anyone been through this?

Well as some of you may know Chloe suffers from bad bowel problems,well yesterday after I hada shower with her I noticed she had a lump just above her belly button, I waited untill my friend came over to letehr have a look tomakesure I wanst being paranoid, she couldnt see it to begin with but then after I had my chocolate party and I was getting Chloe ready for bed I saw it again and asked my friend to have another look, and yep she saw a lump there aswell,it looked like an insect bite but under her skin iykwim, anyway i rang the afterhours service and explained chloes whole situation , (chloe also hadnt done a poo for 6 days untill yesterday morning where she tore quite abit and had huge pebbles) so I told her about the lump and the registered nurse you talk to, was really nice to me coz I kept saying im probly just being paranoid, and then she thought it could of been a little bit of poo that hasnt gone through properly or escaped or something,i was like errr its above her belly button? so anyway I asked to see a GP and my friend took me into the city where they appt was as I had no fuel, and I went and and explained it to the doctor he felther belly and says she has a "supraumbillical hernia" I was like OMG whats that??? and he said its a weakness in her adominal wall due to the amount of straining shes had to do for her bowels.. Then he looked at her bum and chloe got cranky,and said it looks like all her tears plus some inside her bowel have scarred and as they are aging they are contracting and making her bowel smaller (which does make sense as sometimes her poo is soft but she still has trouble getting it out) so she needs to see a peadatric gastroentrologist, and she will need them to look her over and then its a high possibility they will need to dilate her bowel so that there is enough room for her to pass her stools.... I was a bit gobsmacked as GP's ive previously seen even though ive told them how long its been going on, have never even mentioned anything and have just said "increase fibre she'll be ok come back if she starts going really lethargic" I'm kind of relieved at the same time knowing that all this time I havent been being stupid and there is something actually wrong with her.
for now he has perscribed me some drops and suppositories to help her go but Im still going to have to manually help her get the poo out as she is pretty blocked up, and he wants us to see the gastro person asap as the more she strains the worse the hernia will get:(
iam so upset for my little girl, her nappy rash is gone though which is a good thing , but shes still been getting distressed when going and Iknow why now, as the hernia will be causing her pain plus the stools she is trying to push out..

has anyone else had anything similar? I have to go see my normal gp on monday for the referral but if she doesnt want to (he said some gp's are funny about it) then ring him up and he will do it, (couldnt do it last night as hes not ehr normal gp apparently).
im so worried for my little girl :(

Lesley i haven't been through it but i just want to send you both lots of hugs and hope everything works out well and you get some answers in the end. I'm sure once they find out what is wrong she'll be just fine it's just a horrible time until you know more.
You know I'm always here for you if you ever need to talk.

GL with it all.

Hi,

Ahhh poor bubba,hope shes not in too much pain,
As soon as i started reading ur post the first thing that came in my head was hernia,because my mum has it and we freaked out when we noticed the lump my mum had,so im not suprised that you were worried,just goes to show that no matter what you notice about ur kids whether big or small u should always get it checked out.
I hope she gets better soon

Lesley - I haven't seen this problem with a baby, but my sisters 3 year old has had terrible problems with her bowel. Nothing that has caused a hernia, but she has required several enemas as she doesn't like to poo, so she holds on and it makes it harder and harder until it hurts too much to push out.
Anyway - she had to do the laxative option, and it did help, but the only problem was my niece was popping out tiny little poos in her knickers al the time.
She was really hard to toilet train in general, but thats not to do with any problems as a baby.
I hope Chloe will be fine, but I just wanted to let you know that my sister had to use a baby laxative too, and it worked really really well at softening her poos. I hope that helps.
Fi

I have heard of quite a few bubs getting ordinary umbilical hernia, bit I think the supraumbilical is not as common. Ours haven't had it, but my son did get an inguinal hernia (where a little bit of intestine falls into the scrotum) which was fixed with a simple operation. I'm sure Chloe will be fine, it's lucky that you noticed it as I think these things tend to cause lots of problems if they're undetected for a long time.

hey,
thanks for the reply's girls it means alot.
I think I have now managed to clear her blockage, after lots and lots of tears through chloe and myself, she wouldnt keep the suppositories in to start with,but after 3 poo's today all first one was huge and was 3 rocks, and i ahd to help her(didnt use suppository then), second one was softer but still 3 huge rocks and the suppository had managed to work a little so it was easier to get them out with a little bit of lubricationbut we both cried during that one, then just now I gave ehr a bath layed her down on the couch with a towel under ehr put on the heater and put on ehr wiggles dvd and she didnt struggle as much with the suppository, so ti stayed in there for about 2 minutes and then she got the urge to go and it kinda just slipped out with loads of liquid looked like the suppository as there it was but it was smaller then when it went in and it was only 1 huge rock and a tiny one so I think shes starting to clear, she still getting majorly stressed though and I have to sing to her to calm ehr down, the hernia thing to me looks worse then yesterday, but it could just be my eyes, shes going to my normal gp tomorrow to get checked over again and the referral to the gastroentrologist..

thanks for reading and replying, poor little kiddies they must go through so much, its really upsetting

LEsley

:crying: Your poor little girl, I hope you can manage to get it sorted out as soon as possible.

My little girl Bella had the same type of hernia. It's the one above the belly button isnt it?
Hers got bigger and poked out like a pale blue ball about the width of a 10cent peice. We first noticed it when she was about 9mths old, we were told it was an umbilical one but to keep an eye on it. When she was 11months old we got a referal to a peadeatric surgeon. We saw him on a wednesday and she was booked in to have it fixed that friday. The operation was longer than expected as she had a bit of bowel caught up in it. She came out of sugery fine and actually coped better with it than me or DH.
She never really had bowel problems as such, however she only ever went every few days and was always screaming as a baby from tummy pain. Her tummy is a bit mishaped now around the belly button, however we have been told that it will flatten out as her tummy muscles develop and get strong. We have to be careful with her though as she suffers from constipation constantly, no matter what she has eaten. Our main problem is when she gets a cold. I dont know if this is a result of her hernia or not. The dr's never seem to worried. We are lucky that she doesnt have any scarring around or in her anus but the dr's have told us to keep an eye on her with constipation as constant constipation can lead to weak bowels (they forget what to do) and leaking.

All is good at the moment we got over her last bought about 2mths ago and so far we havent relapsed.

Goodluck and let us know how you go.

Love

hey Lesely .... sorry you are going through this with little Chloe, at least it has been diagnosed now & she is on the road to recovery. Now that the problem has been picked up it should get better from here. Sending lots of hugs to you both xx