First - Bobby. His constant pooping in his pants - which has gotten worse and worse lately - has pushed us all to a breaking point. I finally got him in to see a doctor today. Appointment with GI specialist coming later. Thankfully, the doctor was very supportive - although she told me about what I expected; that his encopresis (for that’s what we’re dealing with) is going to take a long time and a lot of work on my part to “fix”. Mainly, keeping a poop diary, keeping a tally on his daily fiber, and involving his school (which may mean my having to go up to school every day after lunch and literally force him to sit on a toilet and try to poop since he refuses to do it himself). So, even more than it already is, my entire life is going to have to revolve around my almost seven-year-old’s poop schedule. And it will be months, maybe even years, before this is “fixed”, if it can be fixed at all. It’s not like there’s a surgery or a pill that will fix this. It’s mostly behavioral - and Bobby just doesn’t care. He thinks it’s perfectly ok to poop in his pants every day and is convinced nobody notices. Part of me is glad he’s not traumatized by it...that would be awful...but it only fuels my rage because he just doesn’t care, and if he just went to the bathroom after eating none of this would be happening. But he refuses. This cast a shadow over our trip to Hawaii because every single day was endless battles over making him sit on the toilet - resulting in screaming and crying and shouting - and then him pooping his pants multiple times every day and me of course having to clean it up. It was a fucking nightmare. This issue has our whole family kept hostage, and I am absolutely beside myself. I want to strangle him and I want to hug him. For now he’s been prescribed laxatives to get cleaned out and we’ll work on making him poop every time he eats (good luck). I may have to pull him out of winter camp; we’ll see. Anyway. That’s what’s happening.
In other news, nothing will happen in the kitchen for at least another month, probably more. The windows were made wrong, and have to be remade, which means I get to live another month with giant holes in the side of my house. The cabinets are lagging and won’t be installed until late January. Now I have to order a new sink and try to get rid of the one I already ordered since we discovered at this late date that it’s going to make the back door impassible. I’m so upset about all of this I can’t even talk about it. I keep telling myself another month is no big deal; we’ve made it this far. And I knew to expect delays. But it sucks. The only thing that doesn’t suck is now I most likely won’t have to pay everyone until after January which means I won’t go broke before I start to make more money. So that is one good thing.
Winter camp, although being enjoyed by the boys, has turned out to be quite the nightmare for me. It’s well over an hour drive each way, which means I sit in miserable non-moving traffic for four fucking hours every day, with only a few short hours at home before I have to turn around and go pick them up. I can’t get anything done, and those long drives with two rambunctious boys yelling and flailing around make me go homicidal. Yesterday I canceled Bobby’s violin lesson because I couldn’t cope; for the remainder we’re on a strict home-dinner-bed schedule and that’s it. That’s all I have the energy for. Luckily the BF offered to take them in the morning which is going to be a huge help. So hopefully starting tomorrow this stuff will get easier. Short of that I was considering just canceling the whole thing and forfeiting the money. And luckily we’ll never have to deal with this again since in three months Theo will be five and can go anywhere. Phew for that.
Teachers’ strike set to start on Jan 10th if an agreement isn’t reached. Here’s hoping the strike can be averted. Apparently the last strike was in 1989 and lasted two weeks. I’m interested to see how this goes.
I know two other families dealing with the same poop issue with their boys around the same age. I wish I had advice!
ReplyDeleteOh honey. That sounds so awful and hard. Hugs to you. It's a lot on top of Christmas and jet lag and renovations (being stalled).
ReplyDeleteSounds like the year is going out with a bang. I hope that next year is better and that poops resolve quickly!
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