By this poop chart, we can discuss stool consistency with a common reference. For the most part, people with IBD seem to struggle with diarrhea, but also many are affected with constipation instead/too. In Isaac's case, as an infant, he went from normal infant breastmilk poop (which is not solid), to a similar consistency of brown soft stool when he started eating solids. At this time with most kids, their stool gets harder and "normal"--Bristol Poo #3 or #4.
But for almost 20 months, that soft stool seemed fine. We talked about it with the doctors, but they didn't seem too concerned. However, last July the diarrhea began to worsen in the sense of liquidity, frequency, and duration of the bowel movement. (As a note of interest, we think it was about when we switched from soy milk to almond milk that this happened. Even though we've determined that soy is what causes him to react immediately--at least for now.). Then it got worse and bloody and progressed worse and worse until a dramatic turnaround to #2 for three weeks, then a gradual shift to #4-#5 and worse for some time, and then a gradual improvement until about two weeks ago, whereupon he's right at #3-#4 once a day or sometimes skipping a day if he has a low residue day.
Keeping a food/poop diary is a must for us while Isaac is growing and developing. We need to get on that. What we need to develop is a good method for us collecting our menu items and to report on stool on the same calendar. Bonnie already writes down the menu plans but it's always on separate pieces of paper. Hmmm.... Any thoughts or ideas or what works for you?
Bonnie, Troy:
ReplyDeleteI lament whenever I hear of kids being diagnosed with IBD. For some reason, adult diagnoses seem less... I don't know. But it sounds like you're on the right track, and this thing is beatable. There are lots of us out there with experience and we are willing to help!
First things to check with him, if you haven't is grains and sugar. You could start the Specific Carbohydrate Diet with him, if you want, and the folks at pecanbread.com have thought a lot about doing the SCD with kids.
There are lots of ways you can track. It just depends on your personality. CCFA has some tracking/journaling resources. Jini Patel Thompson has some. I did two posts on tracking that may help you too, and I have some resources you can use if you want (word, excel, and access--for the especially geeky).
Here are the post URLs:
http://www.naturaldigestivehealing.com/blog/2010/04/07/tracking-your-symptoms/
http://www.naturaldigestivehealing.com/blog/2010/04/07/tracking-your-diet/
My diet tracking journal (PDF) is here:
http://www.naturaldigestivehealing.com/Documents/Daily%20Food-symptom%20journal.pdf
And the excel version (a work in progress) is here in the left sidebar:
http://www.naturaldigestivehealing.com/index.php/about/
Hope this helps!
WOW! Those are some great resources Matt offered for you. I'm glad you have decided to log Isaac's food/elimination/other pertinent info in a consistent place where you can go back and check for correlations, even a yr. or two from now (if something comes up that makes you wonder).
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