7yo constant nausea

[WorriedMumHi]

My 7 year old DS has been healthy, happy, confident and outgoing his whole life. Apart from the odd annoying cold and occasional sickness bug he's been absolutely fine. He's always been sensitive and thoughtful but happy enough at the same time.

Earlier in the autumn he and I came down with a sickness bug. I was unwell for a few hours but he was sick about 15 times in the course of the day and was bringing up bile after a while. Couldn't even keep sips of water down. We ended up calling 111 who said as long as he didn't go longer than 12 hours without passing urine to keep offering sips of water.

He ate the next day and then a couple of days later he was back at school and it was like it had never happened. Then my youngest came down with a bug and was sick for a few days. DS7 came home one day and was very quiet. We realised he hadn't touched his packed lunch so I was checking he was ok and discussing options for dinner when he suddenly through up EVERYWHERE. All over the sofa, his dad, etc. This was after over a week of us being vomited on and DH lost it a bit and didn't handle it well generally. Told him off for not going to the toilet or saying he felt sick, etc. Not our finest hour.

Fast forward to now and for the past few weeks DS7 has been complaining of nausea daily. He refused to eat anything for a while until I took him to the GP who checked him over and assured him he wasn't ill. He ate well for a few days but then regressed and it's reached a point now where he barely eats and there are set points in the day he will suddenly panic and run off to the toilet crying, shaking, absolutely convinced he is about to be sick. He never is.

I've talked to him at length about how powerful our thoughts are and how worry can make us feel sick. How hunger, butterflies, etc can all make us feel sick. We've talked about the word "nausea" - meaning feeling sick but not necessarily being sick. I've managed to stop him running to the toilet on a couple of occasions and made him sit and breath calmly to ride the wave of nausea out.

This has been going on for weeks with no signs of any improvement. He is so convinced he's sick im starting to wonder if there could be something physically wrong with him. Or is he just incredibly anxious?! DH and I have had a stressful time and been arguing which I'm sure he's heard / picked up on at times and I know that can cause huge emotional problems for children. We also have a baby so he's probably not given the attention he's been used to (ie we used to read lots before bed but hardly have time anymore). I also have awful emetophobia which I've had CBT for but does become hard to manage sometimes - I'm about to start therapy again.

The reason I'm posting is for advice / experience of others. Could this very real distress and discomfort be down to anxiety? Should I be pushing for exploration of a possible physical explanation with the GP? Could food intolerances come on suddenly? What else am I missing? I can't bear seeing him so unhappy and uncomfortable and I'm so worried it's going to cause long term issues with his mental health if I don't address it properly.

Thanks for reading!

Please look up functional abdominal pain/ dyspepsia/nausea. Took YEARS for my son the be believed / diagnosed

Aww that sounds hard. I actually posted something sort of similar recently about my 8 yr old son being anxious about eating in case he eats too much and is sick, although in his case there is a much less obvious starting point for this particular worry. He definitely has felt sick/had tummyaches due to anxiety previously when nervous about things and that first happened about this time last year so age 7. I was convinced it was something physical eg constipation as he'd never had anything like that before but it did turn out to be anxiety. I don't have a magic solution I'm afraid but he is always completely convinced he is actually unwell rather than anxious. Even though at times it has happened predictably at a certain time of the week so to me seemed obvious it was worry related. So it did seem really hard for him to accept that link between worries and feeling sick. I do find it hard to know what to say sometimes not to make it worse... Good luck!

Thanks so much - I'll look it up. Do you mind me asking what your DS's symptoms were?

Yes, i thought constipation initially too, or some sort of obstruction. Or a chest infection / UTI making him feel sick. But nothing obvious.

The GP did weigh his so we could monitor weight loss if it continued but otherwise didn't seem worried about anything physical.

I know better than anyone how awful worry can be and especially about sickness. I am obviously better able to manage the fear or being ill than he is. It's the fact he is fine one minute then absolutely convinced he'll be sick the next which makes it so hard to understand from my perspective.

Have you tried any sort of talking therapy with your son?

He may actually have nausea if he is not eating, because of the acid in his tummy, try taking him back to the GP and see if they will prescribe some Gaviscon to help him get him back on track. Also a children's pre and probiotic may be helpful to get his gut back to normal after the bug.

My daughter had this after a stomach bug. It turns out she was having a bit of acid reflux after eating, but she didn't know how to explain it. My dr said it can be normal for this to happen to kids after they have stomach bugs and it can also be mind over matter. He prescribed some gaviscon though and that done the trick. As the sickly feeling had gone.

Constant nausea! Often complaints of pain behind belly button. Worse when tired. Interfered with getting to sleep. Made him miserable. Takes strong antiemetic now (usually prescribed for chemo patients) and it’s worked wonders.

Lots of possible causes of course but he sounds traumatised to me. Lots of vomiting can leave you a bit trigger happy, so a sibling being sick could cause an unexpected reaction, add in the serious telling off for getting that wrong, and you can see how he'd end up all in knots about it all with fearful anxiety.

Thanks - I'll make a note of this

Interesting thanks! And second mention of gaviscon

@Skulldrudgery - I asked him tonight about pain and he put his hand over his belly button and said it often hurts there. 🤔

Yep, that few seconds after when he was told off have played on our minds a lot so godknows what that did to him. Poor thing

Poor chap, sounds like you'll be helping him as best you can though. Re calibrating his gut bacteria is a good shout could do lots of good and can't do any harm. if he does have some psychological causes in the mix (who knows) , you could let him know this will help and it might give him some confidence to help him put it behind him, the mind is a powerful thing.

Hi, haven't sought any official help as every time I think it's getting worse and we should really do something he settles down again. I did get a book called 'what to do when you worry too much' which has lots of ideas. In our case I think the eating/worrying about being sick issue is just a new symptom of general worries rather than a brand new situation. But it is a bit different to deal with as he's so skinny I worry about him not getting enough energy if he doesn't eat enough.

Mine is the same in terms of being fine one minute and then feeling sick the next, which was another reason I was pretty sure it was worries. It has tended to happen in association with particular activities he's nervous about (including ones he enjoys...)

In our case I think he might be doing too many things outside school and part of me wants to decide that he isn't coping and stop one of them but when I've raised this with him he has been determined to carry on with all of it. I don't want to be seen to ' punish' him for being anxious or not eating so not sure what to do...