The time has come...

At Ruby's 4 month check up Tuesday, we got the official thumbs up to start cereal. This has been a moment I've been excitedly dreading for a long time. When I was pregnant, I started researching the timing of the 1st introduction of gluten to try to give Ruby the best shot at not developing Celiac disease. I came across several scholarly articles that focused on the unique window of time between 4-6 months, where the immune system is developing, but is not yet fully developed, when the introduction of gluten is not considered a threat to your body. All the articles also emphasized the importance of breastfeeding during this time, which is what helped me stick it out, even when it seemed like pure torture. Many baby food books have suggested delaying the introduction to as late as 9 months or even a year. The scholarly research I've read pretty much all agrees this is not ideal and have found that even delaying until 7 months poses an increased risk in the likelihood of developing celiac disease.
Which brings us to yesterday. Ruby literally had a few grains of rice cereal in breastmilk and loved it! She quickly figured out the relationship between the spoon moving toward her, opening her mouth, and moving the food backward to swallow. It was really cool to watch. My plan is to advance her through rice and oatmeal and into barley cereal around 5 months old. Most Celiacs consider oatmeal a contaiminated grain and will likely have a few stray gluten proteins. Barley is a glutenous grain. We will need to do some small servings of barley, probably mixed with rice or oatmeal to introduce gluten, but not overwhelm her system.

With that said, I should explain that even though I know she's at risk, she has to eat gluten in order to be properly diagnosed in her future. We hope with careful introduction she'll never develop it at all. She can be tested between 3-4 yrs old, once her body has created antibodies that can be detected with a blood test.

Now, dairy is another story...