***Warning! This post contains a lot of talk about constipation, bowel movements, and other unpleasant things associated with raising children. If that's not for you, then turn back now. ***
Two things to know about Anna.
1- She loves cats, and frequently refers to herself as a cat. She also talks about herself in the third person, and calls herself The Kitty-Cat. Dustin and I frequently refer to her as The Cat.
2- We recently found out that she is lactose intolerant. She had had issues with constipation off and on, to varying degrees of severity since she was 2. It was always worse in the winter, although it never fully went away spring-fall.
Fast forward to late last fall when her issue started to increase. By Christmas it was pretty bad. I had already removed dairy from her diet to see if it would help. Then she had a cold/bug that resulted in her needing to take medicine for a few days. That always makes it worse.
When she was younger probiotics and a few days of no dairy worked wonders.
It just got to the point that I couldn't help her. I ended up making a desperate call to a 'seasoned constipation mom' one afternoon when our dr was out of the office and Anna was absolutely miserable, just a few days before Christmas. We started using pedialax jr, which was a life saver at the time. I thought that would solve our problem and started using it about once a week when she had issues. We continued with that, the elimination diet(dairy and some gluten) and probiotics to see if it would help until February.
She continued to be miserable, and got to the point that her tummy was always bloated, she belched and passed gas all day everyday and she was miserable. One morning she sat on the toilet and just cried. That's when I called her pediatrician. Because we were eliminating so many foods, she was still miserable and I was starting to worry about the long term effects of not enough calcium, fat and vitamin d.
Her pediatrician removed dairy from her diet almost completely for 6 weeks, added a vitamin d supplement, added dairy alternatives and put her on a medicine to help her body process things better. She told me that after a few days it would get her to the point of having diarrhea and we wanted to keep her there for 2 days to clean her belly out. Then we were to cut back the medicine until she had normal bowel movements.
Well, turns out her tummy was so backed up, we never got to that point. I called the Dr numerous times, they upped her medicine three different times and she still never got to that point. 🤷🏼♀️ I was terrified that when we went for her check up the Dr was going to make me remove gluten.
When we went back for her follow up the Dr said her tummy was so much better. Most of the backed up issue had passed and her body was functioning as normal now. She still has to continue to take the medicine for another 3 months. Then we go back again for a recheck.
Anna is still off most lactose items, and the Dr instructed us to give her something more dairyish about once a week...a piece of pizza or a taco with cheese, to keep her body used to processing some dairy. She can still consume butter, ranch, cheese crackers etc. Everything else has been removed, eliminated or swapped for an alternative.
Want to hear the craziest part?
Anna has been our most difficult child with food. She was a picky eater, refused to try new food and was not a fan of many vegetables. Since we've gotten her tummy issues straightened out, she tries everything we put in front of her. She eats so many more types and kinds of foods, and she even asks for salad. Which is something her older three siblings did from a very young age. We started salad before age 2 at our house. We rarely had a picky eater type complaint until Anna. Now I'm realizing that she was having tummy issues all along but didn't know how to tell me because she didn't know the difference.
Once we got her body adjusted to no lactose, it was shocking how much her physical appearance changed! All of her tummy bloat went away and even her face slimmed out. What I thought was just a bit of baby fat still hanging on, was actually bloat from lactose intolerance. Poor kiddo.
She is a much happier kid over all now. She used to be rather clingy, whiny and tearful from time to time. I didn't realize how much it had went away until I stupidly allowed her to eat alfredo sauce from Olive Garden yesterday. She ended up throwing up later in the day and was so clingy, whiny and tearful all day today. Any time I asked if her tummy felt better, she couldn't really tell me it was better but couldn't tell me exactly what felt wrong with her tummy. I'm 90% certain it was the dairy that made her sick. She had no other symptoms, other that burping and passing gas. No fever, no diarrhea and it was definitely not the viral kind vomit. Sorry, tmi, but it's the facts. Lol
In regards to my motherly mistake, she had had jared alfredo sauce and done ok. It didn't immediately occur to me that Olive Garden makes their alfredo from scratch with fresh ingredients...milk, cream, tons of butter and cheese too. 🤦🏼♀️ Plus I momentarily blanked because I'm also lactose intolerant, but I CAN have their alfredo.(I'm more of the can't have cream, milk, ice cream and yogurt kind of lactose person, with the occasional splurge on something without it making me too sick. Emma also struggles with some lactose issues, and is very similar to my diet with it.) Turns out Anna just can't have it. Now we know. We will definitely be living and learning from that one. I feel terrible that we learned that one the hard way. Sorry Anna.
Now that she seems to know the difference of how she feels with and without dairy, she is very hyper aware of asking if an item has dairy in it. Thankfully the food system has come a long way with dairy alternatives in the past ten years. Anna loves chocolate almond milk, almond milk ice cream(I was pleasantly surprised by it as well, and keep my own pint hidden in the back of the freezer now. ;) ), yogurt(The almond milk key lime pie yogurt is my absolute favorite. It's nice to be able to enjoy these foods and flavors without the unpleasant stomachache afterwards.), plant based cheese(No one in our house could stomach the stuff, but Anna is cool with it.) and so many granola bars and snacks without dairy. Just today we found a new item at Sam's club, it's called Oat Bites. They are these small oat muffins made without dairy, soy or gluten. Anna absolutely loves them. It does my mama heart good to see my youngest finally feeling and acting like the person she was meant to be all along. I just wish it hadn't taken us so long to get it straightened out.
~Lyndsay
P.S. I used to find it so strange when other moms would openly talk about bowel movements. Now I totally get it. I've become one of those vigilant 'Have you pooped today? What did it look like?' kind of Moms. The older kids find it annoying and embarrassing. It's just a daily part of survival in life with a lactose kid. 😁 I'm looking forward to the day they have kids and start talking about poop like it's totally normal.
