Constipation in infants: aka how I spent my Sunday morning
Sunday mornings used to be when I might go for a run, then watch a soccer game, or maybe go riding and be back for the afternoon game. This Sunday, though, I spent with my family at CHEO.
This post starts on the border of overshare and promptly invades, so be warned.
I’m Mallory’s night parent. I get up with her overnight, feed, change and soothe her back to sleep when she wakes, which is usually every three or so hours. It’s sometimes better, and when she’s got a cold it can be much worse – every hour.
But I’d never experienced anything like last night.
We’d been out at friends for dinner and got back well after Mallory’s bed time, but she’d had some breast milk and gone to sleep normally enough by eleven. So far so good.
She awoke at 2am, just as the clocks were changing. I fed her, changed her and rocked her back to sleep by 1:30 (Daylight Savings Time).
Half an hour later, she woke, screaming. Recently I’d been able to get her back to sleep without another feed/change/soothe routine, but she was unconsolable. So up we get and it’s bottle time.
She sips about 5ml and goes back to sleep. For another half hour. Again she wakes, crying voiciferously. It’s slightly harder to get her back to sleep, but she does. And in another 30 minutes, she’s awake again. This time I need to use TV to get her to drink, and she won’t sleep.
So I walk with her. And walk. By about 5:30, I’m beside myself. She’s full, with a dry diaper and I’m doing the things that have put her to sleep a thousand times. And still she’s balling her head off.
We’re now completely in a panic. We think it might be constipation – our normally prolific bowel mover hasn’t been so productive since her new-found attraction to solid foods. But we don’t know.
We can’t console her. She won’t sleep.
So yelling at each other, in fear-induced anger, we bundle her off to CHEO Emergency. They take her temperature: it’s fine.
They give her Tylenol and we wait.
The emerg waiting room is fairly full – babies, mostly, although a teenager with a vomit bowl is curled up in the corner.
The triage nurse speculates “enema and xray to ensure there’s nothing seriously wrong”.
We see a nurse practicioner. She examines ears and throat. All’s well. They stick a bag on her vagina to collect pee. They get pee.
It’s fine.
A doctor comes in to tell us we should change her diet and pick up some glycerine suppositories at the pharmacy on our way home.
We bundle her out of the hospital by around 10am. Snow is flying.
There’s a Shopper’s Drug Mart on our way home. Irene goes in for some prunes and suppositories.
Mallory, possibly still drugged, sits calmly in her car seat. She grunts. She grunts again. A long “grrrrr”. Could it be?
We get home and much to all of our relief, indeed, Mallory has let loose.
Thanks CHEO. Your staff are wonderful, and most kind and patient with we fretting parents.
