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Revenge of the Baby
Faaaaan-fucking-tastic.
We found out this morning at his one-year checkup that Ducky's weight has gone from 47th percentile to 11th percentile in the last four months despite the fact that he eats for several hours a day.
The cause? Functional diarrhea. This means several poopsplosions a day for the last few months and into the foreseeable future, nothing we can do about it, and no sense of when it's going to end. It could be months, it could be years.
I know it's not global warming or world hunger or whatever. But (1) What did we ever do to him that he should treat us like this? and (2) Ew.
Anyone else ever dealt with this? How long did it last and was there REALLY nothing you could do about it?
We found out this morning at his one-year checkup that Ducky's weight has gone from 47th percentile to 11th percentile in the last four months despite the fact that he eats for several hours a day.
The cause? Functional diarrhea. This means several poopsplosions a day for the last few months and into the foreseeable future, nothing we can do about it, and no sense of when it's going to end. It could be months, it could be years.
I know it's not global warming or world hunger or whatever. But (1) What did we ever do to him that he should treat us like this? and (2) Ew.
Anyone else ever dealt with this? How long did it last and was there REALLY nothing you could do about it?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by rommie on -
I eat the So Delicious brand. It's not cheap, but it's good. Same goes for the ice cream and coconut milk beverage (awesome in hot chocolate). I was incredibly relieved when Mikey tested okay for coconut.
Mamawho said:Is there a brand you recommend? I don't do soy.
rommie said:Oh, how sucky! I hope you get this figured out. If you'd like a non-dairy, non-soy (soy freaks my head off, but that's just me) yogurt option, try cultured coconut milk. Super tasty and full of good fats and good bacteria.
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Permalink Reply by The Oracle on -
Hmmmm...maybe. I always thought the normal-poop phases were related to changes we made in his diet. But now that you mention it, I'll have to keep my eye out.
And wouldn't you know that as soon as the doctor tells us to fill him up with fatty foods, he suddenly goes on a hunger strike, won't eat hardly anything except bananas and graham crackers. Argh.
I like the coconut milk suggestion, rommie. We're a little bit skittish about soy here too so I'll definitely check that out.
Herasmus B. Dragon said:This may be gross and sound completely backwards, but sometimes constipation can cause very loose stools, because that's the only kind that can make it around the rectal logjam, as it were. When he goes weeks with diarrhea, does he then have suddenly normal poops? Does his bellyseem hard at all?
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Permalink Reply by sarah on -
Just saw this today and it brought back a whole pile of bad memories!
Our little girl (now a happy healthy 3.5yrs old) also dropped (from 25% to 5th) but then stayed on the 5% from that point on so the Dr wasn't concerend (okay he never was concerned at all - just me). Anyhow - we had poop, but only - 1-2 a day so even though we were concerned by the look and smell we didn't get too concerned at first - after all if it were serious there'd be more poop. Right?
Wrong.
By the time we managed to convince anyone that our DD was sick she was 2! And by then she was malnourished (BTW if a kids been basically healthy it'll take a while for their body to actually get to the point of malnourished according to blood work) she had no hair, her tongue was a nasty white, her breath stunk to high heaven, and she was a mean little person to be around (not too bad for family, but others needed to watch out). Oh and her teeth were not healthy.
We cut out fruit - things were worse with fruit. We cut out big dairy, things were worse with dairy. Her fav food was cheerios and she ate them by the box - things seemed to improve. Less poop.
Turns out that was a big mistake.
I did a ton of research - medical texts, google searches and came up with celiac's disease (or CF - I didn't like that option so looked into celiac's disease) we found a dr willing to test her (her original pedi wouldn't because he insisted my little girl who was still onyl 15lbs at 2 was healthy) and she came back very positive. 2 days gluten free and we saw an improvement after 6 months she was a whole new girl. After a year she had hair, her teeth improved, she is now 90% for height and weight. She grew so much in such a short time it was amazing. And she hasn't had diarrhea in over 6 months.
