I think I must sound like a broken record and I'm not sure what I have said to who on this board or other boards for that matter, so please forgive me if I'm being redundant!
I don't want to be left alone! Thanks for pouring out your heart- it is EXACTLY how I feel! I do have the name of a DAN! Doctor, and I spoke briefly with a mom who brought her son to see him. She had a great review of him. What is stopping me from going right now is the fact that this Dr. is in a neighboring state, and I don't know how we would pay him. My DS has a Medicaid waiver because of his dx, I have a meeting with his service coordinator on the 7th and I plan to ask if it would be covered... I hate to sound like a cheapskate, but I am a SAHM and my DH is doing his very best to support us and we just don't have a lot of wiggle room in our budget. We are both afraid of debt. That is why I looked into getting DS an appt. with an osteopath who deals in natural medicine. She is local and takes our insurance.
I, too, ADORE my son and I am fighting my HARDEST to make his life as easy as possible. I know he does not feel good, he just doesn't know how to tell me so. I feel it is my job not to cure him of PDD, NOS but to give him all I can in the way of therapies (PT, OT, Speech, Special Instruction, Counseling) as well as to help his physical self be at his best, so that he can live his best life.
Has the DAN! Dr. checked your DS's immune system? His gut for bacterial imbalance and/or yeast overgrowth? Food sensitivities? If you wouldn't mind letting me know, I am curious about it all!
DS in currently in the next room talking as though he is both teacher & student ("This is how you do it. See? Oh good job!")
you need that first and formost cause you are doing a good job mom My son just got trained this past fall. He turned 4 in July, and I felt the same way you did. I had to overcome belly issues with my son too by realizing that his tummy problems are going interfer with potty.
He does not care if he is wet or dirty (in undies or "youth briefs" or pull-ups). ---he's not ready
He has chronic diarrahea (saw a pedi. gastroenterologist, and we continue to try to fix this issue). --this issue must be fixed cause he's got belly trouble
He has as many as 7 BM's in a day (not always, usually 4), and when he tried to go poo in the potty, he would strain and try so hard that he would nearly cry (me, too) and his poor tushy was red from sitting so long. ---again belly issues that need to be resolved before the offical potty training begins
He is ALWAYS wet in the morning.--that's normal sometimes for even potty trained kids
Nighttime potty training is different than day time potty training. Nighttime potty training is primarily contingent on two things. First, the body has to develop the hormone telling the kidneys to slow urine production. Without it, the kidneys produce urine at full speed, so they produce in 2-3 hours what most people produce in 8-12 hours overnight. There's no way the bladder can hold all that urine.
Second, once the body has developed the hormone to sow urine production while asleep, the child has to learn to respond to body signals that the bladder is full. That's where awakening a child at night to go potty or using a bed wetting alarm can be helpful. Of course, with low sensory awareness kids, that can take longer than usual.
Most doctors don't consider nighttime bed wetting a problem until a child is 7-8yo. There is a synthetic version of the hormone available as a prescription nasal spray but most doctors won't prescribe it for younger children who have not had a chance to develop the hormone yet. And, of course, once you discontinue using the spray, the problem returns unless the body has developed the hormone in the meantime.
Don't worry about your child still wetting the bed at 5.5yo. It's much more common than you'd guess.
Just to echo what the others have said, no you're not bad at all. My oldest dd was in diapers and not potty trained for a very long time. I got a lot of grief from everyone around me (we didn't know dd had AS at the time), but ultimately mom knows best, and taking it at a pace that doesn't stress out your or your child is a good thing. Ironically, the person who gave me the most grief about dd not being potty trained was a lady at church who later ended up having her own child diagnosed with autism and was in diapers until she was 9-10yo.
I was told too late to not have my kids sit on the toilet too long, esp not to sit and strain too long. That has been the cause of their hemorrhoids and fissures (skin tears that bleed). It was my sister who told me, not the doctors. When I looked it up, all the medical info agreed with it. When I mentioned it to the doctors, they said it was correct. Woulda been nice if someone had told me this when I was telling the docs that my kids would sit on the toilet straining for an hour at a time!
After learning here that a lot of AS kids have intestinal problems, I told our GI that I thought dd problems were AS related (dd has always been chronically constipated and worse). The doc dismissed my info even tho' she said she didn't know that much about AS. It took a couple of years of lack of progress even under treatment before the docs started thinking maybe there was something to the AS theory.
Have the docs ever done an x-ray of your ds abdomen to see what the intestinal tract looks like? It sounds like your ds probably truly has diarrhea, but sometimes impacted bowels mimic diarrhea since the only stool that can get around the blockage is loose, diarrhea-like stool. If there's a blockage in the intestinal tract, it would cause the bowel muscles to become stretched out and lose muscle tone and sensory awareness which makes the child have less control over their bowel habits. They often have leakage several times a day. Does your ds have full bowel movements several times a day, or is it more like leakage?
I wonder why your ds would need to strain to eliminate diarrhea. Have the doctors explored that? Currently the GI docs are wondering whether my dd muscles work backwards when she poops (contracting instead of relaxing, which causes her to strain even with diarrhea and makes her feel like eliminating is a very difficult chore). Of course dd problem is constipation rather than diarrhea
Although nighttime bed wetting is very common in children this age (doctors don't consider it a problem until children are 7-8yo), bowel troubles can contribute to bladder troubles. So can stress.
I hope the docs find some solutions for your poor ds soon!
