Lisa says: Constipation devastation

First off, apologies for rhyming constipation with devastation. Addy's learning about words that rhyme in school, and now every word that pops into my head gets rhymed to no end (bend, send, defend, lend... see?).

Anyway, last week was super hard on me — Peter was away for four days and four nights on business, and even though I had help from my mom (what I'd do without her I don't know), I was overtired, overworked and short on patience. It's no secret that I don't do well for four nights on my own with the kids. The worst part was that Peyps hadn't pooped for about four days or so before Peter left, and she was in terrible pain. On Mother's Day (the day before Peter left), she stood in the corner desperately trying to push out a poop — her little face went bright red and she shook as she held onto my dining room table in a death grip for support.

We forced a few raisins (i.e. prunes) and some prune juice into her, and figured that would work. Her diaper remained poop-free.

On Monday night, she woke up in the middle of the night screaming and crying, "My bum hurts, Mommy! My bum hurts!"

By Tuesday morning we were still poop-less, so I went to the pharmacy and bought some kind of stool softener that's safe for toddlers. I'll admit — I had some bowel trouble when I was a kid, and my parents always gave me what we lovingly referred to in our house as "poo medicine." (I still remember everything about the bottle, the name of it, the colour, the taste, etc. I drank a LOT of poo medicine growing up.) After Peyps took her poo medicine, she ended up finally going number two, but it hurt like hell — for both of us.

She's still a bit backed up, and things are still a tad hard up in there, but at least she's pooping.

Do your kids suffer from sore tummies and constipation? If so, what do you do to help? Besides the prunes and medicine, we've been trying to get her to drink lots of water, eat fibre bars, etc. For some reason she won't eat pears these days (they're very high in fibre), and I'm really not crazy about doing the whole suppository thing. Let me know if you have any ideas. I just want my kid to poop. (Scoop, droop, soup, loop, chicken coop... )