The P Chronicles – An Update

If you have no idea what I mean by this title, you may want to check back here for the rest of the story. About a month ago, we were able to have a conversation with a urologist about Avery’s accidents. In addition to our fiber diet and Miralax, he recommended adding probiotic gummies and Metamucil cookies to our regime. He also encouraged us to keep Avery on a tight schedule of voiding her bladder every hour. We’ve been pretty diligent with this routine for a month now, and I am happy to say we have seen some improvement. We certainly have more good days than bad, so we are thankful. It’s strange how bad days usually involve multiple accidents as opposed to one random incident. There is still room for improvement, so we’ll keep working at it. I wanted to pass on this update for those left wondering.

Since I didn’t want to post without pictures, here’s something random. What is it about dog crates that children seem to love?

Avery took pleasure in the same thing not too long ago.

The P Chronicles–Doc Visit Update

Our doctor visit went well last week. Our pediatrician actually started discussing possible constipation issues and treatment before I even mentioned what I had been learning. She didn’t feel it was necessary to get an x-ray yet, but we have started on Miralax. It’s  been less than a week, so we haven’t seen any changes yet. I know I have to be patient, and there are no quick fixes. These are the things I have to remind myself as I do yet another load of pee soaked laundry, and send Avery upstairs to change her clothes yet again.

I have to send out a huge thank you to those who have responded to my blog posts about going through the same situations. Especially Nelissa! Thank you for taking the time to send encouragement and details about your own experience.

The P Chronicles – Stool Study

You don’t get far into Dr. Hodges’ book, It’s No Accident, before you are bombarded with images and lingo all related to nasty poo. One of these images is a stool chart. People actually studied this enough to come up with this chart! It’d hate to have that job!

I guess before this I thought types 1-3 (click the link above for the chart) just seemed like small poops for a small child. Well, no longer! Dr. Hodges details 11 signs of constipation in the book. Can you believe poop accidents and even super-loose stools can be signs of constipation? I’m telling you, you really have to change the way you think about this stuff. (Unfortunately, I’m having to think about this stuff way to much lately.)

We put up copies of these charts next to our toilets for Avery to help us monitor the changes in her stool as we make changes in her diet. We have already seen some changes in her stools, but we haven’t seen any changes in the wetting accidents. Sunday she had no less than 4 accidents. I have a doctor’s appointment scheduled for this afternoon, and I am hoping the doctor will agree to the need for an x-ray to determine if there is indeed a blockage. Please pray that she is open to seeking these type of answers and treatments. If you are wondering what in the world I am talking about you can get caught up on The P Chronicles here.

The P Chronicles – Fiber Intake

Our first step in combating the probable constipation that is leading to Avery’s wetting accidents, has been a change in her diet. This sort of thing is a bit hard for me to put “out there.” For some reason, I’m a bit sensitive about how well or not well we feed our kids. It is a huge responsibly that has a major impact on children. Well, I managed to start tracking Avery’s diet on some seriously low days for us. Day 1 we spent on a quick road trip, and Day 2 I spent at the courthouse trying to get out of jury duty. I promised to be real, so here it is.

So, for the 3 days prior to any diet changes, Avery averaged 8.5 grams of fiber per day. I would imagine this was pretty accurate for an average, but there were typically very few days as low as 4.

The next chart shows the past 6 days of Avery’s diet after we have made some changes. We’ve made some progress, and some days are better than others. This gives us an average of 18 grams of fiber per day. According to the government’s guidelines as published in the book, It’s No Accident by Steve Hodges, MD, the recommended intake for a child age 4-8 is 17-20 grams.

Things I’ve learned so far:

• A breakfast containing around 5 grams of fiber is almost essential for us to get what we want in a day.
• Breakfast is a fairly easy place to make a big impact. (I’ll share a few of our new recipes soon.)
• Every snack and meal counts. If you miss an opportunity to add in fiber, it is hard to make it up later.
• This would be much harder to accomplish in a child that did not like fruits and veggies.
• Weekends are hard for us with football games and at least one meal out to eat. We’ll need to choose a bit more wisely at restaurants. (We had a few strange looks when our kiddo was running around the football stadium offering to share her bag of prunes!)
• It can be hard to get Avery to eat the entire serving size she needs to get the fiber count we are hoping for.
• I’ve started a Pinterest board for new fiber-ful recipes. Please share some of yours if you have any.

The P Chronicles – Our History

As I said in the last post, let’s start with a bit of history. Avery took over a year to potty train. We started around age two, then we backed off thinking she just wasn’t ready. When we returned to the effort, the first two days were perfect. Then everything went downhill. She could use the potty one minute then be soaking wet 5 minutes later. I was constantly having to clean her car seat. The worst part is that she acted as if she didn’t notice. We really just thought she didn’t care. We went through reward systems with charts, then with treats. Then we started taking toys away when she was wet. Nothing worked. For reasons we do not know, around springtime things changed, and Avery started succeeding. We poured out the encouragement. On her four year birthday, Avery declared that four year olds do not wear pull-ups at night. We backed her fully despite the fact that she had rarely ever had a dry pull-up at night. She had some accidents, but for the most part she did really well as long as we woke her up to go one more time before we went to bed.

(The good ol’ diaper days. – Photo by Brooke Davis)

Fast forward to two and a half weeks ago when Avery started pre-k. The first half week was fine. Then the next week, she came home wet every day. I know what you are thinking, she is just having a set back because of the stress of starting a new school. At first I thought the same thing, but she started wetting at home during the day and even at night. In search for some answers, Todd found this article that sounded somewhat similar to our situation. We changed our reactions to the situation and encouraged her any way we could including getting in touch with her teacher.

Within a few days, I was reading the book referenced in the article, It’s No Accident by Steve J. Hodges, MD. There are a few posts here to get a glimpse of what the book is about. Here is an excerpt from an article over on Slate,

“Accidents and bed-wetting have the same root cause: chronically holding poop or pee or both. A rectal poop mass squishes the bladder and messes with its nerves; holding pee thickens the bladder wall, shrinking the bladder’s capacity to hold urine and triggering hiccuplike contractions. The upshot: wet undies and bed sheets.”

I must say I warned you about the whole poop thing. Before we dive in head first to these issues, we have started conversations (again) with our doctor regarding the problems we have been dealing with. Our first step has been testing for a UTI (initial results are negative), and some dietary changes. If you are wondering how we could miss something like constipation, you would be surprised by all of the various forms the symptoms can take. Avery certainly poops every day (multiple times), but it is the consistency that can matter most. I’m eager to get into more details on some of these subjects, but this post is long enough already.  Bet you can’t wait for more!

The P Chronicles – Introduction

It’s something no one really likes to talk about, bed wetting, accidents, piles of wet laundry. Potty training in our house has been the longest, hardest battle to date. I haven’t shared all this with many people because of the guilt, frustration, and tears we have been going through. That’s ending now. I think we have come across the source of most of our problems and the possible solutions. I would like to take you on this journey with me in hopes of helping others in this situation if we come out successful on the other side. Of course, we may fail, again. But, even a failure may help someone else.

As a warning, any post with “The P Chronicles” in the title may be full of lots of references to pee and poop. I never thought these subjects would have their place on my blog, but I’m trying to be very real with you. This is where our life is right now. I’ll give you a bit of our history in the next post.