Persistent constip/diarr in 4yo after long bout of gastroenteritis

[litdog]

Our DD is 4 and at the end of last term caught a horrible stomach bug - norovirus or similar - that involved projectile vomiting at the beginning and then dreadful diarrhoea for WEEKS, literally nearly three weeks.

We went to the doc and to A&E and they told us it was going round at the moment etc.

Since then her tummy has been up and down - she either has constipation or a runny tummy - and keeps being sent home from nursery for one or the other. When she has constipation it's so bad she cries (she is speech delayed so can't talk).

I've been to the GP terrified it was Crohn's Disease and she was non-committal and gave us lactulose and suggested an acidophilus supplement, which we have just started on and seems to be working, but obviously we don't want to be like this forever. She says give it a month with the two medicines and see how we get on, and if it's still a problem she will refer us to a paed gastroenterologist. But she says it could just be her tummy getting back to normal.

Has anyone had anything similar? We have had loads of health probs with DD and the thought of this being something serious makes me feel so despairing.

Thanks

Sorry, I don't have any advice to offer but I wanted to reply to your post. My ds 3.10 had a d & v bug a few months ago and it took him over a week to get back to normal. What I did do to encourage him to eat again was to offer him plain food little but often. I was told by a doctor that their tummies shrink when they haven't eaten for a while and to do that. I would ensure that your dd is having enough fluids too.

Other than that, can't help really as they have always bounced back after a few days or in this case a week. I hope you get a definite answer soon as it must be so worrying for you.

I've just met two people who had that and they have been on a gluten free diet which has helped hugely. They said something about their gut being raw after the bug and gluten irritating it (or something). I'm really not sure that's what they said but def the gluten free thing. Worth a try?

Same prob for our son 18 months ago . After numerous visits to "the best" specialists-most of whom told us to wait it out-we tried at a mum's suggestion gluten and dairy free diet . Eliminating the dairy had an immediate impact and removing uten has been helpful too. Try it. Pretty easy really and it did work.

10 year old dd had a bad bout of gastro which has left her (we hope temporarily) lactose intolerant. We took her off all dairy and saw a huge improvement within a week. The stomach cramps stopped almost straight away. The GP said to continue dairy free for a couple of weeks and reintroduce it gradually to see how it went, but she wasn't able to tolerate it. Some of the research I've done online has indicated that the intolerance can last for a couple of months.
Anyway, I'd give dairy free a go. You have to check food labels closely as you'd be amazed at the things that contain milk or milk products.

I was also going to suggest trying dairy free fir a while. My youngest dc always became lactose intolerant after a tummy bug when he was younger.