Diahorrea (sorry!)

[MandyD]

Can anyone advise about my son's runny bottom? He's had a cough/cold/ear infection for over a month now (lots of mucus). Has finished a course of Clarithromycin antibiotic at the weekend. For the last 3 days he's been having 1 BM per day but its yellow, bubbly, very, very smelly and he says it stings his bottom, so it must be very acid. He is due to have a barium meal for unexplained stomach aches at the end of the month, but has never had 'the runs' before.

How old is he? Unless your medical team advises otherwise, I'd take him off all dairy products right now. If he's old enough explain to him that not having cows milk etc should help his bum get better. There used to be a wonderful milupa dried powder drink which smelt of aniseed and was red which we used to use in the middle east when the children got rashid's revenge. If we couldn't get that then we used to give them cold tea (no milk) nothing else for days til the sickness and runs went. None of my children would touch the rehydrating powders the doc gave them. There was also another milupa product which we used to call kids concrete - it was a rice cereal which you mixed with water and by heaven that stuff could bung up an elecphant! I believe that it used to be used in areas of famine for children who hadn't eaten for days. Perhaps, if that doesn't exist any more, you could try rice pudding that's made with soya milk? My children, now teens love that SOGood soya milk. check with your medical team first though. I imagine it can't hurt to take him off dairy - what does anyone else think?

I've been told that medical advice has changed (again!) and it is no longer thought worthwhile to stop giving children milk when they have the trots and that they benefit from the goodness in it. But it's not going to harm to stop it for a few days, I wouldn't have thought. The combination of antibiotics and mucous could be causing the diarrhoea, too.

Interesting about the rice. My neighbours went somewhere exotic on holiday and got bad stomachs. The Dr there recommended they boiled some rice, strained it and drank the liquid. Apparently there is something binding (starch?) in rice and is easily absorbed as a liquid. Their condition improved within hours, which amazed them, of course, coming from the land of Immodium!

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He's nearly 3! I'll see if it happens again tomorrow and then try some of these remedies. There's a cash'n'carry near me that does a lot of Milupa products so I'll check that out, and thanks, I'd forgotten that a locum doctor once said my son should take live yoghurt/Yakult along with the antibiotics. Anyway, we're going to see the GP on Friday so if no better then I'll ask.

Good luck with your son Mandy.
Remember, whatever you do he will probably recover anyway over the next few days so I would be really skeptical about putting it down to cutting out dairy products or whatever

MandyD, I was always advised to try a BRAT diet: bananas, rice, apples, toast. Those foods are supposed to be a bit constipating. My son has runny poos when he takes anything in that family of antibiotics, too. If yours is anything like mine, it'll clear up soon.

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it is most probably the antibiotics your son is taking which is causing his runs,clarithromycin normally causes runs in adults so can only imagine what they do to kids.i would just keep hiim on his normal diet but with a bit more fluid as the runs will dehydrate him.