My Daughter's Health Journey ~ 002

Digestive Issues: When I Couldn’t Make It Better

Sometimes I sat on the edge of the bathtub while my daughter sat on the toilet.

Sometimes I stood beside her.

Sometimes it was the middle of the night, and we had been there for hours.

Her tummy hurt. She was nauseous. I could be with her for emotional support.

But I couldn’t make it stop.

The episodes continued through first grade. Removing certain foods had helped, but she still had bouts of pain that we couldn’t explain.

One small relief was that much of her schooling happened at home during COVID. When she felt sick, she was already home.

When the pain wasn’t there, she didn’t talk about it much. But when it returned, she told us how badly it hurt.

And there was something happening inside me during those episodes that I didn’t like admitting.

I became angry.

I wanted to be patient. I wanted to comfort her and know what to do. Instead, the helplessness sometimes came out as a short temper.

Sometimes, when she woke me in the night, I would raise my voice telling her to go to the bathroom and that I would be there in a minute.

There was less patience in my voice than I wanted her to hear.

I was angry that she was suffering and I couldn’t help her. But I’m sure she could feel that anger, even though she wasn’t its cause.

I didn’t like that this was my response.

I would go sit beside her, see how much she was hurting, and feel sad that I had been short with her when she needed me.

As her mother, I felt I was supposed to know what to do. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay, but sometimes even that felt like a promise I couldn’t make.

Nothing we tried reliably made the pain go away.

It also brought back something familiar from the beginning of my son’s eczema journey.

That feeling of here we go again.

Another child hurting. Another search for answers. No idea how long it would take or what we would discover.

Only the knowledge that something needed to be figured out.

We continued seeing the gastroenterologist that year.

At one appointment, she suggested that my daughter’s symptoms might be somatic or psychosomatic. She didn’t explain what she meant in a way that gave me any understanding of it. There was no guidance about what we could do with that possibility or how to help my daughter.

So I went home and searched.

In what I read online, I came across discussions of abuse and fear of abuse. I was upset in a way I hadn’t expected.

Was that what she thought was happening in our home?

My husband and I weren’t perfect parents. We sometimes yelled. There were timeouts and warnings about losing technology. But we loved our children, told them so throughout every day, and were trying so hard to take care of them.

I understand now that those terms do not, by themselves, imply abuse. The doctor hadn’t accused us of it.

But at the time, I was alone with unfamiliar words and whatever I could find on the internet.

There had been so much left unexplained.

I came away feeling as though the search for an answer had been handed back to us. As though the doctors had reached the end of what they could offer, and now we were supposed to figure it out ourselves.

With my son, I had felt that the doctors were still trying alongside us.

This time, I felt very alone.

We didn’t schedule another appointment with her. It would be almost two years before we returned.

Still, I did begin wondering about stress.

There had been so many changes in our lives.

My mother had gone to live with my brother, ending the years of having her nearby and caring for her as part of our daily lives. We still saw her, and we were still helping care for my mother-in-law.

Then there was COVID.

I had always been somewhat of a germophobe, but during COVID that fear became extreme. I worried constantly about germs, illness, and the possibility of bringing something home to one of our grandmothers. Someone I worked with had lost several family members to COVID. My brother had been hospitalized himself with COVID.

That fear felt very close.

A lovely family, whose son was a good friend of my son’s, asked whether our children could be COVID buddies so they could spend time together.

I said no.

I felt bad about it, but I was scared. I was also so worried about germs that even a small amount of contact felt like a risk I couldn’t take.

The children were home, doing school away from their classmates. I became especially thankful that they had each other.

And while so many people were coming home to work, I was going back to work for the first time in almost ten years.

My husband and I had always planned for me to stay home when we had children. We had also always said that once they were in school, I would return to work.

The opportunity came almost by chance.

I took the children to the dentist one day and learned that the receptionist had suddenly left. I offered to step in and help.

That became the job I still have today.

When the dental office closed during COVID, I continued working there alone, calling patients, canceling appointments, and rescheduling people.

At home, my husband was working while the children were doing school.

My daughter didn’t like that I was going to work.

I had always been the one there for the everyday things. Meals, baths, and all the little needs that fill a day with children.

My husband had worked full time. He was also the one they swam with, played with, and had fun with. Now he had an opportunity to share more of the daily caregiving I had done while they were little.

They were all figuring it out together.

I hoped it would bring them even closer. Even in such a difficult time, I thought there could be something good in that change.

School at home had its own challenges. I sometimes wondered how much control a teacher could really have over a group of first graders sitting in their bedrooms surrounded by toys.

Life looked very different for all of us.

I wondered whether those changes, the isolation, and the stress might be making my daughter’s symptoms worse. I didn’t know.

Over time, the episodes developed a little more of a pattern in how they ended. Often, a bad bout of loose stool would come before the pain finally eased.

Otherwise, things stayed much the same.

We pretty much muddled through.

When another episode came, I sat on the edge of the bathtub or stood beside her. I held her hand and stroked her hair.

I told her I loved her.

I told her it would be over soon.

And we waited.

A Reflection

I wish patience had been the first thing that showed up every time my daughter needed me.

Sometimes it was anger.

That is difficult to write because I remember how much she was hurting, and I remember wishing I could respond differently.

The helplessness was familiar. I had already watched one child suffer while we searched for answers. Now I was beside another, wanting so badly to help and finding that love didn’t give me the ability to take her pain away.

I can be honest about the moments when my voice was too sharp. I can wish I had handled them better.

I also remember the hours beside the bathtub.

Both are part of what happened.

A Gentle Invitation

If you have ever responded to someone you love with less patience than you wanted, perhaps take a quiet moment to consider what was happening inside you.

Were you frightened?

Exhausted?

Feeling responsible for something you couldn’t fix?

Understanding those feelings can help us recognize what we need to tend to, including the effect our reactions may have on someone else.

Perhaps there is an apology you want to offer, support you need to ask for, or a different response you want to practice.

You can begin with honesty and leave room for kindness toward yourself, too.

What We Learned

• Helping her through an episode often meant staying beside her. We still didn’t have something that reliably relieved her pain. Holding her hand and waiting with her became part of how we got through it.

• An unexplained medical term could leave us with more fear and confusion. I needed someone to explain what they were considering, why, and what we could do next.

• Our family was adjusting to several changes at once. COVID, isolation, changes in caregiving, and my return to work all became part of the questions I was trying to sort through.

• We noticed more about how the episodes ended without understanding why they began. Loose stools often came before relief, but we still had no clear explanation for the pain.

You are always welcome here.

WGG🌿