My Daughter's Health Journey ~ 001

Digestive Issues: When the Tummy Aches Began

Until she was about five, my daughter had been pretty healthy.

She was a picky eater, but she liked plenty of things that were good for her.

She ate fruits, vegetables, cheese and meat. We didn’t have much candy in the house. With my son’s eczema and reactions to citric acid, I was already accustomed to checking ingredients. If the kids had a treat, it was often something like Hershey’s chocolate, and even that wasn’t very frequent.

The first time she had a really bad tummy ache, I was out shopping.

It had started before I left, but while I was gone, it became much worse. She was home with my husband and son, and along with the pain came terrible nausea.

My husband remembered having stomach pain from gas when he was young. Thinking that might be what was happening, he had her lie on her back and bicycle her legs. He encouraged her to walk around.

Nothing seemed to help.

When I got home, she was still hurting. After another hour or so, she was finally able to go to the bathroom, and then she slowly began to feel better.

But it happened again.

Sometimes there would be another episode the following week. Other times, a month or more would pass. There was no predictable rhythm to it.

The pain could last an hour, or two, or three or four. Almost every time, she was very nauseous, but she never threw up. Often, when she did have a bowel movement, it was loose. Other times, there was no obvious resolution at all.

The pain would simply go away.

I have to admit that in the beginning, I sometimes questioned whether it was real. I don’t remember ever saying that to her, but the thought was there. I didn’t understand how she could hurt for so long and then suddenly seem okay again.

After the first few episodes, though, I could see the pain in my child. I watched her struggle while nothing we tried took it away.

I knew I had been wrong.

After the second or third time, I took her to her pediatrician. She examined her, ordered bloodwork, and talked with me about an elimination diet.

That was familiar territory. I had already spent years trying to understand what affected my son’s skin.

I began keeping a food log for my daughter, looking for something that might explain these episodes. Certain fruits seemed to bother her, but nothing consistently stood out.

Then she had a couple of worse bouts.

During one of them, her belly was so tender, and she was so nauseous, that I worried she might have appendicitis. I took her to urgent care.

They did an ultrasound and told us her appendix was fine. They gave her something for the nausea, and we sat there for what felt like hours until the episode passed.

Then we went home.

This continued, off and on, for the better part of a year.

Eventually, we took her to a pediatric gastroenterologist. She examined my daughter thoroughly and talked with me further about eliminating foods and investigating whether gluten might be involved.

There was an X-ray of her belly. We went home with orders for more testing, including stool samples.

Once again, nothing gave us a clear explanation.

A few weeks later, another tummy ache kept us in the bathroom for hours.

She was crying, and I was trying to decide whether to take her in again. We had already been through appointments and tests, but sitting there beside her, I couldn’t know whether this time something different was happening.

By midnight, it had been about four hours. She wasn’t getting better. If anything, she seemed worse.

Then she started having cold sweats.

I took her to the ER.

They did bloodwork, an ultrasound, and another X-ray. They gave her medication for the nausea, and she eventually fell asleep.

Around five that morning, they released her.

We went home with no answers again.

The food logs hadn’t explained it. The testing hadn’t explained it. And I still didn’t know what to do when the next episode came.

Later that week, I came across an article about an at-home blood test called 7 Drops. It advertised testing for more than 180 allergies and food intolerances.

I ordered it.

The report didn’t identify any allergies, but it flagged five foods as intolerances: cane sugar, tomatoes, Emmental cheese, kiwi, and corn.

At the time, I felt like we finally had something to work with.

Cane sugar made some sense to me. I had noticed that she sometimes got a tummy ache after a sugary drink, a Slurpee, or candy. I had assumed it was the sort of stomachache a child might get from having too much of something sweet.

Kiwi was easy. She didn’t like it anyway.

Corn was harder. It was in so many things beyond the corn you might put on a dinner plate. Once again, I was reading labels and finding ingredients in places I hadn’t expected.

Tomatoes were a much bigger disappointment.

Her favorite food was lasagna.

The cheese result also took some sorting out. Her gastroenterologist had told me to watch for Emmental in powdered cheese products, so those became another thing I paid attention to. I was relieved that the report hadn’t flagged every kind of cheese, because cheese was something she loved and ate often.

Removing those foods made a significant difference.

But it didn’t make the episodes disappear.

Even when we had completely removed them, she could still go through the same pain and nausea. We had found changes that helped, but we still didn’t understand everything that was happening.

As my children grew, food also became more complicated in the ordinary ways it does for kids.

They wanted the snacks their friends had. Goldfish, Cheez-Its, crackers, and sugary treats. I tried to buy organic when I could and limit processed foods, but I also knew how much children could want something they were always told they couldn’t have.

With the foods we had noticed brought on symptoms, I tried to help them understand how their bodies felt afterward. For my son, that might mean itching. For my daughter, a tummy ache.

Those conversations became part of learning to make choices.

And my daughter still loved lasagna.

Sometimes she would ask whether we could have it on a Friday night or over the weekend.

She knew it might make her tummy hurt.

She wanted to be home if it did.

A Reflection

It’s hard to admit that I ever questioned my daughter’s pain.

I was trying to make sense of something that seemed to come from nowhere and sometimes disappeared just as suddenly. I wanted a pattern. Something I could recognize, explain, and help her avoid.

But sitting beside her while she cried, I knew I didn’t need an explanation to believe her.

I still wanted answers. I still wanted to make it stop.

While we kept looking, I could sit with her. I could listen. I could keep taking what she was telling me seriously, even when no one could tell us why it was happening.

A Gentle Invitation

If you are caring for someone whose symptoms you don’t fully understand, leave room for what they are telling you—even when their experience doesn’t follow a pattern you recognize.

You might gently ask:

What does it feel like?

What would help you feel more comfortable right now?

And if you recognize yourself in my early uncertainty, perhaps leave room for yourself, too.

We can look back honestly at something we misunderstood and let what we learn change how we respond.

What We Learned

• Her pain had no predictable schedule. Sometimes the episodes came a week apart. Sometimes more than a month passed. The time between them didn’t tell us how difficult the next one would be.

• We could leave an appointment without an explanation and still have a child who was hurting. The unanswered questions came home with us.

• Food changes helped, but they weren’t the whole answer. Removing the foods we suspected made a significant difference, yet some episodes continued.

• She was learning to notice how food affected her. Even her request for weekend lasagna showed how much thought she was already giving to something as ordinary as a favorite meal.

You are always welcome here.

WGG🌿