Persistent daily nausea in 7 year old

[Atlasstars1]

For the last month my 7 year old has complained of feeling sick at least twice a day. Often more. It started at the tail end of your common 3 day virus and I pretty much ignored it apart from to reassure her but I’m now feeling confused by it. every
morning she feels nauseous, soketimes helped by eating, sometimes not. The other times are random. She has also started feeling very travel sick which is new. She gets very
panicky when she feels nauseous, asking if she
will be sick and my response so far has been to downplay/reassure/"no you are fine, let's go xyz" and it passes. But it is reaching a month since it started and i am aware my heart now sinks when she says it.
no other obvious symptoms-
No fever, eats well, plays happily, sleeps well, growing and is never actually sick. normal poos 1
or 2 times a day and no tummy pain. she is naturally pale so that doesn't
help with clues either! she does experience stress
as her brother has global dvlp delay and has huge meltdowns but none of
that is new and she feels nauseous at weekends too so I don't think it's
a school based worry. am stumped.
wwyd with "just" recurrent daily nausea?

It sounds like she is quite anxious and is now afraid of being physically sick.
Has anything changed that could bring this on?

That sounds like she is developing emetophobia. Did she have quite a distressing time when she last vomited? I think she’s getting very anxious about it happening again which is causing nausea, which is then made worse by the anxiety about what that might mean.

I would make a gp appointment 🤷🏻‍♀️. Would also get her an eye test.

that’s what I thought too, which has so far made me be very brisk and “nope you’re fine, nothing to worry about” etc, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m being dismissive when I might be missing something that needs checked ☹️I have a lot of health anxiety so being brisk is really not in my nature! she does go pale (er) when she says she feels sick but she’s naturally pale anyway 😵‍💫

she’s never been a sicky kid (lots of ear infections and colds but never sick bugs) so not sure what has happened If it is just psychological 🤷‍♀️

She had her eyes tested about 5 months ago (only because her brother was due one so I slotted her in too) and they said no issues at all. Can eye issues cause nausea?

I would also wonder about her ears - did the virus affect her throat/ears?

Having recently gone through similar (which turned out to be caused by anxiety) and the initial checks for my DD were for coeliac, constipation and reflux. Could any of those be the culprit?

so she’s had 3 years of recurrent ear/ throat infections and had tonsils and adenoids out last November - good recovery and no infection since so I dont think it is her ears as whenever she had infections previously they were very sore and she’s got
no pain or fever at all, it’s literally “just” persistent nausea.

She sounds like me as a kid. Never had sick bugs, a couple of times was sick but never a bad experience. I developed emetophobia from younger sibling having norovirus and found witnessing that traumatic. I became extremely anxious and panicky and it had a huge impact on my childhood. Could she have had an experience elsewhere?

Oh really?
think I can rule out constipation as she has 1-2
regular well formed poos a day and no tummy pain. As far as I know she doesn’t haven’t any reflux or coeliac symptoms but I have very little
knoew of them, what happened with your lo? Did they diagnose anxiety after excluding the physical symptoms?

definitely not impossible, she asks for repeated reassurance once she starts feeling nauseous that she won’t vomit (which I give then hope I’m right!) and she’s never actually been sick since this persistent nausea started 🤷‍♀️

Reassurance seeking can be a bit of a cycle for anxiety. It might be more helpful in the long term to acknowledge the anxiety, without offering reassurance. Eg: “sounds like you are feeling super anxious about being sick. Were you sick last time you felt like thi?” https://www.nscenterforanxiety.com/blog/2018/7/23/reducing-reassurance-seeking

Thank you, that’s helpful. I’ll try this. I guess I’m just worried I’ll downplay something that actually has a physical issue, but taking an otherwise
healthy child to the dr to say she feels sick but isn’t, will I fear make them say go away and come back in a
month and exacerbate her fear that something is really wrong. Aargh!

My daughter went through a long period of morning sickness, it was difficult as the GP kept telling me it was anxiety and she missed a lot of school which was tricky also. In the end we found out that it was a dairy intolerance and once we cut that out it went away. She still gets an anxious stomach every once in a while as I think this is her thing also but the daily nausea has stopped. I hope you can find out and support your daughter through this. I found it really hard as she wasn't herself at all.

Hey did u ever get to the bottom of this it sounds exactly

Like what my daughter is experiencing