Mackenna's Tummy Troubles

So what a rough several of months we've had at the Schlieman household with Mackenna's little tummy...from the time she turned 1 and we switched her to whole milk and new solid foods time and time again, we are having some issues in the #2 department. She has gotten extremely backed up over the months and it has caused a lot of discomfort for her. Initially our pediatrician had us take her off whole milk and put her on soy. The soy seemed to help, BUT it didn't take care of the issue completely. We witness Kenna in a full plank position straining, crying, turning bright red, etc etc etc. It's heart breaking as a parent to watch. Her appetite has been hit or miss, she's more tired some days than others, she has the beginning of an ethiopian tummy from the distended intestine and she's just been off. We wanted to believe it was just a milk thing, but I kept bringing it up to the doctor and they just kept saying it was 'normal' for kids to experience constipation and that we'd get through it and by age 2, she'd be like a new child.

Well last week, she had to go in to get her ears checked out again and I just had that mother's instinct I guess you can call it, that something is really going on with her little system and I asked again that they DO SOMETHING to figure this out and that I felt it wasn't 'normal' for her to be acting like this and to continue to have these episodes. Thankfully the doc we saw called for a tummy X-Ray and it showed exactly what we thought - an extreme back up in her colon and large intestine. She said that because it was pretty extreme that we should head to MN Gastroenterolgy to see a specialist. At this point, we were just grateful we were starting to get somewhere.

So yesterday, we headed to St. Paul to see Dr. Aurora and hopefully get some answers. It was amazing at the amount of "AH HA" moments we had listening to him. All her syptoms seemed to make more sense when he explained what was going on inside her. The outcome of our visit with Dr. Aurora is that Mackenna needs to have a surgical procedure called a Gastrografin Enema at Children's in Minneapolis. See this link below if you want more information, however, the article seems to focus on older kids and what goes on, so we're still kinda confused how this will all work with a 17 month old:

http://www.childrensmn.org/Manuals/PFS/TestProc/118816.pdf

Basically, it's a 30-60 minute procedure to get our little punkin cleaned out and on the right track to having BM's on her own with no pain, no fear and ease. We know she won't be put under for the procedure, but we aren't too sure how it will work. Considering she's an ancy little girl and has to lay there for a big amount of time, we're thinking she'll have a sedative of some sort, but again, we're not 100% sure. We go next Wednesday at 9:15 with the actual procedure beginning at 9:30am. Once it's over, we'll continue to give her Miralax once a day for a couple weeks to get her mental state back on track to let her learn that she can do it and there is no pain. After a couple weeks of that, we should be free and clear to take her off of everything and be good to go! HERE'S HOPING it all works!

We're glad that we were finally heard and that my instinct was correct - it's amazing how you have to push doctors sometimes to go above and beyond, but moving past that, we're just happy to be on track to have our little girl back to herself again!