Sunday, July 3, 2005

house of poop

No, not Pooh, but poop. Might want to skip today’s entry. Seriously. Might want to just pretend it isn’t there and give it the ole drive-by. Can’t say you haven’t been warned. With 4 kids under 11, poop is still very much on the daily radar.

The past two days we’ve been assisting Ellen with her battle against poop. She has a tendency to withold, but her diet is usually full of enough whole grains, raw vegetables and fruit that it isn’t an issue. Lately, her diet has been comprised of pan dulce (lard and white flour and sugar), cow’s milk yogurt (in the states, the kids never drank cow’s milk, but instead rice milk), more pan dulce, cheese, chorizo and a little pan dulce on the side.

So, it had been EIGHT DAYS since movement has occurred. Southerly movement. Her mood has deteriorated with the lack of movement; something we realized only after movement had been achieved. We began with a bottle, and entire bottle of prune juice. She has had prunes almost daily, but apparently not enough. We spend entire days concentrated on the problem of movement and yesterday achieved a measure of success. We resorted to threats (though not empty ones) of needing “medicine” (suppositories) which she then decided she wanted. It took three seperate attempts for her to accept the “medicine”. The first two were accompained with such screaming that I was certain she was allergic to the glygerine. After the first two attempts, some movement was achieved and after the third, she didn’t even realize the medicine had achieved it’s station and was skipping and playing about. The other threat (though not empty) was that of the “doctor”. If we hadn’t been able to achieve success with food, we then planned to resort to the “medicine” and if that either did not work or she refused, we would have been forced to visit a doctor. She’s never been to one in her life so I’m not sure where the terror lies, but she definitely Does Not Want To Go To The Doctor. I tried to re-assure her, but it is fixed pretty well in her mind that the doctor is not a happy place. We’re going to have to work on that in the event that someday she WILL have to go…

So today we’re on day three of the war against her witholdings. Yesterday she ate well for the first time in memory. Broccoli, prunes, brown rice, chorizo and cantelope for lunch; broccoli, brown rice, ham, prunes and cantelope for dinner. She has been a much happier girl but we still have a long road ahead. Breakfast today was oatmeal with sugar, cantelope, prunes and mango. Lots of water in-between. I’ve always tried to honor the kids’ own hunger and thrist, but the last two days I’ve been insisiting on prunes and water. She ate every bite she took for lunch and dinner; the best she’s eaten in over two weeks. Ever since Jamie got over Typhoid, he has been addicted to a type of “noodle soup”, a Ramen type of “soup”. He eats it for lunch and dinner and eats pretty much nothing else. As such, the kids want the same and think this is where the downfall began. She is somewhat prone to constipation and I think the solitary diet of “noodle soup” exceberated the problem. So Jamie is on the wagon. He’s starting to eat real food again too. 

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