Since infant, Sherilyn has been a very constipated child. When she was a newborn, she would only poo poo once in 8-10 days, which got me worried sick. But when she finally poo pooed, it was explosive and she normally spent a good 15-30 minutes pooping lots. All these years up until now, Sherilyn needs to drink lots of water, prune juice, eat papaya and dragon fruit to assist her with an easy bowel movement. Every now and then, she even needed enema to induce her to move her bowels.
Lately, Sherilyn’s appetite has been really bad. She used to love drinking milk but for the past 1 month, she avoided milk and when she drank her milk, she would take forever to finish a cup of 6 ounces milk. This fler just doesn’t seem to get hungry at all lately. When she didn’t want to eat her dinner one night, we punished her and didn’t give her any milk before she went to bed. I thought she would be famished the next morning but I was wrong. The next morning, she sat at the dining table daydreaming, with the cup of milk untouched for almost an hour (and she was already late for school) until I flashed the cane at her. When it comes to meal times, she would need 2-3 hours every day to painfully swallow her food. I suspected that something wasn’t quite right with her.
Lately, she has also been complaining of having tummy aches. Last week, the hubs and I were shocked when we saw blood in the toilet bowl during one of her poopie sessions. There was quite an amount of blood and when asked if she felt pain at her bottom or in her tummy, she said no. This got the hubs and I to be concerned. A few days later, we brought her to see the paed. Our paed touched her tummy and commented that it was bloated and hard. You see, Sherilyn has a habit of holding back her poop… even when she keeps farting, she would resist going to the toilet. This happens when she’s either too lazy to sit at the throne or when she’s overly engrossed playing or watching TV. According to our paed, the poop have accummulated in her intestines, thus the bloatedness, tummy ache, frequent flatulance and the lack of appetite.
She was given Duphalac syrup (Lactul Solution) by our paed. She has to drink the solution thrice a day, until she gets a diarrhea, after which the solution can be reduced to once a day. Once she has a regular pattern of bowel movement, the medication can be stopped. Frankly, I am not really keen in feeding her with laxatives. I may try feeding her with psyllium husk (natural fibre) one of these days because this has helped me tremendously in my bowel movement.
