Dd has tummy ache every day - advice please

[JodieG1]

Can anyone help with this please. Been to the drs twice and they've said it's abdominal migraine but from what's i've read about that online it can be stress etc. Now her homelife is good and we've spoken about school and there's nothing worrying her. She's 5 years old. What else could it be? It's been happening for weeks now and she got sent home from school last week with tummy ache too. Given calpol each time but surely this can't be right?

Are there any tests or anything she could have? I will be making another dr appt to ask and see what can be done because she can't be expected have this every week. It's not constant but seems to come and go.

constipation?

She never seems to have problems going to the toilet, had thought that but she does go every day.

Are you sure it is actually a tummy ACHE. Since she is only 5, she may be excited or nervous about things, so she thinks she has a tummy ache and it is just a feeling in her tummy iyswim. My dd (11) has always said she had a tummy ache (in fact she had one about an hour ago!) and at first I would jump straight for the calpol, but now I give her a heatbag and it always goes away or she forgets she's got it. There's definately nothing wrong with her, eats & drinks well and goes to the loo regularly.

My 4 year old is always 'poorly' or 'tummyachey'

he says it when he feels like being babied a bit, I think.

Thanks. She hasn't eaten anything new so can't be that. We found out what it was last night, she was up in the night with sickness and diarrhea but it's not usually down to that. Probably going to have to go back to the drs. She is always ill as well, every week she has something else. Ds doesn't get as ill as her, so I'm always worried. Could her constant illness have anything to do with her being born prem? Was only 4 weeks but she had to stay in scbu and was very slow to gain weight.

Don't know loads about intolerances/allergies, but it is still possible that it is an intolerance to a food even though she hasn't eaten anything new. Sometimes it takes a while for intolerances to develop. It might be worth keeping a food diary for her and a diary of when tummy aches occur so you can then see if there is any correlation between the two. When I was little, I had tummy aches a lot (from about 4 years) and after my sister was born and my Mum found she had a dairy intolerance, she took me off dairy too and it helped loads. Years later I have been properly diagnosed and it is actually wheat I'm intolerant to, but dairy exacerbates it.
Hope you get to the bottom of it soon!

Thanks Jingle, I'll do that and see if I notice anything.

ENTP - that's what the dr said to give and she was crying with pain so had to give her something. Why do you think that could make it worse?

My daughter suffered very badly from abdominal migraine when she was small - before the age of 4 she was hospitalized three times and was on a drip for a five days each time. At that stage they didn't know what the problem was and it's only been relatively recently that abdominal migraine is recognized in children. Her triggers turned out to be: chocolate eaten after 4 pm, ham eaten after 4pm, (both of these are OK if eaten earlier in the day), being overtired was guaranteed to bring on an attack, as was not eating a snack about 7-8pm before going to bed. If she didn't eat before going to bed she would be up with tummy pain and sickness about 4 am. This last trigger is related to low blood sugar - and if she didn't eat regularly throughout the day an attack would also be triggered. We also avoided every additive, flavouring etc. that we could. Keeping a food diary is a great idea and will let you plot what your daughter's triggers are. On a separate issue how is her growth - is she staying on the same percentile she started on as a baby? I ask because my son had tummy problems, slow growth(from the age of 5) and despite repeated visits to the GP (was told I was an overanxious mother) it took us seven years to find out he was coeliac (after I insisted on the coeliac blood test). Hope you can sort it out - I know how distressing it is for her and you!

I try to avoid as many addiditives as possible and usually cook from scratch, been harder with new baby though. What medicine doesn't have additives?

Flaming - sounds awful for you both, was it hard to find the triggers? She is quite tall now but was tiny for ages as a baby, weighed 9lb 7 at 3 months and gained very slowly.