If I'd known then, what I know now I'd have gone gluten free even when the first (several) drs told us she was fine. It was a miserable road to travel.
Oh and we also found out the entire family has it. IBS gone, aches and pains gone, mood swings gone, PMS gone, my hair is thicker than ever before. We also found out both sides of mine and DHs family had undiagnosed cases for years. My sister is no longer lactose intolerant : )
I really recomend looking into it - even if it's just personal research. 1/122 people have it without realising it and if there's a family history your risk increases.
Either way I hope you figure out what's happening and get things working properly again soon.
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Permalink Reply by The Oracle on
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Wow sarah, that sounds so awful. I'm sorry you went through that - how frightening. And I'm so very glad you figured out what was wrong and that your little girl is doing so well now. Yay for happy endings!
Celiac disease has actually crossed my mind -- I've had a lot of digestive problems over the years and though I haven't been tested for celiac, my digestion definitely improves when I cut dairy, wheat, and sugar out of my diet.
Ducky also gets yeast infections rather easily and they're tough to get rid of, which I suspect may tie into all of this, especially if it's celiac. Maybe I'll try pulling back on the gluten and see what happens.
BTW, if you hadn't been following the other thread, we ended up in urgent care last night b/c of dehydration along with ear infection. I'm sure his congestion and fever contributed to the dehydration but I'm also positive the diarrhea accelerated it. So touchy, all this stuff.
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Permalink Reply by The Oracle on
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Okay, because you all couldn't convince me enough, our dear friend Marc, who is a PICU nurse, just convinced me to seek a second opinion sooner rather than later. In the meantime, he told me how to measure urine output the way doctors do, so I'll be doing that this week, and monitoring Ducky's food reactions more closely, so I can go in armed with more information.
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Permalink Reply by wookie on -
If you are ready to do an elimination diet to check if gluten is something that is exacerbating things, by all means, full steam ahead. An elimination diet would probably be the only way at this point that you could sort out if it is food specific. I don't know at what age you can do traditional allergy testing or if it would even be useful at this point as it sounds like he's already got a lot going on internally.
A sensitivity to gluten is not always the same thing as celiac disease, but obviously both problems will respond well to the diet change :-) Diet change is a big deal but as many have pointed out, often means lots of good changes.
My MIL is a RN of 40 years experience and has celiac disease. The gold standard for diagnosing celiac is an intestinal biopsy (which is obviously rather invasive). Blood tests can produce false positives, iirc they can only tell that your system is reacting, not if celiac disease is what is causing that reaction.
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Permalink Reply by Boring User Name on -
The two threads together are interesting. Obviously, there was an ear infection, but my mother-in-law describes my husband's brother as the baby who never stopped crying. In those days, babies were getting the cereal super early and it turns out he had celiac disease, so he didn't stop crying from the introduction of food, around 3 months, to somewhere over a year when someone finally figured out it. I don't know why she decided to have another kid, I sure wouldn't have. But I'm glad she did, since the second baby was my husband :-)
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Permalink Reply by rommie on
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Poor little guy! I hope you can find what's bothering him. Mikey doesn't have celiac, but he is allergic to all three of the gluten-containing grains for which he was tested. Give me a shout if you decide to try an elimination diet and need any cooking ideas.
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Permalink Reply by sarah on
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Wow you've been through so much in such a short time. I really hope you figure things out quickly.
I do think a second opinion would be a good idea. Dehydration is a huge concern and shouldn't be treated lightly.
A couple things - wookie has a couple facts mixed up. The blood test has a high rate of false NEGAtives - so even if you have celiac's disease it could come up negative. Both mine and my husbands tests were negative.
The other point is that yes, the biopsy is the gold standard b/c there is very little chance of a false negative. However false positives do happen. Lactose intolerance would cause the same thing to happen to the gut as happens in celiac's disease. All the biopsy really shows is that something is causing the vili in the intestine to fall over, causing a leaky gut. It doesn't actually say what.
