I think I have posted before about my 6 (turns 7 in July) year old girl who has chronic belly aches.
Quick history:
born with severe Reflux
sort of outgrew reflux, treated with tums when attacks occur
started first grade this year and discovered the nurses office.
She has been sent home 2 times because of multiple trips to the nurse in one day but still continues to go alot.
No other symptoms at all. WHen I would get her home, she would be FINE.
She wakes up maybe 4 out of the 7 days after we put her to bed complaining of belly ache, so we give her tums to get her back to bed.
I brought her to the dr thinking maybe something else is going on, but nothing. so they think she is lactose intolerent. They had me take her off dairy for 3 weeks then slam her to see if there are any changes. Throughout the 3 weeks she had less belly aches, still went to the nurse, still wakes up at night, though not as much.
I started her back on dairy this past weekend and no dramatic changes. I told her that the dr called and said she was all better and could have dairy now thinking this would be a safe way to see if she has belly aches. SHe heard the dr say all this so I was worried she would "play" me.
So she woke up last night, after about 30 minutes in her room, saying it hurt. gave her a tums and sent her on her way.
I dont know what to do anymore.
I spoke with my father and he thinks she is a bundle of nerves, too self conscous, and stoo hy. She is all of those things, always has been. ALways thinks of if she can hurt, what will happen, she is always asking "what if". SHe was devistated when she got a 100 (she normally get 110%) on her spelling test.
What can I do to bring her confidence up, make her not so nervous and hopefully cure these belly aches? I have a routine parent teacher conference tomorrow and plan on asking her for her advice.
amy -
This sounds like my oldest when she was about that age. Constantly leaving school going up to the daycare where her sister was. Either a belly ache, headache, or feeling yuck in general. Even had her go to the doctor. He had said many young girls go through this during elementary. Stress, nerves, anxiety. Gave her a liquid to take to settle her stomach which was awful!!!
She outgrew it eventually, but it lasted about a year or two.
Sounds like your daughter could be stressing herself out. Does she voice to you her worries and concerns? Communication between the two of you can make her feel more secure. Let her know that you do not expect perfectionism from her and that you love her no matter what. My oldest had a difficult time with that too. Another thought, could something or someone at school be causing her to feel bad? Yes, talking with her teacher may bring you some clues.
Good luck.
I agree with the previous post. Many children go through this and stress and anxiety can certainly cause the stomach to feel poorly. On the other hand, is there any possibility she may be allergic or sensitive to other foods in her diet? Primarily gluten? This can cause heart burn, indigestion, bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, fatigue..... I'm not a child, but suffered with a chronic stomach ache for a couple of years. The only time I felt better was when I took gluten out of my diet. The stomach ache went away along with the other symptoms. When I eat gluten products it comes back. She may not test positive for celiac, but she may have a sensitivity. You may want to ask her doctor about an elimination diet just to see if there could be something in her diet. At least you could have some peace of mind by ruling out dietary problems.
My daughter is the same age. Last August she saw a gastroenterologist who diagnosed her (only through questioning,not testing) with acid reflux. She put her on Zantac, which seemed to help a little, then stopped working. The doctor ordered an x-ray which showed that my daughter was extremely constipated. I mean she was totally full of poop!! She never showed any signs of constipation,,,no hard time going, and she seemed to go often enough. She complained of belly aches constantly, and I started to think it was nerves, also. Now she's on Miralax daily, and she's perfectly fine.
I spoke with her teacher on Friday and she is willing to do everything and anythign to help identify whats going on. She did say that my daughters confidence is very low. She never raises her hand but when she does its low like she's not really sure and she will call on her, she'll slouch down and whisper the answer, and if its right, she will sit up tall and proud. There was no regular time she goes down it varied from day to day. My daughter said she was afraid to go to the nurse becuase her teacher told her she goes too much but her teacher told me she told her that she is missing alot of class time and if she keeps going like this she will get behind. I told her if she was truly sick she needs to go to the nurse and the teachers will let her. I discussed with the teacher and she agreed. I dont want her to think she is going to get in trouble if she keeps going. I truly think is a mind game or her shyness. I never get a complaint on the weekends or in the mornings, just after she goes to bed or during school time, thats it. But if it does continue I will have to bring her in again.
