Child vomits every time she’s poorly

[TheQuickHedgehog]

Just seeing if anyone else has experienced this.
My daughter (5) gets every bug,virus that’s going around. She’s already been off school twice so far this year. She’s now ill again but luckily it’s during the half term.
Every time she is ill, she vomits at least once. If she feels unwell she will vomit. She got sent home from school after she was feeling poorly and then vomited. Because of the 48 hour rule I had to keep her off for the rest of the week. The next day she was absolutely fine.
I don’t know why her body does this. It seems to react to feeling unwell by vomiting.
Ironically she’s had very few stomach bugs that have caused persistent vomiting and diarrhoea- less than a handful in her 5 years of life.
Anyone else experienced this? Will she out grow it?

My son does when he has a bad cold. Usually once at night, fine the next day. I send him to school as he hasn't got a tummy bug.

I think it's quite common in young children, particularly if they have a fever. Or if they have a very runny nose that they aren't blowing and end up swallowing a lot of it.

But I'm curious how you know it isn't just a stomach bug? We've had stomach bugs that have caused my DDs to just throw up once - they both threw up once, 24 hours apart, and then DH threw up two days after that, so it was definitely a sickness bug. They just caught it mildly.

DD used to do this, particularly with a fever. I always welcomed it as I knew she'd start feeling better soon and it weirdly helped. She did grow out of it.

I think it's a physiological reaction - same reason why folk vomit after trauma and injury/fight and flight kinda thing

Your body can't cope with dealing with processing food as well as fighting germs so it's reaction is to empty the stomach and puke.

I would send my DC in to school if they were sick like this outside school.

Obviously I don’t know for sure that she didn’t have a stomach bug. But other than the times that it was 100% stomach bug (lots of d&v over 1-3 days), nobody else in our house has vomited or shown any gastrointestinal distress. And I don’t believe anyone is that unlucky for it to be a stomach bug every time they’re ill. Although maybe that is the case 🤷‍♀️ However the times she for sure has had stomach bugs, we have all had it to varying degrees.
My daughter has never caught anything “mildly”. When she’s ill, she’s very ill. It’s heartbreaking. She goes down hard but bounces back quickly. Weirdly though, my younger daughter has hardly ever been sick in her 2.5 years on earth. She even avoided Hand foot and mouth despite an outbreak at her preschool and both her older sibling and me getting it. And when she is poorly she definitely gets it mildly. Even stomach bugs. She’s the hardiest out of the lot of us 😂

@TheQuickHedgehog mine are similar, but the other way round. Eldest hardly catches anything and has barely ever vomited in her life, just a couple of times. Youngest is a lot more sicky. Thankfully she seems to have grown out of the frequent vomiting, that was a nightmare.

My son was like this with pretty much every illness. It seemed to be the fever that caused it because his temperature would come down once he had vomited. Even when he had chicken pox which was very mild for him, he had 4 spots but he vomited just before the spots came out. He's in his 40's now and can still sometimes vomit when he is ill.

It’s reassuring to know that my daughter isn’t the only child to react to being poorly by vomiting. It’s horrible that she’s only enjoyed one day of half term before being struck down by an illness that hasn’t impacted anyone else in the household 😢 She has a temperature, feels generally crappy and the vomited started today. 💔
Hopefully she’ll be feeling better by tomorrow, she’s getting upset worried she’ll be too ill to go trick or treating.

Neither of mine vomited much at all as children.

But every time they caught a cold (which wasn't that often, we were lucky) one would get a temperature but not a cough, the other would never get a temperature but almost always got a cough.

Human bodies vary in the way they react to infection.

Look up Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome - I think this is what my son is suffering with and would fit your daughter

Yes! My youngest dd does, every time she gets a high temp. And usually she hasn't even had a chance to tell me she's feeling unwell so she wakes up, comes and has a drink of water in the morning and throws it all up. In the past she would then complain she was hungry and I'd give her some plain food, which would come up again.

I've learnt my lesson now, as soon as she's vomited, it's water only for 24 hours. Even calpol has to be given gradually because it will come back up. But generally, 24 hours and she's clear of whatever was causing the temp and vomiting.

I have a 10 year old like this too. He is prone to chest infections and asthmatic type breathing issues with viruses. Every time he has a serious one it is accompanied by vomiting as well, just to make things even worse for him. It is reassuring to hear about other kids like this as it's not something you commonly hear about.

My son is 15 now & would vomit quite frequently growing up. It wasn't necessarily linked to other illnesses but as soon as he became verbal, he was able to give us a warning. It has only been the last few years that he has been able to explain more of the symptoms & it's looks like he suffers from migraines.

@kateandsam that's interesting, please could you share more symptoms alongside the migraine leading to vomiting?

I'm certain my son has cyclical vomiting syndrome, but he has also complained of light hurting his eyes when he was last sick, and I myself suffer terrible migraines which make me.nauseous. The doctor fobs it all off as just classroom viruses, of course.🤨

It is to do with auras around his vision. He can tell when it's going to happen because his vision goes funny. He usually vomits & then will recover after sleeping.
It's been very difficult to try & get him to discuss symptoms.

Doctors say they can't do anything until he is 16

My DD is like this, she's 17 now and hasn't grown out of it. She vomits if she has a bad cold or cough, or other minor illnesses like tonsillitis.

She also vomits when she tastes something she doesnt like, and when she gets her period.

She has a very sensitive gag reflex.

I stopped telling school about the vomiting unless it was stomach bug related, or she would've taken too much time off.

@kateandsam thanks for that description, mine also struggles to verbalise how he feels and what's happening, so I shall ask him if things look funny next time he has an episode. Hope your son gets sorted ❤️

He seems to think they are caused by anxiety/ stress, so hard to know though as I can't see he had much stress when he was younger