Remember all of my disclaimers from yesterday? Good! Feel free to disagree with me privately 😉
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I bought Solly to Dr. Guselle for two reasons. The first, simpler one was about a little bump that lives in his bottom lip.
See it off to the side there? It looked to me like a calcium deposit or something. Nothing I was too scared of, but I wanted to mention it. I remember right around when it showed up. It wasn’t from a fall or bonk, so I didn’t think it made sense to be scar tissue. I was mostly just curious her take on it. She felt it while he angrily stuck his lip out at her. She gave me a rough idea of what she figured it might be, and said it would likely disappear as he grew and stretched it out. Mostly importantly, she wasn’t worried about it at all. So, win.
The second thing we talked about was his constipation. (Hey, that picture shows his little lip bump, too! Go figure!) For a quick refresh, if you’ve forgotten, Solly is pretty bad at pooping, and we only really picked on just how bad it was earlier this year. Maybe end of February-ish. We spoke to a couple of people and got some direction. We got his system cleared out, and proceeded to keep him on a laxative treatment for the next sixish months in an effort to give his bowel a break and let it go back down to size after the mad stretching it was going through. We ever so carefully and slowly weened him off of his laxatives over the summer, and within one week of being off them completely, he was back to being completely blocked up, unable to poop. So we put him back on his laxatives and he’s been on them since. Dr. Guselle was very happy with all the steps we had taken, and was in total support of the months we spent trying to retrain his bowel. Lots of people have recently been suggesting to me that he possibly has an allergy, but in her opinion, she figured the laxatives wouldn’t solve the problem the way they have been if it were an allergy, or celiacs, or something along those lines. We talked about how everyone has different needs and its very likely he just needs more fibre than maybe the rest of us. Not so fun fact – I am also that person, and I take benefibre often enough. No shame. She told me I could absolutely give that to Solly as well. I told her that felt wrong, having come from a home where my loving mother made basically everything from scratch, and she said that was fine, too, but in the meantime, benefibre is perfectly fine because its literally just fibre. She suggested I slowly get him taking it in regularly, and then slowly start weening off the laxatives. Because of the laxatives we’re using, they’re not making him sick or hurting him in any way. His body won’t have any type of “withdrawal” from them at all, so if he stays on it a bit longer, even just because I’m nervous, thats ok. None of these decisions are hurting him, which helps my mama heart feel some relief. I don’t want to set him up to be in pain, or to be unhealthy, but the idea of dropping everything and suddenly trying to make everything under the sun from scratch so I can douse it all in bran and flax seed scares me. Hopefully I can some of that gradually, though. Thats the ideal. But until then, Benefibre is going to become a part of Solly’s life! And maybe everyone elses. Can’t we all use a little bit more fibre??
Thats the skinny on Solly and what he’s up to! He’s really happy, really cute, and super healthy.
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I’ll give you all the low down on Rowan tomorrow. His part of the appointment was definitely the longest and most info packed, and the post about him is probably the one I’m dreading putting out there the most. I appreciate so much your support on the post I wrote about my part of the appointment, so let’s keep it friendly!