Thank you all for your advice and stories, glad to know I am not the only one with a mystery belly ache.
just wondering if when you took her to the doc,if he ran any tests on her liver and kidneys? if so,was everything there okay? has she ever just out of the blue,vomited for no apparent reason or is this strictly belly pain she is having?
the thing is,given what she DID have earlier on,there 'could' possibly something more to this than just her low self esteem and needing atention type issues. it would just be a matter of testing those two things just to rule out some other possibilities as the cause of her stomach pain. this just "could' be a something not a nothing,you know what i mean?
my son had about the very same type of history as your daughter(the reflux,a change to soy formula really helped this tho) and the ongoing stomach aches which would often pop in right about the time he needed to 'do" something he really didn;t want to do? so we didn;t think too much about it til he started vomiting in really strange places with no actual "illness' going on that really showed itself. we found out suddenly,and i mean very suddenly one day that he actually was having really big liver issues. but this is how it all started,just with what your daughter is kind of dealing with. the vomiting didn't start til much later tho,around like age8-10 or so? if those two labs have not yet been done on her,they really do need to be at least checked out for any abnormalities. you just need to rule outwhat you can right now. hopefully this is just a 'phase" but you need to be certain it isn't the symptoms of something else too. good luck and please keep us posted,Marcia
Yes she has vomitted out of the blue, usually in the middle of the night, for no reason and she doesnt remember doing it the next day. Its actually scary, I wake to a gurgling sound, and she is asleep but throwing up all over the place, kind of exorcist sort thing. But its over after that. I chaulk those times up to her reflux, thinking she had something she shouldnt have before bed.
No the drs did not do any invasive testing, they just felt around her belly, she was not "backed up", they pretty much ruled out apendix, her urine was perfect but thats all they did. If this continues and I have to bring her back to the dr, I will mention your comments or request some more testing.
My friend's daughter, same age as yours, complained of bellyaches a lot and she mentioned it to her doctor. The doctor recommended removing all dairy from her diet. She did and the the bellyaches have stopped. Just a thought.
if they have never actually checked out her liver and kidney labs,they really do have to. my son,believe it or not had just had an actual "sports" physical which supposedly also included an abdominal palpation per the phys report that she gave my hubby when he had to take him to the doc that day not me. well after pronouncing him totally "healthy" and letting him actually play football that year,but thankfully my son decided he didn;t feel like it when the time came,less than two months later he was throwing up blood and was found to only have about 20% of his actual liver functioning. we were just blown away at the news and the fact that some stupid PA who supposedly actually had layed her hands on my sons abdomen,somehow managed to actually miss a severely enlarged/hardened liver and spleen. just stupid,honestly. she was fired on the spot that day by the doc who i rushed him to when i picked him up from school where he happened to be when the vomiting episode took place. this all occured when he was only 12(the usual 'presentation" like he had for this is normally around like age ten). but he was having the same types of symptoms your daughter is showing much much earlier than ten.
i am in no way saying this is what is going on with your daughter,but those labs would really be helpful in just ruling out possible underlying things. they just really need to be done,even better along with an abdominal ultrasound just to really "see' how the liver and kidneys look inside. labs alone do not always tell the whole story when it comes to actual disease processes. the only time the actual numbers will go out of range is when that actual real damage reaches some little magic threshold amount. otherwise you can have great labs with actual diesase process going on in any given organ. mine are still perfect but my ultrasounds of my kidneys and liver show a totally different story. i really would just make certain that these two organs are running perfectly in every way. we NEVER ever saw this coming in our child. he was actually more healthy than his actually totally healthy brother who didn;t ahve this diesease. its all just insane really. better safe than sorry when it comes to our kids. i really would push this with her doc at this point. hopefully everything is fine and it is stemming from something totally different than any type of liver/kidney issue,but these organs do need some checking,espescially the liver. hope all is well. please keep me posted as to what you find out,K?marcia
just wondering if when you took her to the doc,if he ran any tests on her liver and kidneys? if so,was everything there okay? has she ever just out of the blue,vomited for no apparent reason or is this strictly belly pain she is having?
