The Story of Poop

Nice, right? This is a highlighting theme in Delaney’s childhood thus far and so the story of my life for the past 2 years. I know that every parent has their own set of challenges with their children and many of them are so much more serious than ours. I have friends whose kids have disabilities, require serious surgeries, and need to make life altering decisions in the lives of their children. Our particular battle with Delaney is over poop. Not an issue that, at first glance, seems to be that big of a deal, but it has consumed our lives since she was 9 months old.

I know David has given the run down of this and it’s not really new “news,” but we’ve had a change of course this week that has me hoping for the best. The short version that Delaney has struggled with constipation since she was a baby. Her first pediatrician had us work on dietary tracking and modifications over the course of 6-9 months and after little to no improvement we moved to a regular laxative. By 18 months, after almost a year of tracking and medicating, we were still working through Delaney not pooping regular or at least having periods of time where is was difficult and dramatic. We were referred to a gastrointestinal specialist who determined that there was nothing physically wrong with her -  no rectal or colon concerns and she was developmentally fine. Great. So we moved on to a new course of treatment with a new stool softener and laxative regiment, which we’ve been doing without little change for about a year now. We were seeing the specialist about every 3 months for followup, but we got to a point where he said there was nothing else he could do in her treatment until after she was potty trained.

I was pretty much at a loss for what to do at this point since we were having regular cycles of Delaney going 5-6 days without pooping and a whole lotta drama in making happen whether medicated or not. I really didn’t want to make any more trips out to Fontana to see him because I didn’t feel like he was giving me anything to work with. While he had given us the new medication, it didn’t seem to be working to me and he couldn’t talk me through what else should be done. I honestly felt that this was going to be our way of life until she “grew out of this.” Or at least, that’s what everyone we knew kept telling us.I was hoping that potty training might make a difference in behavior, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

Delaney has been potty trained since October. She took to it fairly quickly and we haven’t really had any problems with her reverting or being skiddish of pooping in the potty, so that was a relief. But with potty training came a new set of challenges, her new ability to control when she went meant that she could hold her poop in for longer. So now we could go a full week without any poop at all – even fully medicated with stool softeners and laxatives. Fun times. In the past few months our cycles have varied from completely normal, with a neatly potty trained kid who goes regularly and no big deal, to a traumatized child who takes 3 full days to clean out and get back on track. It’s like playing Russian Roulette, you never really know what that week is going to look like or what the drama level is going to be. Mind you, this is all with regular diet monitoring and 2 types of medication on top of making sure that she is fully hydrated. If there was ANYTHING that could be done on our part, we were doing it to make sure that we were setting Delaney up for success and not failure. And I know that we are loved and that people only want to help, but we get advice from all over the place (and it really is welcome). We are so desperate to make this situation better for all of us, that we’ll listen to what anyone says, but sometimes . . people kill me. Everyone has a remedy that works for them or “you should try this” or “this is what happened to my kid”, or “oh, yeah, you’ll just have to wait until they outgrow it.” We had tried EVERY single thing people had suggested to us and more with our doctor’s supervision and NOTHING was working, but I was beginning to feel like people looked at us like we were failing her.

I had started to do some research on my own and realized that our situation wasn’t that uncommon for kids and she wasn’t among the most extreme cases, but most of the stories did indicate kids not making huge strides of change until they were close to 5 or 6. Um, what? That would put us at a 4-5 year struggle with pooping for 1 kid. I really wasn’t ok with that. I spent some more time with her pediatrician looking for more suggestions. She too thought that we could work on the behavior side of it with the medication. So we worked through incentives with D. M&Ms were her choice, but after a few weeks of that, not a whole lot of change still. She knew full well that she would get “M’s” if she pooped, but it still never moved the process along.

Flash forward to this week. Last time she had pooped was Friday and it was now coming on the next Wednesday night and we started our cycle of her panicking that she had to poop, so we did our normal run to the potty back and forth all night and the normal cycle of nothingness. This week was different though. She typically works herself into a frenzy after several days of this and eventually her body wins out over her will to hold it in, but her level of panic and discomfort started immediately. We were up with her every 2 hours or so on Wednesday night (10:15, 11:45, 1:30, 3. and finally 6am). She was hysterical. I couldn’t take her to school that day and have someone else stay with her, so I worked from home that day and hoped that I could get her on the path to cleared out by the end of that day. Not so much. Nothing all day, just a whole lot of hysteria. I was beginning to wonder if this time something serious had happened to her, but was still holding out hope that her body would win again and we could all breathe a sigh a relief. These cycles are stressful on all of us.

I had small group that night and while David was home with her she still hadn’t made any progress, which meant that she had gone a full 24 hours trying to push and NOTHING had come out in that time.  I was now worried. It was too late to make an appt and I didn’t want to be up another full night trying to work through this, so for the first time we took her in to urgent care for some help. Oh, what a night. It was long, gross, and traumatic for all of us, but 2 doctors, 3 enemas, and a set of xrays later we brought our cleaned out kid home. While that night was horrific, it did mark a turning point for us (I hope). The two doctors we had were AMAZING! They were able to walk us through her history and how to take steps to ensure that we never let Delaney get this bad again. Essentially, both disagreed with everything our specialist had trained us to do and the medication he had been prescribing. The pediatric dr we saw last night gave us some great info and updated D’s regular pediatrician for us. We met with her this morning and it went so well.

We’ve established that medicine has done Delaney no good. Her diet is well regulated and there is ZERO reason for Delaney not to have a regular bowel movement. It was so reassuring to hear that we had been doing everything right because I was seriously beginning to feel like a failure as a parent for letting my kid go so long without further intervention. So, as of this morning, our new plan of attack is behavior modification (or an attempt to do so .. ).  Apparently, my kid is a “retainer.” She’ll hold and hold and hold – as we’ve well established. The Dr.  gave us some suggestions for retraining her body and she’s going to call us weekly to see how they are going and make changes accordingly. We’re going to take D off all medication for now, since we’ve established that it’s done nothing help and all assistance that it’s supposed to provide she’s fought against anyway. So that’s where we stand for now. I’m hopeful for a possibility of change. I have no idea how its going to work, but I’m also encouraged that her pediatrician is so willing to help us walk through this. Of the 5 doctors who have helped us at some point along this journey, none of them really agree on a single course of action, but we’ll mix and match until something works.

So . . sorry if we talk about poop all the time or you happen to be around us when our kid is in one of her cycles. We try not let it affect the world around us, but there are times, that it’s inevitable. We promise not to bring it up over dinner if we hang out with you . . .

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