New idea –  When I started this site I thought it would be a place for people to have easier access to everything helpful being gluten free.  However, I’ve found so many other resources that I can’t dedicate the time to my original idea.  But being a mom of a celiac daughter is stressful so I want to write, to help me out and maybe help others.  (So if you actually read this please comment!) So now once a week I will dedicate to writing a post.

We recently (a few weeks ago) had our 6 month gluten free checkup.  The amount of stress leading up to it was so incredibly high.  There’s been 2 or 3 times in the past few months where we think she’s been glutened but it’s impossible to know.  I constantly worry whether what we do is enough for her.  So I don’t understand the labs at all, I just know that her transglutaminase IGA was over 100 and the doctor told us that could mean 101 or 199.  I tried not to quantify my expectation for her 6 month blood test but the truth was I had in my head I wanted this number to be under 50.  My friends and husband warned me that I was setting myself up for disappointment a fair hope is just to be under 100 so we now have a benchmark number.  They were wrong and it is down to 30.3! Under 20 is considered normal although ideally under 5.  But we got down to 30.3!!!!! I cried as soon as I read that.  I was so incredibly happy.

So how do we do it? Every celiac family is different and everyone needs to do what works for their family (both mental and physical health).  We were told my son should still eat gluten and my husband is a very picky eater and so he eats gluten.  I eat gluten free 99% of the time although I am not completely careful with cross contamination for myself unless it is something my daughter would try of mine.  It makes her so happy to know that I support her.  I started eating gluten outside of the house but now I only do on rare occasions when I feel bad making a scene of being gluten free when I don’t have a medical reason to be.  Although I do drink beer, since she’s 4.5 and years away from being allowed to try it.

We started with buying new non-stick pots and pans, cutting boards, and cooking utensils.  We made a gluten free shelf in our pantry and label everything we can.  We keep our toaster but cleaned it out well and everything goes on tin foil in our toaster, both gluten and non-gluten.  We bought new kid plastic plates/cups/bowls for my daughter although most of the time she now eats from our regular ceramic dishes.  Her leftovers are only in glass containers.  We always pour out communal foods so gluten hands to reach back in.  We take out more peanut butter than we need onto our plate so that we won’t double dip.  We wash hands…..a lot.

As time has passed we’ve started to become more gluten free.  Items in our mind that should be gluten free we buy brands that would be safe for our daughter – sauces, marinades,  spices, potato chips, french fries, etc…  We got rid of a lot of our old non-stick pots and pans. The majority of what we cook is naturally gluten free except for pasta which we use a stainless steel pan for.  And our pantry actually only has 1 shelf with gluten.

Anyway, back to the original thought that her checkup was a major success and we made it work with a gluten household.  Her iron levels on the other hand…but we’ll leave that for another day!