the thing is,given what she DID have earlier on,there 'could' possibly something more to this than just her low self esteem and needing atention type issues. it would just be a matter of testing those two things just to rule out some other possibilities as the cause of her stomach pain. this just "could' be a something not a nothing,you know what i mean?
my son had about the very same type of history as your daughter(the reflux,a change to soy formula really helped this tho) and the ongoing stomach aches which would often pop in right about the time he needed to 'do" something he really didn;t want to do? so we didn;t think too much about it til he started vomiting in really strange places with no actual "illness' going on that really showed itself. we found out suddenly,and i mean very suddenly one day that he actually was having really big liver issues. but this is how it all started,just with what your daughter is kind of dealing with. the vomiting didn't start til much later tho,around like age8-10 or so? if those two labs have not yet been done on her,they really do need to be at least checked out for any abnormalities. you just need to rule outwhat you can right now. hopefully this is just a 'phase" but you need to be certain it isn't the symptoms of something else too. good luck and please keep us posted,Marcia
This is my first time on board. And I am really scared for my 6 year old daughter, my daughter has always been very gasy as a baby, and now it is belly ache all the time. At play bedtime, in the morning. We tried cutting out Milk and add more fiber, she drinks a lot of water but still, her stomach hurts. Sometimes when I pick her up from school, she is sitting on the bench becuase it hurts. We have been to the doctor, and they suggested Benefiber and Milax drops for infants, nothing. She is always constipated and does not go on a regular basis. Any suggestions would help. It breaks my heart to see her in so much pain. She once asked me if her belly would hurt in heave. Tears filled my eyes. I
This is my first time on board. And I am really scared for my 6 year old daughter, my daughter has always been very gasy as a baby, and now it is belly ache all the time. At play bedtime, in the morning. We tried cutting out Milk and add more fiber, she drinks a lot of water but still, her stomach hurts. Sometimes when I pick her up from school, she is sitting on the bench becuase it hurts. We have been to the doctor, and they suggested Benefiber and Milax drops for infants, nothing. She is always constipated and does not go on a regular basis. Any suggestions would help. It breaks my heart to see her in so much pain. She once asked me if her belly would hurt in heave. Tears filled my eyes. I
Thank you Marcia, Just put a call into the doctor. I will ask to run those test for liver and kidney. The doctor prescribed a pain medicine for her. But I was afraid to give it to her, she is so young to be on pain medicine. What do you think. I forgot the name of it;
i really am glad you are going to do this. at this point everything needs to be looked at and either ruled out or in and the only way to do that is by testing. if your doc has any type of problem in doing this for your child,simply ask him or her to "okay,then please tell me whats wrong with her right now". if they cannot give you that answer, the tests at this point are just a must.
do not let yourself be intimidated by any doc when it comes to your child. i had to get a bit nasty with some people who were just too stupid to even BE around my child while he was in the hospital. its amazing what you will actually 'do' for your child but sometimes not even do for yourself in the same situations. this just needs to be checked out as one possibility,thats all. hope things are okay. but you do need something solid here to go on at this point. please let me know what you actually find out,K? marcia
Dee - ask your doctor if your daughter may be intolerant of gluten. Some people suffer with constipation and chronic stomach ache. Not every person with this condition suffers the same ailments and sometimes don't get diagnosed because they don't show classic symptoms. This is a very simple thing to check for with a blood test or even an elimination diet. Your doctor may dismiss this as your child may not be anemic or showing other classic symptoms, but just request the test and don't take "no" for an answer. If you've added more fiber to her diet and she's still having troubling with her bowel movements that may be a clue that she's having a problem. Don't attribute it to stress just yet. A child who asks if her stomach will hurt in heaven is probably suffering from something more than stress.
