Dec 04 2008
How Not to Deal With Diarrhea
My son had a mild case of diarrhea (gross) after Thanksgiving. I don’t know if it was the food or the traveling but at least it wasn’t too bad - until I tried to fix it. Tuesday morning he seemed fine and hadn’t done his business yet so I thought perhaps he was over the worst of it. To get us out of the house I packed up and headed to my office.
We went to lunch and he enjoyed chicken strips and french fries (mostly the fries which I thought wouldn’t be too hard on him) and a glass of milk. On the drive back to the office he exploded in his car seat. I’ll spare everyone the details (except for the few other people in the office who had to witness the cleanup) but it was ugly. Always prepared, I had brought another set of clothes so I cleaned him up, got him changed and he seemed happy again.
Until an hour later when the whole process repeated itself. I was out of clothes at this point so I had to clean up the car seat - from explosion #1, I didn’t realize this was necessary until I opened the car door and the smell hit me - wrap him in a blanket and head home. I did stop at Walgreens to pick up more Pedialyte and toted him along with only a shirt, tennis shoes, and a blanket around his legs.
When we got home he did it again and my husband valiantly offered to clean him up. He didn’t know what he was in for and after a lot of horrified exclamations from the other room he arrived back to say it was done but the smell was so bad, “he must have swallowed a book of matches or something!”
Our pediatrician has a handy online manual for such things so I pulled it up to see what might have gone wrong. It said stay away from fruit or fruit juice - check. Feed him things like potatoes, crackers, bread - check - did that too. Then I saw it and realized where I went horribly wrong. It said that dairy products will aggravate diarrhea so stay away from those too. I flashed back to the giant glass of milk at lunch. Oops. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
One day, several destroyed outfits, a set of washed sheets, and one washed car seat cover later my son seems to be doing much better. Lesson learned - the hard way.
*Note to childcare class instructors. PLEASE MENTION THIS! I most certainly would have remembered the “no dairy or your house will never smell the same” tip.