JodieG1 - finding the triggers wasn't difficult once I realized it seemed to be a form of migraine. Hubby had a lot of "ordinary" migraine before we married - and I very quickly found and eliminated his triggers much to his relief! Daughter's three hospitalizations were within a period of 15 months (and she would lose about a fifth of her body weight each time which was frightening). She would be in agony with stomach pain and sick constantly (ending up with it being every five minutes) for up to 24 hours and would end up bring up a lot of blood. I knew low blood sugar was a trigger for hubby so started looking for it with daughter and sure enough it was in the pattern of attacks - we eliminated that and with a food diary discovered that it was not just specific foods but foods after 4 pm (this is the case with hubby as well). I think it might be something to do with the substance not getting through the system before bedtime so hangs around longer giving them a better chance to react to it. I've absolutely no proof of that but it seems logical! By the way she couldn't keep Calpol down but could keep the Disprol Suspension down. Does your daughter go very white when she has an attack? My daughter would go so white her lips would almost disappear. We adopted the strategy that if she looked at all pale we would immediately give her a snack!

I had tummy ache every day until I was 14 - which the docs put down to me being "nervous". When I was 14 I read an article about lactose intolerance so I cut out milk. It stopped immediately.

I can now eat things made with Milk but if I have even a spoonful of full-fat milk I get bad tummy ache for a few hours.

I would cut out dairy for a week or so and see if that helps.

Flaming - she does get quite pale and has come out of school very pale and then started being ill before too. Must have been scary for you all with the hospitalisations, is she ok now? What you've said does make sense. I'll definitely be keeping a food diary now and see if I notice anything.

MP - she doens't eat huge amounts of dairy as it is as she doesn't like milk or cheese. She'll have milk on cereal but prefers it without. She does eat fromage frais though so I'll think about cutting dairy out completely to see, think that's a common intolerance isn't it.

Hiya, my 8 year old son sufferes from Abdominal migraine..he dosen't have it every day though...and since starting on a seratonin replacement medicine they have disappeared!

He used go pale, clammy, sick lots of times, couldn't eat and would just have to sleep til it wore off.

So it can be just hormones that set them off...as Keenan was getting a bit older actual headaches were starting to appear too. It's taken about a year for the peads to suss out what it was, and even then it was me suggesting it after doing research and there being many people in the family suffereing from migraine.

let us know how you get on.xx

JodieG1 - yes she is fine now - she's only had one attack in the last five years which was caused by coming in late from a party (she's a healthy just turned 18 year old now) and saying she didn't need anything to eat. Next morning she made it to the top of the stairs before having to dash to the loo to be sick - she now eats a slice of toast before bed regardless of how late she comes in! She doesn't drink because she is still very sensitive to additives, etc. (and can go high on sugar so who needs alcohol as she puts it!). She doesn't take in too much sugar at once though because the initial boost in blood sugar can be followed by a blood sugar low triggering an attack. I'm sure you'll soon identify what is causing your daughter's problem - but keeping a steady blood sugar level is a good first aim.

I think I'll definitely make her another drs appointment as he didn't mention any medication that she could take to help other than calpol.

Lulabelle - I know what you mean, it seems my dd is ill all the time, we haven't been able to go and do anything at the weekend for months now.

lulabelle - I can relate to that as my daughter missed most of her first year of school. I think the migraine attacks keep them permanently below par and their immune system never gets a chance to get back to full strength. It took a long time after the regular attacks stopped for my daughter to regain what I regarded as her full health. I was very worried at one stage that she was going to tip into Chronic Fatigue.

Agree that there may be a physical cause - but why not see if the tummy aches stop next week during the Easter holidays?

Thats the medcine (sanomigraine) thingy that my son is on..it's marvellous...its called pitzoforen i think too..seratonin supplement...it works great for Keenan...but if we miss a dose...we know about it!

Keenans peads appoints have been put back to 6 months apart now as he is doing so well....he did mention that we will try and get him off the medcine sometime in the future though.....so whether they think he might grow out of it i don't know..but do mention it to your doctor....it's not fair on your child to have to put up with this when there can be a simple solution.x