Also the thing with both tests is that in order for any form of accuracy the person would need to be on a gluten diet. If Ella were tested today she should come back negative for all tests b/c she's been gluten free for 6 months (well other than a small amount she got by accident last week - trust me not fun).
So an elimination diet started ASAP would be great for the health of Ducky, but in the event you wanted a blood test done it'd be counter-productive to start the diet now. That being said the celiac's association advocates for diagnosis based on improvement with change of diet. Both my husband and I are diagnosed based on the fact that we improved after going gluten-free (I had IBS, thyroid, mood problems etc DH had horrible breath, joint, bone, muscle pains, anxiety etc). Our younger DD has been diagnosed based on family history and the fact that if I EVER cheated on the diet while nursing her, she was sick. We'll never bother having her tested in any way. OUr newest baby will be diagnosed based on history alone - we will not do a gluten challenge until this one is old enough to decide for him/her self.
If you do decide to start the elimination diet right now make sure you do a bit of research first. Some things like nuts and fish are easy to take out - others like corn, dairy and gluten are more difficult b/c they're hidden in EVERYthing. Also based on symptoms you should be fairly safe to leave allergens in the diet and only focus on the foods that cause intolerance. Those are the foods that cause GI problems (off the top of my head I know corn, dairy, gluten), the allergens would cause hives and respiratory types of problems.
For us we started with gluten based on the wide range of symptoms we were dealing with. They fit celiac's disease, but no other intolerance could explain everything. We also tested for CF, since Ella was diagnosed with asthma she fit the profile for that as well (also CF and celiacs disease go hand in hand in many cases). She was tested for allergies - but we were told the tests were very inaccurate in young children, and after getting the celiac's diagnoses we were told to try the previous allergens b/c the leaky gut would have, in a sense, made her allergic to everything (even Cinnamon!). She is now allergen free, and asthma free - 1 month without any of her meds and a much healthier little girl too.
I remember well the many ER visits, the laying at night worrying, the hours spent googling, and finally the HOPE when I found somehting that could explain it. I also had the doubt - what if the Dr is right, what if I am just a paranoid mom? What if there isn't anythign wrong with my baby? BUt she had UTI after UTI and was always sick. SOme nights we laid awake with her in our bed checking her all night long b/c her breathing was so bad we didn't know if she'd survive. Everytime we took her to a Dr. we were told wait and see - she's happy - a sick child isn't happy, a sick child doesn't meet milestones on time, let alone ahead of time.
When she was finally diagnosed she was so sick, so malnourished, dehydrated, but still happy. She bounced back very quickly and was a new person within days and within a couple months you couldn't even tell how sick she'd ever been.
I'm telling you this so that you find out what's causing Ducky to be sick. Find the second opinion and please don't go through the same thing we did. Get him healthy soon.
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Permalink Reply by JTX on -
Oh, Oracle, I'm so sorry. On many levels, this is so sucky.
Keep in mind what one pediatician said to me when our eldest was a few months old and actually projectile-vomiting... "having a baby with digestive issues is okay in the grand scheme of things. He's still remarkably healthy, and this will get better."
(You should hear the above in the warmest, calmest voice possible, btw.)
Before doing an elimination diet, have you thought about consulting a nutritionist who has experience with pediatrics? Since you're nursing, of course you have to think about your foods, but if you think celiac or other sensitivities are an issue, you should pursue elimination diets under some supervision. This way, you can make sure that both you and Ducky are getting the nutrients you need.
I'm so sorry about the urgent-care visit. I've been through the massive dehydration with a baby and it's just awful. I hope this turns a corner really quickly.
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Permalink Reply by The Oracle on
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Thanks for all of the input - all of you - lots to think about.
I started an input/output journal today and will start weighing diapers tomorrow. Or maybe in the middle of the night tonight. I knew that Weight Watchers food scale would come in handy for something someday. However, I think/hope the dehydration is fairly well past (at least for now) but the poopsplosions remain and we need to get it figured out.
You all have been champions putting up with the gory details of my kid's poop. Thank you.
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