Please help: Stomach cramps getting increasingly worse in 7 year old

[WrongSideOfTheCoin]

My DD has been getting regularly stomach cramps. It started probably last year but then she used to get one episode only every few months. After summer this year it was first a few times every week and now it's several times a day. Sometimes she's buckled over in pain and it can last ages. Ibuprofen seems to help. She says that she always has a low level of pain but now only tells us when it's really severe. It happens in school as well.

The GP has prescribed an antacid but that hasn't made a difference so now they are recommending an elimination diet to check first for a dairy intolerance and then gluten. She's been off dairy for a few days now but that hasn't helped. I doubt it's gluten. She was tested recently for.a gluten intolerance and it came back negative.

We will still cut it out (after the dairy trial) but I'm concerned it's something more acute that needs treatment now. Considering that we can control the really severe episodes with ibuprofen it doesn't seem to be a case for A n E either but I'm worried that if it's something more serious we will miss it by making small changes to her diet.

The GP has also mentioned abdominal migraines and has said that in kids abdominal pain without known cause is quite common. Most probably it's just something like that but just worried about the possibility of it being something else. Especially since it's becoming worse.

Has anybody come across this? What did it turn out to be? If your child had abdominal migraines when did they grow out of it?

We were prescribed Movicol for DD's constipation, I didn't think it was available for kids OTC?
As a PP said it's better to have a doctor prescribe it to get the correct dosage. Definitely worth a try if her stool is hard.

DD had zero scans when she was in and out of A&E, they just palpitated the abdomen - I was told by a paeds A&E doctor that they don't normally scan kids, though I can't remember why.

Are you sure it is abdominal pain? My DS when young used to suffer from severe pain - he would roll around on the floor of the doctor’s surgery and he always said his tummy hurt. We learnt to control the pain by cutting out fizzy drinks, especially Coca Cola. When he was 16 and tried alcohol the problem and the pain returned. However the cause was a blocked kidney requiring urgent surgery.

No, I'm not sure if it's abdominal pain. She says it's around her navel usually.

I'm not sure how to progress with this.
I feel like I can't go back to the GP till we've at least submitted the stool sample but the logistics of that are proving to be ridiculously hard. We have to hand in the sample to the clinic before 11am but so far she has not done a poo in the morning before school. I should probably call the clinic to ask if we can take a sample from the evening before or will it "go off".

In the mean time DD is really suffering. The weekend was better. Reminded her to have lots of fluid and we had a ton of vegetables. We were a bit more relaxed and i thought maybe it is related to stress after all but yesterday night she was up for two hours crying with pain. (I kept her home from school yesterday as she had a bad cold and an absolutely crazy long school day filled with activities so I thought I'd just let her relax at home. I was also hoping she'd do a poo in the day so we can take the stool sample but she didn't.). She didn't have any stomach cramps during the day but then yesterday night was really bad.

She's been off dairy for almost a week now and that hasn't helped. She is dreading doing the gluten free trial as she has so many wheat products. I've tried to reassure her that there will be lots of tasty alternatives but she's not thrilled.

The next time she has severe stomach ache should I take her to a n e? Would they be able to do anything that the gp can't? (Like a scan).

I had 'migranes' in my stomach from a young age. When I got my period I would have severe pain (talking about passing out). One time it got so bad my parents took my to hospital - I had emergency surgery as they expected appendicitis but whilst operating they found a huge cyst the size of a watermelon on my ovary. It had not appeared on any ultrasounds either! This was the cause of all my tummy issues from age 5. Please please advocate for your child, push the professionals and and get this sorted.

This sounds like constipation and you should ask the GP for laxatives. What's a typical day go eating like for your dd?

We had this problem with my son. He had blood tests, stool samples, celiac test etc. He also had a scan and they noticed his spleen was enlarged, but they didn't know why. It could have been a result of having Covid.

We were so desperate to help him, we decided to cut out gluten, sugar, lactose, and all difficult-to-digest tummy irritants like onions etc, a bit like FODMAP. It was so restrictive and I felt really bad for him as well as finding it a challenge to come up with alternatives for everything we ate. We discovered he had worms and he was treated for that. Not long after that he did get better and we went back to a normal diet.

I still don't know for sure if it was just the worms that caused it, or post viral inflammation after COVID, but I don't regret doing the special diet for a couple of months, as it was gentle on the bowels and gave his poor tummy some time to recover, whatever the cause was.