I want to second what Bleigh said. As a child I always had stomachaches and severe anxiety. My mom used to take me to the Dr. all the time and they would say I had "nervous" stomach or a virus. Turns out I had Celiac Disease and I wasn't diagnosed until I was 24 years old. I suffered for many, many years needlessly!
I just wanted to add that I understand your frustration. My 4 year old was always complaining of tummy aches. This occured when it was time to eat, and also a lot at night. I was so tired of hearing about her tummy all the time. My daughter is also very manipulative, so I could never tell if she was telling me the truth or not. I had her to the Dr. multiple times. Finally, I took her in and had the Dr. draw all sorts of labwork, urine, test, blood cultures, the works. We found out after all this that she has crohns disease. All of her complaints were completely valid. I am not saying this is the case with your daughter, but I would definitly get some routine bloodwork to rule out any other problems and then go from there. It will at least ease your mind that you have ruled out medical reasons. Sometimes, it is so hard to differentiate from behaviorial from medical. Take care
Kelley
I finally pushed with her pedi to have a lactose breath test. The pedi swore she was lactose intolerant through just withdrawing her from it and SHE SAID her belly aches went away.
I told them that she is pretty smart, and that I cant take her word for it. They agreed and off we went.
The test was brutal, it was 3 hours long, no food, just sit there and breath into this bag every 1/2 hour. The brutal part was the boredom. No TV in the waiting room, we couldnt go anywhere, she started to lose it around hour 2. I thought they would just give me the results and we could go home. But NOOOO. We had to meet with everyone. I told them about her being a reflux baby, these chronic belly aches but that I wasnt sure if they were real or not. So they did a rectal, no blood (she always had blood as a baby) but she had a very hard BM in her. So they sent her to xray.
XRay came back and showed she was packed with 4 days worth of an adult size poop. When the dr was feeling around, he noticed her breath was very acidy, so i explained that she didnt brush her teeth yet that day and he said no, this is acid. I told him, she was a reflux baby, but we stopped on prescription meds at age 3 cause they didnt work as well as we wanted. We were giving her just about 1-2 tums a day, sometimes it worked sometimes didnt. So they want to scope her again to see if there is any additional damage done since her last scope ion 2004.
They did a bunch of blood tests, they mentioned chrones and celiac.
Scope isnt until july 21, so we are on huge doses on miralax and prevasid until then.
THank you for all you support and suggestions, i hope everything is clean in her gi tract.
quite an ordeal there,believe me, i can relate to that part. sitting and waiting for yet another doc appt and sitting thru test after test can get to all of you very quickly. especially when it is your child with the medical problem. did they tell you just exactly what types of blood labs they were running on her? did they say when you would get the results? i do hope things are okay. but not finding the reasons for all this just sucks too. just make sure that YOU have some good support thru all this too. it can wear you down having to deal with doc after doc and all the darn testing that comes with it. please continue to keep us all posted. hang in there,Marcia
Thanks for the kind words Marcia....No they didnt tell me exactly what blood tests they were doing, except a chrones and celiac test, but they took I think 9 viles of blood. They didnt even say when the results come back or even if they will call. I think me and my husband we so eager to my dd out of there that we just ran for the dor when they said we could leave. I assume they will call if they find anything in the tests.
I do have good support and utilize them quite often. We;ve been through this too many times when she was a baby. Looking back now and thinking of whats to come, it was much easier when she was a baby, as she didnt need to know what was going on, now she knows somethings up and having to explain things without scaring the life out of her is hard. We havent told her about the scope yet, not sure when we will do it. I am thinking like the week before, we might start by innocently saying she has a drs apt in a few days....then MAYBE the night before, tell her whats going to happen.
6 year old, chronic belly aches 
