Poop Post

Yes, this is a post about poop, so if that's not your thing, run along and come back some other day!

First, I wanted to tell everyone about this amazing product. Unless you or your child has cerebral palsy, you probably didn't know that people with CP often have digestive issues. Basically, smooth muscles are just as weak as some of the skeletal muscles and that makes "moving things along" difficult. Well, Alice's mom recommended a product a while back called Fruit-eze and this is a truly wonderful thing (quite a coincidence, Alice's mom blogged about poop recently too!). Anyway, if we give Charlie Fruit-eze than we can rest-assured that he WILL poop. This stuff works! We like it so much that we have told a lot of people about it and now they are coming back to us and telling us how much they love it. Charlie's instructor gave it to her grown daughter who's had trouble with constipation her entire life. Now, she has some fruit-eze every morning and is doing great. They are fruit-eze converts! Another member of my family (who will go unnamed for privacy reasons) feels like her entire quality of life has improved since using Fruit-eze. The best part is that it doesn't taste bad--kind of like a Fig Newton. The website even includes instructions on how to put it through a g-tube. Really, if you or anyone you know has issues with constipation then you owe it to yourself to try it out. We're basically buying it in bulk now if that tells you how we feel about it.

In other poop news, we've started letting Charlie poop in the potty as they say. Basically, most nights he'll be sitting in his high chair, eating applesauce laced with Phenobarb, and he'll decide that this is the optimum time to go number two. Well, gravity is on his side at that point, but sitting on a hard surface does pose a bit of a problem. He'd grunt, nothing would happen, we'd lay him out on his changing table and he'd do his business. One night the light bulb went off and I told my husband to let him sit on the toilet instead. We put him on there and he pooped like a champ. How great is that? No nasty diaper, no packaging up another person's crap, basically, it's like Christmas.

My husband says that this isn't true potty training since we aren't explaining things to Charlie and he's not telling us he has to go to the bathroom. I say, screw it, MY KID IS POOPING IN THE TOILET AND I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH HIS FECES! True potty training my ass.

Finally, we went back to the doc today and while there is still infection in his ears, it's improving, so the doc thinks the new antibiotic is working. She does think he's got croup as well, though, so we're doing a three day course of steroids. Ahhh, the joys of motherhood, sick kids and crap. Will the glamour ever stop?