A Poop Post

DISCLAIMER: This post is all about poop. Colors of poop, shapes of poop, smells of poop, I think you get the (graphic) picture. So if you cannot handle poop, please don't read this post!!


Never one to lead the boring life, Ellie loves to give us new and exciting things to worry about. Most recently that's been poop. Two weeks ago, I realized it'd been a few days since she'd pooped. Laid off the bananas and applesauce and she passed a MASSIVE poopy. Bigger than Joey's even, which is saying a lot. Over the following several days, she continued to have very hard poos and they were very dark in color - almost a dark purple color. So I called the nurse line and they said that she may have a small tear in her rectum from that last monster poop. I was told to give her prunes and other fruits with "p"s (pears, peaches, sweet potatoes, etc.) in hopes that this would soften her poops and allow the tear to heal. That all went well for 3-4 days until she decided that even though she usually loves solids, she didn't want them anymore. I was hoping it was just a fluke, but since she still won't eat solids today and since she hadn't pooped for me since Sunday, I decided to call it in.

Basically, the pediatrician is worried that she may have some sort of small bleed in her upper GI tract. Since we recently stopped her Prevacid, it's possible she is refluxing again (although she isn't showing symptoms of that anymore), which could be irritating her esophagus and causing the blood, resulting in very dark, stinky stools. So the solution is three-fold: 1) Put her back on Prevacid for the time being; 2) Give her a suppository and bring in the sample tomorrow; and 3) Start giving her prune juice as well as continuing to offer the solid form. We're supposed to return on April 7.

Before anyone goes into panic mode, the pediatrician did say that she doesn't think there is anything to be too concerned about. She said that Ellie appears to be in great health and that if she had significant bleeding she would be very sick. She also ran a hemoglobin test while we waited which came back just fine. And Ellie is still gaining weight just BEAUTIFULLY - she's up to 12.5lbs!!! So at this point, it really is all just precautionary - but better safe than sorry!