When Your Celiac Warrior Starts Kindergarten

I’ve always wanted to stay home with my kids. I have fantasized about it my entire life. I wanted to have four kids and be able to teach them and mould their spongey little minds in the baby and toddler years before passing them off to a complete stranger to do the same. I’m sure a very capable, but very strangery stranger. I always thought maybe we could work our way around needing two incomes, but most likely that it wouldn’t be a possibility. But, when I had brain surgery I could no longer drive and I was healing physically and emotionally, and so I became a stay at home mom. It was the silver lining in the hardest time in my life. I, of course, needed a lot of help from family at first, but I was at home and able to see my kids all day every day like I had always wanted.

My husband, Tyler, and I wanted kids long before we actually got married and decided it was time to try. It felt like we were waiting forever. We personally had a few things on our life list we wanted to check off before we took that leap. I wanted to finish my degree and start a career and we wanted to get married.

We adopted our dog Harvey to try and satisfy the need to become parents a few years before we knew we would be in the right place. It worked for a little while, but it just wasn’t enough. Poor Harv was a place holder. It’s kind of like when you settle for an entry level job, waiting to move your way to the top. You know, that dream job you’ve been talking about since you moved into your dorm room in college. That vertical move is enormous! You don’t just step up, you hurdle. You get that flexible pole out and fly right over the bar. I don’t know anything about pole jumping (to be honest my biggest accomplishment in athletics was when I was selected to compete in shot put against other elementary school students in grade eight. I came in last place. Yep, that’s how sporty I am), but I’m assuming you feel pretty high and blissful when you make it to the top. Our pupper was our fur baby until our squishy little newborn came into our lives and changed things forever. When Maddie arrived it was love at first sight and all those things parents tell you about the unexplainable love and the no sleep and the new mom hormones were all true.

Four years have flown by and now it is time. I’ve been thinking about Maddie leaving me and going to school for months and months now. Yes, I feel like she will be on this new voyage and I am being exiled somewhere far away. It makes me want to eat all the chocolate.

I won’t be her whole world anymore, and I’m okay with that. I’m excited for her, but I’m also scared. Sometimes I can’t sleep and spend hours in the middle of the night looking at first day of school outfits and researching the best lunch bag to buy. And now I’m two weeks away from facing my fears. The thought of her entering the school with the mob of other little humans being sorted from an assembly line to their classrooms is honestly crushing. It’s a similar feeling to how I felt when I was away from her for six weeks when I lived in the hospital. Now that I write that down it sounds a bit ridiculous. Your child going to school and your child not seeing you while you are fighting for your life are two very different things. I think being so close to death and almost losing the blessing of being a mother makes this transition a little harder. Maybe it’s this hard for all moms and we just don’t hear about it. I’ve heard parents say how sad they were when their first baby heads to kindergarten, but never grasped the magnitude of this kind of sadness I feel. It’s hard for me not to break down and ugly cry like Kim Kardashian when I’m reminded of how close I am to letting her go.

I think my worries are a little more complex than the average mom. We went through that period of time when it was really hard for me every day because of my health, but Maddie has an autoimmune disease that will make it challenging for her every day for the rest of her life. You may not understand unless you are a celiac mom yourself, but when you send your child with Celiac Disease into the big world by themselves you can no longer protect them from the environment which could hurt them. Their kryptonite is everywhere. Gluten lurks on tables and toys and books and on the floor and other kids clothes and dirty little fingers. We’ve been so diligent since she was diagnosed almost a year ago and you can see she is healing. She smiles more, she has more energy, she no longer has really dark circles under her eyes and she’s grown so much. She is no longer height stunted and she’s getting closer to the size of her peers. Now sending her to kindergarten, I have to trust her and her teacher to ensure she is safe. It’s hard to relinquish that control.

Maddie has always been very reserved around other kids. Despite taking her to play groups, gymnastics, art classes, swimming lessons and more, she still didn’t play. She stayed on the sidelines and watched. This is largely to do with her having Celiac Disease. She was a very sick little girl for a long time, while we were trying to figure out why she wasn’t growing and all the other symptoms she had. Feeling like crap all the time doesn’t really motivate you to socialize. I get it, when I was sick I didn’t want to talk to anyone either. I think because she felt rotten for so long and didn’t have practice making friends, it’s still hard for her to know how to make friends now. She also still has days where she doesn’t feel well and she’s irritable and doesn’t have energy. She’s improved so much, but she still has a long way to go before she feels like a normal kid.

I’m worried that she won’t make friends. I’m worried that she will be scared and overwhelmed and will cry all day. I’m worried she will miss her bun bun, her very loved and very raggedy stuffy. I’m worried the teacher won’t take her autoimmune disease seriously. I’m worried the kids will make fun of her food and say it looks gross. And I’m worried her classmates wont compliment her backpack or clothes or they might tease her about her small stature. See, I’ve never navigated this territory before. I don’t know if Maddie will fit in, because Maddie is different than the other kids. I know it’s not crucial to fit it, but I lay awake at night thinking about all the possibilities. That’s why it took me four weeks to pick out a backpack for her.

I’m trying to hold back my tears in front of her, so I can get her excited for the first day. It’s hard though, I have a difficult time not sobbing while squeezing her tight. This feels like the end of an era fous. For me, and for her. I know she will be okay. I know she will find her footing and make a friend. Hopefully more than one, but one is all you really need. I know she will be fine because she’s strong and she is resilient. She has handled her gluten free lifestyle better than an adult would and she was only a few weeks away from her third birthday when she was diagnosed. She never gets angry she can’t have what everyone else is eating. She never complains. I’ve been so impressed with how quickly she understood and accepted her disease. She just wants to feel better, so she does what she needs to do. She is managing her diagnosis with grace. She has been through so much. I have hugged her while she screamed out in pain with tears running down her cheeks because of this disease. She had a bronchial spasm during the endoscopy that gave us an official diagnosis, which was incredibly scary. She was admitted to the hospital and I slept in the hospital bed beside her, listening to her raspy little snores all night long. I have held her hand many times while she has had vials and vials of blood taken. I have been beside her every step of the way and now she will have to do it on her own. With everything she has gone through she still has become a happy, spirited (almost) four year old. She will do amazing because everything she has done in her four short years of life has amazed me and so many other people.

On her first day I will hold back my tears in front of her and let it pour out after the mob disperses and she’s escorted into her classroom. I will walk out the doors, proud of my celiac warrior. But, for now with the two weeks I have left with her before she’s officially a kindergartener I will eat handfuls of chocolate chips and cuddle up watching Frozen on repeat with my girl.

“Let it go, let it go, can’t hold it back anymore!” 🎶