I’ll be scheduling Owen’s hospital visit soon.

Today was Owen’s four-month check up with the pediatric GI. Unfortunately, we really haven’t seen much progress.

He’ll have good days and bad days, but pretty much every day he still has poopy underwear. Some of it is a matter of him not wanting to poop (which he admits) and trying to hold it in, but some of it is still the liquidy stuff that I don’t think he can control—which would mean he’s still backed up (impacted). But since he does seem to poop quite a bit (quantity-wise) I just couldn’t fathom that he was still backed up. Also, it seemed to me that when he has normal poops (i.e. not the soft squishy stuff) he has no problem going—he knows he needs to go and he goes and it’s perfect. We gave up on the daily mineral oil after the first few days because it just gave him diarrhea every single day (which is NOT what it was supposed to do).

So in talking with the doc and telling him everything…he said he thinks that Owen is still impacted. Especially when he asked if I felt that Owen was really ever fully cleaned out (like when we did the 8-hour no-food clean out)—like did he ever just get down to pure watery poops—and I said no. He asked if the semi-regular clean-outs after that were any better (we’ve been doing a semi-clean out about every three weeks) and I said no. So he said that if it was HIS son and he was at the four-month mark with no real progress, he would admit him for a hospitalized clean-out. Which could take anywhere from 3-5 days. IN WILMINGTON.

Hospitalization may sound awful, but he assured me they do A TON of them and it’s really no big deal. Some of the worst cases he’s seen? They remove 10# of poop from the kid! He doesn’t think Owen is that bad, but he thinks it’s the best bet to make sure we’re basically starting with a clean slate so-to-speak. He also warned that it isn’t the magic solution, though it can work wonders and a lot of parents said it was a miracle and wished they’d done it sooner. Of course, it won’t help with his emotional issues about not WANTING to poop, but at least we know we’ll be starting from scratch.

At this point, I’m game to try ANYTHING so I said of course we’ll do that. They said they can pretty much get us in whenever, so I just had to figure out Katie care since she can’t stay there with us. I can also stay overnight, but I don’t need to so if I think he’ll be okay then he can stay by himself.

Of course Owen was there listening to all of this and I was worried he would be freaked out or would refuse to go or would have a meltdown…but the doctor said “Kids don’t mind it at all! They can watch TV, movies, and play XBOX games!” Owen’s ears perked up. The doc asked if Owen would mind going to the hospital and he said no—and he actually wanted to go right then and didn’t understand why he couldn’t. 🙂

So I contacted my sitter (the same one we used when we went away for the weekend) because I know her summer nannying job is over, and she said she can do it…so tomorrow I have to call to schedule. I’m hoping for Sunday because I have a dinner outing planned Thursday, an old friend (one of my high school classmates) coming in from out of town Friday morning, and a birthday party and BBQ to go to Saturday. Then just hope it only takes two days and not four or five.

Stay tuned for updates!