For the past couple of days, I noticed that Hannah’s abdomen was getting bigger. Then last night after her bath, Daddy made the comment to me that he thought her stomach looked bigger. Having him make that comment without telling him what I was thinking proved to me that I wasn’t just be paranoid and seeing things.
Then this morning while playing, she was having a harder time breathing. It was almost back to the days when her spleen and liver were so huge they pushed up her lungs so much she didn’t have much air in them. It is kind of like a gasping sound, but she really wasn’t gasping. She was just running out of air quicker than normal.
So I called the pediatrician’s office, and our pediatrician was out of town this week (Okay, he does deserve a rarely-taken vacation — but bad timing!). So we saw one of his clinic partners. I was kind of dreading it because this pediatrician really doesn’t know Hannah or her situation, so I was fearful that something would be missed.
The nurse came in and took her oxygen stats — 99% on room air! Then, we got her naked and weighed her 18 lb 15-1/2 oz. Those were good signs.
The doctor came in and listened to what I had to say. He listened to her lungs really thoroughly as well as her heart, and everything sounded good. Those were the words I wanted to hear!
Then it was on to the abdomen. Her liver looked much bigger than normal, at least 2 cm bigger than two weeks ago. Then he palpated on her abdomen, and she sounded like a drum, a loud drum. She has so much gas in there that she is about to pop!
Whether it could be a side effect from the amoxycillin for her ear infection (which she still has) or a reaction to the new formula (Grow N Go, 9 mos and up), we don’t know. She also has been a bit more constipated than usual to the point where 3 times in the past few weeks, she was in agony because she was unable to poop out what turned out to be huge, solid logs (I would have to help her, not fun!).
He prescribed some Florastor for kids that we can use in her formula for gas relief. If we don’t see a change by Friday, he wants to see her again. He was very concerned that he didn’t “miss anything” because of her Gaucher’s disease, but everything he said made sense to me.
Keep your fingers crossed that we can deflate her!
Hey Carrie,
This actually sounds like something my daughter went through when she was about 9 or 10 months old, when I switched her from formula to homo milk ( which was the thing to do 7 years ago – now they want babies left on formula for like 2 years, lol).
She would cry for hours trying to go poop, and I too would have to help her get it out. So I started giving her a lot more fruit and juices and cut back on her milk, and it really helped. But then when she was back to normal, I figured it was okay for her to have milk again. It happened again, so I was able to pin it down to her getting too much dairy.
Even today at 7 years old, if she eats too much dairy – cheese, yogurt, milk, ice cream, etc., she ends up with a bad tummy ache and has trouble going poop. So I have to make sure she doesn’t eat a ton of dairy, or she’ll be paying for it later.
So I wonder if maybe it does have something to do with her new formula. If you don’t see any change, I would be tempted to switch her back to her old formula and see if she improves.
Melissa Ingold’s last blog post..Time To Get Kyle Some More Help
As much as that seems uncomfortable it’s good to know it is just gas. Hopefully the medicine helps. It also sounds like he was very thorough going the extra mile to check her out.