semi constipated baby

[heidikk]

If you're not completely sick of my questions yet - Kory (6mo) had a bout of constipation Sunday night. stools looked dry, coming out in little bits at a time. he was straining and screaming and completely miserable. he wouldn't even nurse. I tried giving him some pedialyte but he wouldn't take more than a few sips of that either. Finally about 2am, he managed to push out the thick sticky stuff and have a normal bm. For the rest of that morning he was unusually grumpy and gassy. (gassy is normal for him, but being grumpy about it is not) Within a few hours he seemed fine and completely back to normal. however, in the days since then, he's been intermittently acting like a milder version of Sunday night is still going on. He strains harder than usual and cries about it with every bm, and his stools are usually of the thick and sticky looking stuff, though at least not dry little bits like before. I'm afraid he's gearing up for another miserable night - or worse, the dios I keep reading about. What can I do to help him and avoid having to go on miralax?

 

[Ratatosk]

When DS had issues like this, we ended up having to give him milk of mag to get him cleaned out. Happened a few times off and on when he was a baby. He get plugged up, wouldn't eat... Wasn't on it long term, just a few days to get him normalized. I do have a friend whose daughter has to be on a maintenance dosage of miralax as she had major constipation issues. You could try prunes, or some white grape juice, a little prune juice....

 

[Aboveallislove]

One thing you can try is to give him pureed prunes for his enzymes. BUT I'd highly recommend calling CF center and explaining what's going on b/c CF constipation is not like "normal" constipation. It could be DIOS or even if not, the poop sticks to the walls of the GI track and just builds up more and more and more. DS had EXACTLY what you are describing, plus lots of vomitting on and off and I kept calling etc. like 2x a week for about 3-6 months and they had us do Miralax but not enough and we ended up in ER AND hospital with an NG tube pumping "go-lytely" into his tummy. And that was after an enima got out a ton of sticky poop and a normal BM. That hospital stay was horrible. "normal" folks can do other things to avoid, but not CFers. The GI track's mucus is sticker/drier AND water cannot get into the GI track properly (i think that's from pancreas, check out cff.org's summary of GI track). Miralax is only thing that can address that for CFers. Our son who just turned 4 is on 2 adult doses of miralax AND daily milk of magnesia. His decline in eating/refusal is a dead give away when things are backing up. I'd also ask CF clinic to refer you to their CF GI NOW since it was 6 months wait for us and they only could "squeeze use in" after his second ER trip!

 

[heidikk]

I did call the clinic Monday morning. They said that it sounded like he'd had a bout of constipation that resolved itself and not to worry at this point. The nutritionist suggested that dehydration could be what caused it. It was a hot day on Sunday though not horribly hot. Not sure how we're going to handle any real summer weather if that's the case. I'm just trying to make absolutely sure he's getting his full salt dose and nursing a lot. He has at least been eating just fine since that night. They did just recently up his enzymes to 3 creon 6000's at each meal. I read something that said constipation can be caused by too high a dose of enzymes. So I'm wondering about that too.

 

[Ratatosk]

I know when we would adjust DS' enzymes, he'd sometimes have issues, that it'd take a few day for him to get used to it. Or we'd gradually up his dosage of enzymes by half a capsule cuz his digestive tract was kinda finicky. When we needed to use a laxative, DS would still be stooling, but it'd be very loose -- his colon was full of stool and what was coming out was what managed to slip thru "the cracks". He had the drier stools, more of what I think of being true constipation when we switched him from formula with extra calories, to whole milk.

 

[Lety]

It is safe to give Miralax everyday? What are the side effects? I know our kids need it to help with constipation but I always worry about side effects. How much a 47 lb kid should take?