Don’t say I didn’t warn you! 💩
Facebook reminded me this morning of what Solly looked like a full year ago.
Note the prune-stache. That means that he was already having a difficult time pooping :/ Difficult enough that I had gone on the hunt to get him pureed prunes from the baby food section of the grocery store. At that point, I figured we were clearly in desperate times to need to make additional efforts to help him poop. I’d give him a scoop or two of prunes stirred into the minimal amount of solid food he was eating, and after a day or two, he’d poop, and I’d decide he was “all better.” I had no idea.
For literally the next YEAR, poor Solly worked to poop. He would either cry and drop down and strain and produce nothing, or sometimes he’d go hide and cry and work for it away from us. And guys, I failed. I completely missed how long it all went on 🙁 I have an embarrassing amount of pictures of him pooping in places that I thought was funny. I had him labelled as our bad pooper, which wasn’t untrue, but I didn’t realize just how bad things were :/
Solly would FINALLY have success, but he would scream like a wounded animal, and what came out of him was just not right. WAY too big. But when it happened, I’d take comfort in knowing that he was FINALLY cleaned out, and we could move forward. Except it never, ever helped, and it just kept happening. We hacked up prunes for him to eat like raisins, and gave him little bran muffins, and really amped up our fruit and veggie intake as a family. No dice. Nothing helped.
For the last month, he’s become irritable, and has flip flopped between sweet and funny, to VERY easily upset, to laying flat on his tummy on the floor (or on me,) unmoving, and sweat.
We finally gave up and resorted to suppositories. And they didn’t take. No joke. Nada. I sent this picture of him to a nurse friend of mine, telling her this was the face of a little dude, post-suppository, and she asked me a few questions.
After a brief evaluation and realizing just how long this had been a problem, I realized just how bad of a position Solly’s bowel was probably in. It must be SO stretched to produce such HUGE poops, and then just keep doing the same thing over and over again. So, we started Solly’s new “treatment.”
We rocked a clean-out treatment for three days with NO progress. THAT scared me. I didn’t want to have to admit him to the hospital because I had just simply missed how backed up he really was 🙁 So we decided to give him another day or two and slightly increase our plan. And it WORKED!!!
Yesterday, this little man FINALLY had some good relief!! Today is more of the same. And it shows!!! He feels SO much better! He doesn’t want to be held as much, thats for sure. He wants to chase his siblings and lift heavy things and play hard and scream and laugh and help out. Its pretty crazy to see such a shift in his personality literally the day of! Leaving our ultrasound yesterday, he didn’t want to be carried to the van. So he held hands and walked with the rest of us. And he EATS! A LOT! He definitely had some holdback before, and I just hadn’t realized how much until he didn’t have it anymore!
Today is more of the same. Solly is SO FUNNY today! Forgive his boogery nose, but I wasn’t going to mess up the happy picture 🙂 He. Feels. AMAZING. I’m so relieved, and he clearly is, too.
To be fair, he’s still pretty scared of diaper changes and such. I don’t blame him. He does NOT like pooping. Yet his poop this morning was NOT preceded by crying, so thats hopeful! We’re REALLY babying his little bum, to avoid absolutely any rashes or soreness. Anything to make things less traumatizing for him.
I want his success to continue! He will likely be on a light treatment to help him poop nice and easy for several months to give his little bowel a chance to actually be little again. A retraining exercise, so to speak. I am SO thankful to have had the help and expertise of a friend to help us through this tricky situation. I am confident that Solly is on the mend, and I can tell he for sure believes he is getting better, too.
What. A. Relief.