, what we have now is a slight stuffy nose & slightly running number two.....ugh. But, Ethan not suffering with allergies issues during the night, and he is making it to the bathroom, so we are hoping this helps until we can get some further information. Well, last week, I mentioned this to some of the moms at Easter Seals, and one of them told me that they experienced similar issues with their kiddo. Their child is now on a prescription form of allergy medicine, and he no longer has issues in the other area! YEAH!
Well....this momma just got off the phone with the pediatrician's office with this new news......so we will see what happens next. We have been dealing with this pretty much since the beginning of the school year, and I would really like to have this settled & be done with it. We have still kept our appointment at the end of the month with the GI, but I'm really hoping that it is a side effect of his medicine, and not something else. I would really like for SOMETHING to be a simple fix!!!! Fingers crossed & prayers lifted!!!!!!!
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