Hello and Welcome

Let me preface this by saying that I have coeliac disease, I was diagnosed by both blood test and biopsy about three and a half years ago. 

I was under a dietician when we lived in the UK but there is no NHs here and care is expensive. 

Ben, my third son, is not diagnosed, but given his symptoms and the fact that my mum and two cousins on that side of the family are also coeliac it seems likely. 

I don't personally have the usual telltale gastric symptoms, it was constant anaemia and pernicious anaemia that led to my diagnosis, and so it's been easy for me to ignore it for the last 2 years. 
Ben, who is 2 and a half, does have gastric symptoms though, and other telltale signs such as his size since weaning - born on the 50th centile, on the 70-90th while excl bfed he's now been on the 0.4- 4th since 12 months etc. His stools are very loose. 

Yesterday he had a dentist appointment and it confirmed what I'd known all along, his teeth are dreadful, and so he's now facing a general anaesthetic to extract one and fill others and I realised that he's in all likelihood not absorbing enough calcium, and that gluten could well be the issue.

I'm not planning to put him on a totally Gluten Free diet, for one thing, I think there's too big a chance that he'll be gluten free and then eat something at school or at a friend's house and be properly poorly - I have seen this in too many children - and for another he isn't diagnosed. But I can't see any harm in restricting his gluten intake to a very small amount (other than the fact that it's going to be hard - which is the reason I've ben 'naughty' for the last 2 years).

Our normal diet is too much pasta! 

We do eat a lot of rice too, and the children (with the exception of Ben) love potatoes, Ben's a big fan of roast parsnips, but pasta and noodles do make up the majority of our carbohydrates, and though Coeliacs always say, "the pasta is really nice now" I know it's no. It it is, compared to the old GF stuff, but it's not like expensive italian stuff, or even De Cecco, still, I have fed it to the boys and they will eat it, so for them it's something I can I hope change without too much fuss - I doubt I'll get my husband to change though!

We're not big bread eaters but we do eat a fair amount of pitta so I need to find a decent recipe that works to make my own as while the waitrose essentials ones are about 60p for 6, the GF ones are about £4 for 4.

Breakfast is going to be a nightmare, Ben's not a big eater but the one thing he does eat well is breakfast, he's a big fan of weetabix, shreddies, shredded wheat, Golden nuggets etc. And we can basically get the big brands - and even the rice/ corn based ones all seem to contain barley malt extract - and waitrose own which also all seem to contain BME too. I wonder if Co-op is any better, I could cross the island if it turns out that it is.

~We seem to have a section 8 foot long (4 or 5 shelves high) in the local supermarket, which is similar to my store in the UK but it is all sooooo expensive.

Still, I found Young's Gluten Free fish fingers in the freezer section so we'll survive!

I'm blogging this because I always feel it helps to have my thought on "paper" and because there are things I'll forget if I don't. And putting it "out there" gives me a better chance of joining the struggles of others. 

Stick around, and watch us fight through?