Good morning all. I am responding to the note about the baby with
intussusception. Here is what I have from personal experience. This case is
one I use as an example for case study lectures that I do sometimes, as it
is interesting and unusual.
What happened with my daughter is this. She was 10 months old, and like
Laurie's friend's baby, had had a bad cold. She developed vomiting, and
fever, and was quite ill, ...I was assured that this was a normal GI bug,
and not to worry. My intuition told me that this baby was really sick, and
I was right. The next morning she had 1/4 c of fresh blood in her diaper,
and she had a reduction by barium enema. I won't go into the horrific
advice I received, but suffice it to say that after this procedure, they
put her on clear liquids, including ginger ale, etc, but forbid me to
breastfeed her. The surgeon advised that I leave the hospital if I could
not be with her and not feed. The procedure for reduction was
TREMENDOUSLY painful, in fact, they did it with only a demerol cocktail
prior to it, with no pain medication during the procedure. I was holding
her for it, and as she was screaming in agony, I yelled for them to get
some morhphine, to get it NOW, and to show it to me before they gave it,
since I am a ped. nurse and I didn't want them overdosing her. By the time
they got back with it, she had fainted from sheer pain. I hear that they
now routinely give anesthesia during this procedure, and it's a damned good
thing. No adult would have stood for it.
Afterwards, I was told that she probably had it because the infections you
get can cause enlarged lymph nodes, which can cause the lump that the bowel
twists around on, if you get my image.
The long and short of it was that I breastfed her on a pumped breast. The
surgical person curtly told us to leave the hospital the next morning,
since we obviously were not following his orders. He probably still will
not want to meet me in a dark alley...after my comments to him.
There is a chance that it can re-twist after it has been untwisted, but a 4
mon old baby should be fine on breastmilk. I can't see where sugar water
or anything else will do anything more than breastmilk. And no, I did not
give my baby ginger ale, and I did not leave the hospital, or my baby, that
night, but I did leave a lasting impression.
Kathleen
Laurie states:
>>We went to the emergency room (the day before she came down with the
horrible cold) with her turning blue and gasping for breath. She ended up
with an intususeption (intestinal blockage) and was almost helicoptered out
for emergency surgery. The problem was accidentally corrected as our doctor
did a last minute finger probe. Whew. What a frightening day that was. We
have friends whose daughter died from that, which made it a little more
painful. Anna generally poops about once a week. Our doctor, who is normally
unconcerned with such things, was worried that that may have helped cause
the problem, and so wants to keep her "regular" from now on out...meaning
wants me to supplement her with a bottle of water and corn syrup every day.
Anna refuses to take it, but for whatever reason has begun pooping at every
feeding...which is sort of nice, I suppose.
Do you think the long bouts between BM's may have led to the intussuseption?
Do you know anything about them? Since she won't take the water, what is
something else I could give her to help keep her regular (if something is
needed, that is)?>>
I told her that longer intervals between bowel movements were not uncommon
in exclusively breastfed babies and told her that constipation would
produce dry, hard, pebble-like stools. Baby has gained and thrived well to
this point and she doesn't like the idea of giving a bottle every day. Baby
is 4 mo. old. There was a brief problem with nursing after the
hospitalization (mom didn't pump as often as she should have during that
few days--but who can blame the distraction?), but several days of "nursing
day and night" fixed that problem :-). No recent immunizations or anything
else new in the diet prior to this problem.
Thanks for the help!!!
Kathleen B. Bruce, BSN, IBCLC co-owner Lactnet, Indep. Consultant
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://homepages.together.net/~kbruce/kbblact.html
LACTNET Archives http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/lactnet.html
***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
