Chloe’s story to being diagnosed with coeliac disease, as told by Mum, Maria

As Chloe moved on to solid foods as a young baby she was always unsettled and a lot of the time would bring her food back up. This went on for a long time.  As parents we took her to the doctors and health visitor but this was always pushed aside telling us to try milk or to try not to react to it as this might have been for attention. The older she got she started complaining of tummy pains and we knew that something was not quite right. With a number of trips to the GP they finally referred Chloe to a consultant at the children’s hospital. We waited from September and she was finally seen in May the following year.

On seeing the consultant he run some tests which includes ttg levels and Chloe’s results range was 146 which confirmed she was coeliac and diagnosed with coeliac disease a week later.

Big changes for the family

As a family this was all a lot to take in but I think a lot harder for us as parents.  Chloe has been amazing and adapted straight away to a very strict gluten free diet. We involve Chloe in cooking meals and especially baking cakes and scones, pancakes and bread, trying to make this fun for her.

Advice for newly diagnosed with coeliac disease…

Our advice for someone who is newly diagnosed with coeliac disease is to always read the labelling and to be very strict with cross contamination.  We also use the app for scanning food labels from Coeliac UK. This became very helpful as some food will say gluten free but contain oats which was not suitable for Chloe.

We tried a few flour mixes before Glutafin.  She absolutely loves to make the Victoria sponge cake recipe on the back of the box. We use this for making bread, pancakes, scones which she loves. We have also taken some into school so she can make play doh because we didn’t want her feeling left out. In Chloe’s words “Glutafin flour is the best mummy.”

Things have started to get easier…

Things do get a lot easier with the gluten free diet and we find it’s a lot easier to do it as a whole family. We do have separate toast and utensils for Chloe and use a lot of baking paper to help with the cross contamination.

Her last mot bloods for ttg levels was 9.2 and the consultant was really happy with the results and Chloe has become much more settled.  Hopefully, because she is young she will find this a lot easier as she gets older.

Share this now: