No More Juice!

Ok, let's start the the begining, maybe this could help someone else get the right treatment a little sooner.

Alexi was born at 30 weeks, so she had some very close monitoring for the first couple months, even back then we noticed trouble transitioning from IV nutrition, to the feeding tube, then again from the feeding tube, to digesting breast milk.  The doctors watched closely, but since everything eventually passed through they decided there wasn't a concern yet and she got to come home.

Since birth Alexi has been thinner in the mornings and had a big old round belly (like daddy's) by the end of the day.  We've brought it up at every doctor visit and they felt it was a result of her being low tone.  It just seemed odd to us that no matter how much core work we did with her, it didn't go away at all, in fact it got worse the older she got.  She's fought constipation off and on her whole life but in the last 4-5 months is been more often than not.

The constipation seemed to get worse when we started solid foods and the chronic nature of her constipation alarmed us, so we scheduled specific Dr visits around it.  They felt it was a result of low tone and that she needed more juice (we had been told that at every Dr visit for months.)  We did as instructed every time with no result.

One day, while we were visiting her family from across the state, Alexi began vomiting.  Our first fear was that she ate something she was allergic to.  We called the Dr and went over everything she ingested and there was no real concern of allergic reaction.  We continued our stay and Alexi did pretty well at first, but then began throwing up more and more.  Once we returned home and saw the Dr, they decided she was throwing up from being constipated for so long, and put her on mirilax.  This seemed to work for a day or two, then right back to vomiting.  They (Drs) were pretty sure the vomiting now was a result of being on mirilax and being gassy, so anti-gas medicine.  Then after that the vomiting was blamed on indigestion, so on to zantac.

With all 3 of these meds and Alexi still vomiting we saw a nutritionist for Alexi.  This nutritionist immediately knew something was up when we explained Alexi's belly situation to her (6 pack in the morning, looks like she swallowed a beach ball at night.)  The nutritionist did her job and advised us on some foods, but knew she was going to be no help, and recommended that we see and GI immediately.  So we called the pediatrician and had a GI appointment scheduled.  The GI also seemed to lean towards low tone being the main cause, but agreed to order an upper GI scan to be safe.

The upper GI scan showed clear as day that Alexi had a pretty serious blockage/restriction in her duodenum (first section of "plumbing" outside the stomach.)  They were confident that she had what is known as a Duodenal Web.  This caused Alexi's intestines to work as efficiently as a clogged drain pipe.  Sure the sink will drain, but it's gonna be a while, and the bigger particles aren't goin through.

Picture break!

Here's a few shots of Alexi practicing her modeling faces...

Show me Excitied!  Now Anticipation...  Impressed!

Bored...  Now like your thinking.  Now surprised!!

Ok, whew!  Got that out of the way.  Why was I so detailed in explaining what we went through trying to figure this out?  Was I complaining about the Drs?  No, certainly not.  I'm simply trying to help anyone else who may read this and see if we can't help them get the ball rolling on fixing the issue before the situation gets worse (like it did for Alexi.)  We were semi-adamant that there was something serious wrong with Alexi, and the Drs kept denying it.  It's not their fault, but we have learned more than ever that we need to be unafraid of putting our foot down and making sure a situation is checked out, not letting it go and seeing if "more juice" does the trick.

Now onto the hospital stay...  (see next blog entry!)