Entry #630684, added on 01-19-09 @ 12:59 pm EST
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| Adventures in Poo | Entry #630684 |
*Warning: May contain gross, descriptive language - if you have an easily upset stomach you might wanna skip this entry*
There are some things that are a complete testament to a mother's love. Who else is willing to selflessly clean up a child's tears, vomit, and poop and still love the child at the end of the day? A year ago, almost to the day, my daughter had to be admitted to the pediatric ICU of the local hospital for constipation and impacted bowels. Basically she was so full of poop she couldn't pass it out. They had to administer a saline/laxative for about five hours to make the stool soft enough to pass out. She vomited up her last meal, cried and screamed for six hours straight and then pooped so much she overflowed her diapers three times.
Well, last night about 1 am Libby woke me up saying, "Owie, poo." shaking and whimpering. I immediately knew what the problem was and thanks to the kind previous guidance of her pediatrician with our prior episode, I was able to develop a course of action. I started with children's ibuprofen and that seemed to help so I let her go back to sleep. She woke me again at 6:45 crying her little eyes out. I made a quick run to the local Walmart for some suppositories and administered more Ibuprofen, gave her four teaspoons of grape juice with Myrolax in it and administered the suppository.
It's a scary thing any time a child that small is in so much pain she's trembling. You just want to do everything you can to keep your cool and the instinct is to just comfort as best as you can. I'm rather proud of myself - for my third relatively dire situation with my daughter I didn't cry and kept my cool. About 10:30 this morning she woke me up crying again, saying "wanna poo, wanna poo" which I took for her to mean she wanted to poop but was struggling. I took her downstairs and using a baby wipe, literally had to massage the poo out of her because she was so tired from pushing all night she just couldn't get it out. I got a large clump out which really helped her feel better.
It wasn't long before she was ready and able to eat and the sweet sparkle had returned to her eyes and personality. She ate some cereal, drank almost a full cup of milk with more Myrolax to help her pass the rest of what I knew was in there, then drank half a cup of straight water because I'm concerned about dehydration. She hasn't been drinking real great in the last few days which may have been part of the problem. By noon she'd passed another batch that was about four inches or better long and at least 3 inches wide. It was still pretty firm but not nearly as hard as the first batch was.
It's amazing to me that I didn't even really bat an eyelash throughout the whole episode. I was concerned, sure, but ultimately, I was able to spring into action relatively speaking. Next time I won't wait so long (but then again, I won't have to run to the store either cause we have the suppositories now) to do something and will be a bit more persistent about getting her to take the medicine she needs to. I feel bad that she suffered but she seems none the worse for the wear and is back to being my cheerful little girl again. I almost wonder if her attitude the last few days has been a result of constipation and not teething as we had originally thought. That being said, I sure hope she grows out of this problem. I haven't been giving her Myrolax each day because for a child that's potty training (which she'll start doing soon, she's almost ready) it can make it difficult for the child to know when she has to go and make it difficult to control and therefore cause accidents. I'll administer it until she's pretty much run clear and then wean her off of it again. The only thing I can think of is that both times she's been smack dab in the midst of a growth spurt and is literally eating so much we can't keep enough food going into her but she's not willing to drink as much. Hopefully in a few years we won't have to do this.
The worst thing is that it seems so sudden. The initial signs are so small that they're easy to mistake for teething, or just an upset stomach and even if she hasn't gone in a couple days, it's hard to judge if she has to or not. She's always been pretty erratic with her bowel movements except when she was breastfeeding (but was jaundiced instead).
In any case, that was a fun little adventure. This is a testament to how quick the change in her was. Yesterday afternoon about 12 hours before we'd gone to Walmart to go shopping. She'd outgrown her shoes and I almost fell over when we measured her little feet. She'd grown to a size seven in 2 weeks! She was previously in a size 4! We got her some new Dora shoes because she just loves that show and she had so much fun running up and down the aisles with us, giggling and laughing. She was so delighted by her new shoes!
Last time we'd gotten her two pairs of shoes, one pair of sneakers and one pair that was a little dressier, which proved to be a mistake. This time we just got her a sturdy pair of tennis shoes. It won't take much for her to outgrow them unfortunately, not even a quarter of an inch but I'm hoping her feet are done growing for a little bit. I still can't believe she's almost 3 feet tall already and not even 2 yet. She's just growing so fast, it's amazing. I'm glad she seems to be getting better and we were able to handle it before she needed an ER visit. Thank God she can talk! |
© Copyright 2009 MKeyes gets married 4/28/12 (UN: michellekeyes at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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