Miralax to the Rescue

There can't be anything in this world more humbling than sitting across the aisle from an American soldier who is wearing a prosthetic left arm while seated in a wheelchair with what's remaining of his left leg elevated and bandaged. Or seeing another soldier, a young father, being pushed around in a wheelchair with two little blonde haired, blue eyed girls following after him. And, if those didn't get to you, then maybe watching the mother of one of our female American soldiers pushing her daughter, who looked to have suffered a head/brain injury, around in a wheelchair might humble you to your core.

Today, we visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

I took my daughter in for a specialist consultation, but I left with a broken heart over how many of our American military men and women are injured, often beyond repair, for the sake of our freedom. I don't think the reality of what our troops do for us on a daily basis in lands far away from home sinks in often enough. I wish more Americans, especially those who are preoccupied with money and prestige and beauty and fame, could spend a little bit of time witnessing what I did today. Seeing those precious lives forever changed in such drastic and dramatic ways really puts things in perspective for you in a hurry.

Dear Lord, please bless the lives of our military men and women and their families. I pray that you'd especially bless those who have willingly sacrificed so much, even their lives, so that I can live in free country. I pray that you will keep me ever aware of their sacrifices and never take the things I enjoy for granted. I also lift up those special doctors and nurses who have so graciously followed the call to practice medicine in our military facilities. May you always equip them to serve our wounded warriors in a special way. Amen.

Besides being absolutely heart-broken over the injured soldiers I saw today, I also had the very best medical experience of my entire life.

As you know, Lydie has been battling severe constipation for a couple of months now. Major amounts of prune juice, karo syrup, and prune puree have not done the trick. As of this morning, she had not had a bowel movement in a week, but that's a short amount of time compared to the month of September when she only passed stool twice and that was with the assistance of suppositories.

Obviously, she's a special case.

Danny and I have fretted and worried over the issue and were both anxious about today's appointment. Thankfully, our prayers were answered on a multitude of levels, and we left the appointment feeling a little more hopeful.

I promise you that we saw the very best military doctor in the armed services today. Dr. C was the most thorough, compassionate, sincere doctor I have ever had the pleasure of sharing an exam room with. She spent over an hour with us discussing Lydie's symptoms, performing a physical examination, educating us on treatment options, and preparing us for future follow-up. She was more than fabulous, and for that I am extremely thankful.

The bottom line is that Lydie is not displaying any symptoms that might indicate any sort of disease or physical malformity that could be causing her constipation. Praise the Lord!

She does, however, have a severe problem that needs to be addressed. Dr. C said that the only thing we could do wrong at this point is to do nothing at all.

Believe me, I am all for doing something to fix this issue.

Dr. C had a few suggestions of things we could try:

1.) Increase fluids. Lydie only drinks about 24 ounces of formula a day. She is what Dr. C refers to as a "challenge to feed." If the child wanted more to drink, I'd give it to her. She just never wants more than those four bottles and, even then, she sometimes doesn't finish those. She's not dehydrated by any means, but Dr. C thinks it would do some good to try our best to get about 30 ounces of fluid in her a day. One of those ways would be to add an extra bottle of formula, but she also suggested just adding a bottle of pure, undiluted prune juice or apple-prune juice.

2.) Increase poop-inducing solids. We've already been giving Lydie about half a container of prune or sweet potato baby food each day, but Dr. C suggested trying an entire container or even two. Since Lydie is still not really opening her mouth to take the food from the spoon (remember, she's a "challenge to feed"), Dr. C said this might be a later addition. She said to avoid all the baby cereals completely and to stick with fruits and veggies with the letter P in them like prunes, peaches, pears, applesauce, sweet potatoes, sweet peas, etc.

3.) Add dark karo syrup to a bottle. Previously, we were adding a teaspoon of light, reduced sugar, reduced calorie karo syrup to every bottle. Apparently, giving her the reduced sugar syrup completely negates the effectiveness of adding it to the milk, and a teaspoon isn't enough anyway. Who knew? Dr. C said the excess sugar is used to pull liquid into the intestinal tract and soften the stool, so you want the full amount of sugar possible. And, she said the dark karo syrup does a better job at getting this done. My concern with the karo syrup was whether it might have an effect on her long-term health, but Dr. C didn't seem to think that would be an issue.

4.) Add Miralax to a bottle. The last of Dr. C's suggestions involved medication. Miralax is a powdered laxative that is virtually tasteless and can be added to a bottle once daily. She said this would produce the most visible results in a relatively short amount of time. She also warned us that, since it is a laxative, it could actually produce diarrhea-like results. At this point, I'm okay with diarrhea, as long as it is coming out of the child's body. She suggested scaling back on the amount added to the bottle or only giving it every other day until the loose stools became more pasty and normal.

As we finished up our conversation, Dr. C said we should try something consistently for a week or two and evaluate how things are going and then make adjustments. For now, Danny and I have decided to give Lydie the Miralax in her morning bottle until things become a little more regular. Then, we'll transition to just adding the karo syrup. We are also going to do our best to increase her liquids by adding a juice bottle to her daily line-up, as well as adding an ounce of prune juice to each bottle. That way, even if she refuses the juice-only bottle, she'll at least be getting four more ounces of juice via bottles for a daily total of 28 ounces.

All that blabbering to say our baby girl's bowel situation is fixable. I am so thankful that there's nothing more serious going on with her.

We will speak with Dr. C in about a week to report any improvements and to make adjustments as needed. If things aren't getting better after about a month, we'll go back in for further evaluation, but Dr. C doesn't anticipate that being necessary. We'll keep you posted.

Ty was such a good boy while his sister went to the doctor. He even got a sucker from one of the nice nurses. He had so much fun eating lunch in the big cafeteria. He laughed and talked and made lots of friends. He's quite the charmer.



Lydie, on the other hand, was exhausted from all the commotion. She slept through lunch.

This is the newest addition to our medicine cabinet. That is one big bottle, I tell ya.

The trip to Walter Reed was pretty long and fairly scenic, as we had to go right through the middle of downtown D.C. While we were stopped at one of eight million stoplights, I noticed this church's windows and thought they were gorgeous. Plus, the stone it is built with is not like anything I've seen before. I just had to snap a couple of shots to share with you.