So should I push for a scan? But you said that the scans in your case missed it. If we follow the gp's advice we need to submit the stool sample and then cut out dairy for two weeks and then gluten for two weeks but that would be another month of this. But can I bother the GP again before the end of all these trials they asked us to do?

The GP surgery just said that the stool sample has to be from the same day so it really seems to depend on our luck. Actually she used to poo regularly in the morning before school so maybe that is another sign that she is constipated.

Can I ask how long after having covid did you notice the enlarged spleen? Was it soon after? DD had COVID beginning of 2022 if I remember right so quite a while ago though she might have had it since without us knowing. I'm almost hoping it's worms because it seems like that can be treated easily but we just need to get that stool sample somehow.

I have lactose intolerance.

It took nearly a year after cutting it out for my bowel pains to subside as my gut was really inflamed from it.

Can't comment on whether the pain in your child is constipation etc, but a week is way too short to tell for any kind of intolerance.

My money is on constipation. Eats lots of wheat products, doesn't drink much water, pain or reluctance around eating, hard stools..

My now 7 year old daughter had abdominal pains for years, she was seeing a paediatric gastroenterologist who put her on movicol, then iron supplements; we tried gluten free, dairy free & soya free and none of it seemed to make any difference. The Dr also suggested a probiotic and a friend recommended Symprove. I was a bit skeptical that it was not a medicine but every night at 4am when I was rubbing her back trying to get her back to sleep I used to think "I would pay anything for a potion to make this better". Anyway I put her on Symprove - it's quite expensive but a child only needs a dose roughly equivalent to their weight in mls (so 20 ml) and you have to take it for at least 12 weeks before you see any effect. Look, I don't know if it's coincidence that her guts got better at the same time but they honestly are. She's on a normal diet and although she sometimes still does get flare ups and constipation, she generally has a bowel movement every day and sleeps through the night most of the time. So if it's snake oil that I've bought I honestly don't care!
I think it does generally do her good anyway - her twin brother never had the same issues so he doesn't take it (he's fussy so it would be a pain to get him to drink it) but when there's a sickness bug going around school, she seems to suffer less than he does.

If it took a year for symptoms to improve how did you know it was lactose intolerance? I mean did you do any test apart from an elimination diet?

I'm also wondering about the possibility of Crohn's. DD has to do lots of stool samples and they're fine to be kept in the fridge for a few hours until you can take it. (Bit gross for those looking in the fridge for food, I'll admit!)

She could be gluten sensitive rather than celiac. According to the celiac test I’m not celiac, however if I eat gluten I get a whole range of horrid symptoms (from stomach ache, shits, sore tongue, low b12, low iron). It’s a good idea to trial a couple of weeks gluten free

also work hard on having a healthy gut, diet and supplements

If she isn't pooping regularly this is the first thing to sort out, even just to get the stool sample. Call the GP and see if they will prescribe Movicol already. Look at the ERIC website to see what size and shape poops should be - they should come more than 4 times per week.

My ds had something like this although nowhere near as frequently-about once a week. It finally went away undiagnosed-the doctor's final best guess was abdominal migraine. Which I had never heard of.....

She is pooing regularly. About once a day but since the GP's appointment it has been in the evening rather than morning, which makes getting a stool sample for the GP rather tricky.

So I was diagnosed with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and they basically said to me everyone's different, there are some foods that are more likely to trigger people but you need to work out what your own triggers are.

I had significant abdominal pain from about 14 and I was diagnosed at 20. I had alternating diarrhoea and constipation, plus some vomiting.

I already knew caffeine was a trigger as I got really bad diarrhoea about 30 mins after drinking any which lasted about 24 hours.

I upped my liquid intake, started taking fibre tablets every day as that gave my gut a regular routine of eating and fibre.

I thought citrus might be a trigger for me as it was for my mum so I cut that out for a few months but it didn't seem to make any difference.

I stepped back to a fairly bland and repetitive diet and ate meals on a very regular routine - so no changing times etc, always eat dinner at 7 sort of thing.

That helped but not enough. Lactose was the highest on the list they gave me so I cut that out next. It was quite tricky because I'm veggie so that effectively made me vegan.

Within a month I saw a difference - less vomiting for a start off - but it did take a long time for my gut to settle down. It was probably a year before it was as settled as it was going to get.

I believe the standard amount of time is six weeks - if you aren't seeing a difference after six weeks it's probably not that.

Of course you can always go the other way and basically cut out almost everything and add it in slowly.

I can now tolerate small amounts of lactose.
However, any kind of cold of infection sets off the iBS again and I get bad gastro symptoms.