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Amen. Music to my ears! Thank you!!
Jennifer
I love this board!!
It helps me SO much to know that I am not the only person in the world in this situation! It just gets so hard when my niece (nt)
Thanks for your kind words. It is so nice to know this board exists- it has helped my mental state in a huge way already!
Jennifer
Edited 1/2/2008 9:15 pm ET by emc24me
Hi Jennifer,
I think I must sound like a broken record and I'm not sure what I have said to who on this board or other boards for that matter, so please forgive me if I'm being redundant!
I don't want to be left alone! Thanks for pouring out your heart- it is EXACTLY how I feel! I do have the name of a DAN! Doctor, and I spoke briefly with a mom who brought her son to see him. She had a great review of him. What is stopping me from going right now is the fact that this Dr. is in a neighboring state, and I don't know how we would pay him. My DS has a Medicaid waiver because of his dx, I have a meeting with his service coordinator on the 7th and I plan to ask if it would be covered... I hate to sound like a cheapskate, but I am a SAHM and my DH is doing his very best to support us and we just don't have a lot of wiggle room in our budget. We are both afraid of debt. That is why I looked into getting DS an appt. with an osteopath who deals in natural medicine. She is local and takes our insurance.
I, too, ADORE my son and I am fighting my HARDEST to make his life as easy as possible. I know he does not feel good, he just doesn't know how to tell me so. I feel it is my job not to cure him of PDD, NOS but to give him all I can in the way of therapies (PT, OT, Speech, Special Instruction, Counseling) as well as to help his physical self be at his best, so that he can live his best life.
Has the DAN! Dr. checked your DS's immune system? His gut for bacterial imbalance and/or yeast overgrowth? Food sensitivities? If you wouldn't mind letting me know, I am curious about it all!
DS in currently in the next room talking as though he is both teacher & student ("This is how you do it. See? Oh good job!")
You have nothing to feel bad about!!
Hi Jennifer,
If you're interested, you can email me
(((Hugs))
you need that first and formost cause you are doing a good job mom
My son just got trained this past fall. He turned 4 in July, and I felt the same way you did. I had to overcome belly issues with my son too by realizing that his tummy problems are going interfer with potty.
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s225/irishwildrose/pp2.jpg
Heather,
Just an FYI about nighttime potty training:
Nighttime potty training is different than day time potty training. Nighttime potty training is primarily contingent on two things. First, the body has to develop the hormone telling the kidneys to slow urine production. Without it, the kidneys produce urine at full speed, so they produce in 2-3 hours what most people produce in 8-12 hours overnight. There's no way the bladder can hold all that urine.
Second, once the body has developed the hormone to sow urine production while asleep, the child has to learn to respond to body signals that the bladder is full. That's where awakening a child at night to go potty or using a bed wetting alarm can be helpful. Of course, with low sensory awareness kids, that can take longer than usual.
Most doctors don't consider nighttime bed wetting a problem until a child is 7-8yo. There is a synthetic version of the hormone available as a prescription nasal spray but most doctors won't prescribe it for younger children who have not had a chance to develop the hormone yet. And, of course, once you discontinue using the spray, the problem returns unless the body has developed the hormone in the meantime.
Don't worry about your child still wetting the bed at 5.5yo. It's much more common than you'd guess.
Just to echo what the others have said, no you're not bad at all. My oldest dd was in diapers and not potty trained for a very long time. I got a lot of grief from everyone around me (we didn't know dd had AS at the time), but ultimately mom knows best, and taking it at a pace that doesn't stress out your or your child is a good thing. Ironically, the person who gave me the most grief about dd not being potty trained was a lady at church who later ended up having her own child diagnosed with autism and was in diapers until she was 9-10yo.
I was told too late to not have my kids sit on the toilet too long, esp not to sit and strain too long. That has been the cause of their hemorrhoids and fissures (skin tears that bleed). It was my sister who told me, not the doctors. When I looked it up, all the medical info agreed with it. When I mentioned it to the doctors, they said it was correct. Woulda been nice if someone had told me this when I was telling the docs that my kids would sit on the toilet straining for an hour at a time!
After learning here that a lot of AS kids have intestinal problems, I told our GI that I thought dd problems were AS related (dd has always been chronically constipated and worse). The doc dismissed my info even tho' she said she didn't know that much about AS. It took a couple of years of lack of progress even under treatment before the docs started thinking maybe there was something to the AS theory.
Have the docs ever done an x-ray of your ds abdomen to see what the intestinal tract looks like? It sounds like your ds probably truly has diarrhea, but sometimes impacted bowels mimic diarrhea since the only stool that can get around the blockage is loose, diarrhea-like stool. If there's a blockage in the intestinal tract, it would cause the bowel muscles to become stretched out and lose muscle tone and sensory awareness which makes the child have less control over their bowel habits. They often have leakage several times a day. Does your ds have full bowel movements several times a day, or is it more like leakage?
I wonder why your ds would need to strain to eliminate diarrhea. Have the doctors explored that? Currently the GI docs are wondering whether my dd muscles work backwards when she poops (contracting instead of relaxing, which causes her to strain even with diarrhea and makes her feel like eliminating is a very difficult chore). Of course dd problem is constipation rather than diarrhea
Although nighttime bed wetting is very common in children this age (doctors don't consider it a problem until children are 7-8yo), bowel troubles can contribute to bladder troubles. So can stress.
I hope the docs find some solutions for your poor ds soon!
Pages