Read the following and tell me if it sounds familiar:
You feel a wave of pain ripple through your tummy. You pause briefly. This couldn’t be gluten, could it? No-o-o! You think. You’ve been so careful. Five minutes later, there’s another ripple of pain. Suddenly you’re on high alert. What have you eaten in the last few days? Could anything possibly have been contaminated? You remember the wild and dangerous trip you made to a restaurant you’d not been to before. Could it have been the sauce you were given? What about that visit to a friend’s house where they offered you a gluten-free biscuit. Was it definitely gluten-free or just wheat-free? Why, oh why, didn’t you insist on seeing the box? A flicker of hope goes through you. Perhaps these pains you’re experiencing are something else. After all, you did have a big dinner today. Maybe it’s… An agonising streak of pain shoots through you. No doubt now. You’ve been glutened. This is exactly what happened to me last night. There’s no good time to be glutened but it seemed doubly unfair to me given I’ve just had a baby (17 days ago to be precise) and therefore just been through a considerable amount of pain recently. Add to that the exhaustion that is a baby who needs feeding every 3 hours and I’m sure you can sympathise.
All I could hope for last night was that the pain would be over as soon as possible. At one point, I tried to play the “I’m grateful” game. I concluded how grateful I was to have a bathroom all to myself with its own bidet (for fear of TMI, the less said about the latter the better).
This morning I was eternally grateful to Husband for doing 2 night feeds to which I was completely oblivious (after the pain had subsided, I went to bed and was out for the count).
The sad thing about the scenario I encountered is that it’s practically impossible to go through life without it happening. You can be as careful as possible and still come a cropper (and believe me, I am careful with bells on).
Even people who refuse to eat out can get caught. Remember the recent scandal where packaged gluten-free products in supermarkets turned out to have gluten in them? Admittedly, it was a tiny amount, but the law for 20ppm or fewer is there for a reason.
So what I’d like to know is, how often do you get glutened (if at all)? Do you have any tips on how to avoid it? Please share them below!