Ms. Zhang’s baby is 35 days old, and this child has not had a proper bowel movement since birth. Other children had bowel movements 24 hours after birth, but this child did not have a bowel movement until 2 days later, and after that, he had a bowel movement every 1-2 days. After 10 days after birth, she suddenly stopped having bowel movements, and only after 5 days did she have a bowel movement, and only once every 5-7 days after that. The doctor said, first of all, to discharge the possibility of megacolon, it is necessary to do colonoscopy, but such a small child to do colonoscopy is still relatively troublesome, you can first observe. If you don’t have a bowel movement for a long time, you can also use a little bit of open cork.
The effect is really good when you use it, and the stool comes out a lot. However, you have to use it every time you have a bowel movement, and if you don’t use it, your child will not have a bowel movement.
In addition to the bowel movement problem, the child also has trouble sleeping. He always cries every night and wakes up almost once every half hour. Because I was worried that he would not sleep well, I slept with him in my arms every day. During the day, she may be able to sleep for an hour, but the rest of the day she does not sleep well and wakes up when there is a little movement. The parents also pay attention to the child’s calcium supplement, but the effect is not obvious.
The family could not figure out how much milk the child should eat. The child was fed when he woke up, once in less than 2 hours during the day, and almost once in half an hour at night, but he did not eat much each time. This child did not eat much and did not have a bowel movement for several days, but when he did, the amount was large and the stool was especially smelly. During the first few days of defecation, her appetite is fine, but if she doesn’t have a bowel movement for a few days, her appetite drops significantly. The child is now more than a month old and has only gained less than 1 pound in weight. This child is too difficult to bring up, and the parents are really working too hard, the mother is not even doing well in the month, and a parent is exhausted and on edge. This child is not a giant colon or not? Why is this child so difficult to raise?
Doctor’s answer: First, we need to analyze and study the child’s feeding, and then analyze whether there is any relationship between bowel movement and sleep disturbance. Then, we will discuss the treatment.
The rhythm of feeding a newborn child is called a newborn when the child is 28 days old. This child cannot be called a newborn anymore, but it is not much older, so let’s refer to the feeding rhythm of a newborn. The normal routine for newborns is to eat milk every 2.5 – 3 hours, usually for no more than 20 minutes, and to eat milk vigorously. After eating, he or she will sleep and wake up to eat. The reason why newborns need to maintain this rhythm of life is that the stomach of a small child is too small to eat too much milk at one time. The energy provided by the milk eaten each time is limited, and when the energy is not enough, he has to keep on replenishing it, so the interval between milk eating for small children is still quite short. If the child is healthy and the mother has enough milk, the rhythm of breastfeeding should be like this.
If the rhythm of breastfeeding changes, it is important to find out why. For example, if a child wants to eat milk in less than two hours or even less than an hour, eats frequently and wakes up frequently, you should consider whether the amount of milk is sufficient. If the child is breastfeeding, consider the possibility that the mother is not lactating enough.
In the previous case, the parents fed the child frequently because the child woke up frequently, but in fact, the child was not interested in eating milk, so the amount of milk was not much each time. Because the child did not eat much, the parents were worried about starving the child, so they fed more frequently. In this way, a vicious circle is formed.
This vicious circle will certainly increase the pressure on the stomach and intestines, so that the function of the stomach and intestines is further damaged. If the stomach is damaged and the intake function is poor, it will show that it does not like to eat milk. If the function of the intestines is damaged and the conduction is weak, there may be problems with the excretion of stool. If the stool is not excreted in a timely manner, stomach qi cannot be carried down and new food cannot enter, so the child’s appetite will be further reduced. The stool cannot be eliminated for a long time, so the stool is smelly. The above situation is most likely caused by force-feeding, force-feeding is the cause and food accumulation is the effect.
If the stomach is not in harmony with the restlessness, excessive feeding increases the burden on the stomach and intestines. Since the diet is stagnant in the middle jiao, it cannot be digested, so it affects the qi flow of the stomach and intestines, thus forming food stagnation and qi stagnation. The Qi stagnation in the stomach and intestines makes it easy to have gastrointestinal discomfort, or distension, or pain. For a normal child, the above symptoms can be expressed in words, but this is just a small baby, and the only way she can express herself is to cry. As the saying goes, “If the stomach is not in harmony, it is restless”. If you don’t get rid of the stuff in the stomach and intestines, can the child’s stomach and intestines be comfortable? If the child’s stomach is not comfortable, he or she will not sleep well and will wake up often.
Is the child a megacolon?
It’s really difficult to answer this question, and you can’t make a diagnosis without testing. But this child is still young, so we can try to treat him with Chinese medicine first to see the effect.
If the disease is not megacolon, but is caused by food accumulation, herbal treatment is not difficult. We can see that this child’s difficulty in defecation and food accumulation are all related to unreasonable feeding, which is not uncommon in clinical practice. In the treatment, first of all, we should guide the parents how to carry out reasonable feeding, and at the same time give the medicine to eliminate the accumulation of Qi and laxative, there are still a lot of Chinese medicine laxative, and there are also a lot of medicine to eliminate accumulation of Qi and laxative. If you can restore your own bowel movement, you are definitely not a giant colon. If you can’t have a bowel movement on your own even after using powerful laxatives, then you should consider the possibility of megacolon, and you can have the necessary tests at a later date.
The parents of this child lack general knowledge of pediatric feeding, and the reason for this is simple, mainly because of the lack of social science. It is recommended that parents can educate themselves through a variety of ways to ensure the healthy growth of their children.