A New Perspective

Ok, so I'm going to warn all about this post before I get too far into this is that I'll be talking about poop. Not kidding so if you are not into hearing about stuff like that, you've been warned. Since I've started this journey with Eden and our family. I have avoided the subjects of changing diets, cutting out certain foods, and changing our eating habits for Eden's Autism. We generally eat very healthy and have always been concerned with the amount of food Eden puts into her body every day. She has trouble with smells, textures, colors of food, and gags most of the time when she eats things (I also think this is a sensory behavior not a sensitive gag reflex). I was never for the Autism and "gut" disorders and thought that my kid didn't have any of these issues. I was proven wrong...

This spring Eden started having issues with urinating all the time (EVERY 15 minutes all day) we were sent to a kidney specialist to try and figure out what was going on. She was having accidents all the time (after being potty trained through the day for a year) and wouldn't even tell me when she wet herself so I usually found out the hard way when we arrived to an appointment or when we were about to go somewhere.

After a ton of urine tests, ultrasounds, blood work, and questions; we determined that first Eden wasn't going to the bathroom a lot, (Yes, poop). She was in fact only going about once every 5-6 days and they were very hard and painful (which probably made her very uncomfortable and not want to go more). The results of the ultrasound on her belly also showed her bladder was very square, (what does that mean?) which is a sign that she has a lot of stool in her intestines and I also know for a fact that she went poop before that ultrasound. She also had gone to the bathroom right before the ultrasound, had a measurement on her bladder and once after she went to the bathroom (about 30 minutes after she went pee the first time) she had a full bladder and did empty it (which was another concern). So what do we get from this? Well, Eden has a bladder the size of an infant and it explains why she goes all the time and she is full of poop which causes the bladder to contract more which also can trigger frequent urination.

What do we do about this? Well, the first thing we did was start her on a laxative and stool softener. After much worry about how to introduce this we just put it in her milk. We would give her a full dose at dinner time and with a lot of playing around with the dose we use 1 full adult dose (which is what the Doctor prescribed). This gets her much more "regular". We then started her on a medicine to increase her bladder size and decrease  frequency of urination. There is a down fall to this medicine, it causes constipation. LOL Really? We worked a month getting her regular and now we are giving her something to counter act that? Once the medicine was starting to work she stopped going everyday to every 3 days. Which is better than where we started but not ideal.

We went to the Doctor for a checkup on Thursday and talked to her about how things were going. I noticed that Eden had gained over a pound in weight and an inch in height! I was so happy to see that I almost cried. She hasn't grown that much in 2 years! We talked about how she is not urinating a lot when she isn't drinking (an improvement) but when she drinks she still is going every 15 minutes for about an hour or a little more with less accidents. Pooping every 3 days (which is a huge improvement for her). This is all an improvement but not exactly where she wants to be.

Since the appointment we have increased her laxative/stool softener gradually to a dose and a half a day (half in the morning and a whole one with dinner) and continued her bladder medicine. The goal of this is to get her to poop every day have them be soft and then if we don't see an improvement in her urination up the dose on the bladder medicine. But we don't want her to stop pooping. We have increased the amount of fiber in her diet and will also be starting her on a fiber supplement in her food, along with slipping high fiber veggies and flax seeds into her food. Switching to a whole wheat pasta and other diet changes.

What has this done to her in the last 5 days? OMG I'm not sure what is going on with her but she has been having less behaviors (aggression and meltdowns) although her oral stimming (screaming, eating things, and raspberries (on people and herself) have increased 10 fold. She also has eaten food she never has even attempted to try before. The other day she had 2 pieces of cheese bread sticks I bought for myself. Yup, she grabbed them and ate them. She has eaten tortilla chips and couldn't get enough of them and also today she just grabbed an apple and ate 3/4 of it like it was candy! The conclusion Ed and I have come to is now that her belly is finally empty she actually feels hungry. She may never have been hungry before because she was always so full. I'm a believer now that some of her behaviors and such were stemmed from how uncomfortable she was in her own body and now I'm hoping that this continues and she improves a ton in the next couple of months.

I'm not sure how I will react when Eden starts eating more and acting better, I'm always so uptight about her behaviors and constantly feel she is out of place or one step behind. I'm so excited about her future and what may happen if these things stay this way. She'll be more attentive, talk more, listen better, less aggressive and everything else I've hoped for this past year.