Parents Chronic tummy aches

[leotardmakermum]

My daughter has chronic stomach aches. After the first one which lasted several months, she was eventually diagnosed with a dairy allergy. After the dairy had finally cleared out of her system, things improved. That was about two years ago.

Last year it happened again, and we investigated other food issues, removing yeast from her diet as well. That also improved things. Well, its back again (since late September), and I find myself again wondering what's going on.

I semi-regularly take her back to the doctors to be rechecked - whenever things get bad - just to see if some new cause shows up.

She's 8, trains 14.5 hours per week, and according to all her coaches over the years, has stomach muscles of steel. That is only a slight exaggeration. She is SOOOO strong in her stomach muscles that she can do the most amazing straddle holds, far above the height anyone else can get. So much so that she can do them on her elbows and still lift her backside way off the ground.

I knew she could do straddle holds well, but when her coach showed me a photo she took of her doing it on her elbows and I said "is that good?" and she explained why it is amazing, it made me think of things in a new light.

It suddenly made me realise (and I know this is thinking a long way down the track) that it might make childbearing difficult, as there will be nowhere for the child to fit! And then it made me wonder, "is that why she always has stomach aches?" I wonder if her stomach muscles are so tight that it hampers her digestion...

Has anyone ever heard of something so strange before? We have a doctors appointment for this morning, and this is one of the things I will be discussing with her. However, while she's a good doctor, she's not a sports doctor, so she may not have heard of anything like it before either. I don't suppose the general population encounter stomach muscles of steel every day.

Thanks for any input you may have for me. I have being following the other recent thread on tummy troubles with interest.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

no correlation at all. and gymnast/girls/in to grown women have babies just like everyone else. although i will attest that my wife approached the whole process like preparing for the Olympics. Diet, rest, stretching and then "hit" the routine. if labor and delivery were the 4 events, she not only shattered prior records but the equipment also. kinda reminded me of Chucky...on steroids.

 

[Amusibus]

I highly doubt whether strong stomach muscles could cause a stomach ache. being a gymnast, your daughter KNOWS what sore muscles feel like. Ask her if her belly ache feels like sore muscles or if it is different. childbearing is much more dependant of the structue of the pelvic bones than the muscles- if anything, strong stomach muscles wil help her with pregnancy rather than hurt her. Talk to the doctor about all this of course. My daughter was recently diagnosed with "abdominal migraines", all kinds of weird things could be going on. Also I'd recommend a pediatric gastroenterologist rather than just a general pediatrician. Good luck.

 

[mado4]

I highly doubt whether strong stomach muscles could cause a stomach ache. being a gymnast, your daughter KNOWS what sore muscles feel like. Ask her if her belly ache feels like sore muscles or if it is different. childbearing is much more dependant of the structue of the pelvic bones than the muscles- if anything, strong stomach muscles wil help her with pregnancy rather than hurt her. Talk to the doctor about all this of course. My daughter was recently diagnosed with "abdominal migraines", all kinds of weird things could be going on. Also I'd recommend a pediatric gastroenterologist rather than just a general pediatrician. Good luck.

Came to my mind : irritable stomach or gluten allergy ??? I would try to make a list and put down what she did that day and if she had tummy aches …what helps her to get better ???

 

[leotardmakermum]

Thanks for suggestions and ideas so far. No, I don't think that her tight muscles are really hampering her digestion (I'm not suggesting that it is muscular soreness - you're right, she definitely knows the difference there), but I'm clutching at straws!

We have investigated so many things previously, and now we're going through the whole thing again (not necessarily a bad thing). Blood tests today to look for coeliac (she's previously returned negative tests), Gilbert's syndrome and a whole heap of other things - I didn't actually read the list on the pathology request.

Also an xray to check whether she's "backed up". I think the answer to that is no, having now seen the film and it looked quite clear to me.

The doctor did mention stomach migraines, which personally I think sounds like "the thing we diagnose you with if we can't figure out what else it could possibly be", and having had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I know all about such real, but unresolved and undiagnosable medical issues.

She gets these stomach aches every single day. I ask her in the morning when she wakes up if she has them - the answer is usually yes. I ask her when I pick her up from school how her tummy is, and usually it is sore. She often tells me when she is going to bed at night that her tummy is sore. There is no obvious cause, there is nothing that makes it better.

We're in Australia, and I suspect our health system works differently to the US system. Here we go to our GP (general practitioner) as a first port of call, and if they think we should see a specialist such as a pediatrician then they give us a referral. If we wanted to see something like a pediatric gastroenterologist (does such a thing exist in Australia?) it would probably take at least 2 months to get in to see one. It usually takes 2-3 weeks to get in to see a GP - this morning I rang for one of the appointments that they release on the day for acute things such as flu, infections etc. Fortunately I managed to get one.

Dunno, glad to hear that pregnancy shouldn't be an issue, and can be approached like an Olympic event. We're a long way away from that anyway.

Oh well, hopefully the raft of tests she had today will show something up - something we can work with to try to resolve. If nothing shows up, we might try the low Fodmaps diet. The doctor thought that was a good idea.

 

[Amusibus]

Just so you get an idea of what a case of abdominal migraine looks like, I'll tell you what we go thru: about every 2 weeks, seemingly out of the blue, my daughter starts in with the stomach aches. It gets severe pretty quickly. Stays at the point of screaming and sitting on the toilet while hunched over a garbage can for about a half hour. Eventually she vomits. Pretty quickly, the pain subsides. The whole thing lasts about an hour. In between episodes, she is pain-free and normal. This has been going on for the last 14 months. She has had every test in the bookincluding upper GI, endoscopy with biopsies, celiac, and everything else. Normal, but she is lactose intolerant and has reflux, both of which were incidental diagnoses and neither of which would explain the severity of her symptoms. The wheat-free, dairy-free diet did not make any difference, we have had her on it 6 months and have never cheated.
Anyway... Too bad it is so hard to get in with a specialist. Your daughter's symptoms don't sound at all like my daughter's, but maybe there is a continuum or something, I don't know. Good luck hope you get to the bottom of it and she feels better.

 

[leotardmakermum]

Amusibus, your poor daughter. That sounds just horrible for her. Don't you just wish that you could wave a wand and make it better? Our doctor said that usually people with stomach migraines just grow out of them at some point. I hope that day comes for your daughter really soon.

I said to the doctor today about my own daughter, "I wouldn't want to have to live with a stomach ache every day, so I don't see why she should have to." That's why I want to try to finally get to the bottom of it.

Now where's my magic wand...?

 

[Kiwi]

Just a thought, you might get a physiotherapist to check her breathing (particularly if you can find one who is a breathing specialist). If she is habitually holding her abdominal muscles tight, she may have developed a faulty breathing pattern, such as chest breathing. Breathing pattern disorders can cause all kinds of seemingly unrelated symptoms.

 

[leotardmakermum]

Wow, now that's an unusual suggestion! I'll certainly keep it in mind, thanks.

Most of the time I don't think she deliberately holds her stomach muscles tight - they just are, and always have been. The coaches first recognised it back when she was still a little tot.