Unexplained vomiting 5 yr old - Acid Reflux / GERD Message Board

bopper · 12-19-2008, 10:14 AM

HELP! My 5 year old daughter has been throwing up only in the night or early in the morning for no known reason off and on since early fall (about 3-4 months now).

Happens almost exactly the same time in the night each time (between 2 and 3am) and she continues to throw up every 15 to 20 minutes for about 6 hours or until all contents of your tummy are gone.

I would say that in the last 3 to 4 months, we have experienced somewhere around 8 bouts of this unexplained vomitting.

Does not seem to be a bug...no one else in the 4 member family is getting the bug, she is fine other than, explainably tired the next day.

She has always had a modest appetite, is petite and very active. She is also what I would describe as a sensitive child.

We took her to our family doctor who could not find anything obvious wrong with her. She did ask us to keep a diary of her diet which we did for about 2 weeks during which time, of course, she did not vomit. Family GP asked us to bring her back one week later which we did not do because she did not experience any more bout of vomiting.

Since then, she has been up in the night vomiting on three separate occassions plus one occassion of early morning (on the way to the bus stop) bout of vomiting.

During the episodes, she cries and complains of stomach pain and is very clamy and lethargic.

I have a call in to our family doctor for a follow up but I thought I might get some insight from this board in the meantime.

In researching nighttime vomiting, three causes keep arising. 1-gastro-esophaugael reflux 2 - post-nasal drip and 3 - brain tumour.

Her symptoms seem consistent with GERD (hoarseness, complains sometimes about vomit coming up in her throat and she swallows it). My question is, is this something that she would develop at 5 years old or should we be looking at something else.

HELP US!!! We are soo very exhausted and missing a lot of time at work / school.

gcsjr · 12-20-2008, 05:51 AM

GERD is fairly common in children and can cause many of the symptoms you mention (nausea, vomiting, hoarseness, the acidic taste in her mouth). It can be tough to diagnose in children because they have a harder time describing how they're feeling, but her symptoms sure fit GERD. In kids the acid doesn't have very far to travel from the digestive tract up the esophagus and it can usually be treated with common acid reflux medications. You might consider having her see a pediatric gastroenterologist to confirm that it's GERD.

Ol'Line Rebel · 12-20-2008, 02:16 PM

Hi, I hope you can find out. I just wanted to make a couple comments.

Yes, a child could have GERD (even from birth).

But you also must distinguish between vomiting (forceful muscular expulsion from gut) and regurgitating (incidental "losing it" by accident, such as open sphincter, food not past the sphincter burping back up, etc). If she has tummy pain I'd suspect real vomiting, but GERD does not involve that. It involves more accidental regurgitation, including burping up stuff because the sphincter won't block it.

Does your DD have any odd symptoms along with the vomiting, such as not knowing what's happening, or not remembering when she vomitted? I saw an episode of M-YSTERY D-IAGNOSIS (hope this isn't deleted; useless when 1 can't post direct references) where the little girl kept suddenly vomiting in the night. Turned out she had epilepsy that affected her vomiting center (my dad has epilepsy, so I know something about it, including that there are many variations). Don't want to scare you, but just wanted to let you know of other possibilities.

Also check for gastroparesis, gastritis, and other rather common gut problems, maybe even colitis. How about gall bladder?

bopper · 12-30-2008, 06:47 AM

Thanks for the reply.

You are suggesting that it could be that something like stress or anxiety could be causing her to throw up once then her body is not able to shut it off after the first time? Hmmm. Would that be accompanied by stomach pain...?

DMBF · 01-05-2009, 06:56 PM

Hi there
I feel for you! I am now a GERD sufferer, but many years before my symptoms, my then 4 year old daughter had the same symptoms/episodes!!! WIth her, it always happened around midnight with vomiting until her gut was empty, and then she was fine the next day. After a few times, I took her to the pediatrician, who ordered a GI series of x-rays, just to rule out a few things. That was normal. She had us worried with the other possibility, but she checked out fine otherwise. I did start charting her diet on the days when it happened, and realized that she had eaten an unusually large amount that day (like yours, she was petite and not usually a big eater). My family dr. was the one who finally suggested it could be REFLUX and she was colicky as a baby (now seen as probably GERD in infants). We had some food sensitity testing done with a naturopath, and she ended up sensitive to citrus, milk, chocolate and a few other things. We drastically reduced these things for one month, gave her acidophilus for kids (the good bacteria found in yoghurt--but you can get it in pill form) and she was fine. We gradually re-introduced those things and she has essentially been fine. In the last two years, she has had two episodes which I think were GERD in that she got up in the middle of the night and was sick in the toilet (she's now 11), went back to sleep, adn was fine. I might add that someone told me as well that what comes up with the stomach flu is often very thin and grose smelling where as what comes up with GERD can be thicker (I know, this is grose, but it was so true for us!) and not as foul smelling. Does that make sense? I have another friend whose daughter went through the exact same thing and it was diagnosed as GERD. SHe took medication for a few months and was fine after that. Occasionally, my daughter will now ask for a ROLAID and I give her half. I suspect she will follow in my footsteps as she gets older (though I hope for her sake that she doesn't). I really try to encourage her to watch what she eats, esp. at night (e.g. chocolate, acidy fruit, etc). HOpe this helps!