- My daughter started vomiting regularly when she was in second grade.
- She didn't have any other symptoms, like a fever, when she'd vomit.
My daughter, Anya, had always been very healthy. She was the child with perfect attendance who didn't shed a tear when running into kindergarten on her first day.
But Anya began vomiting regularly when she started second grade. She had no fever and no other symptoms. At first, it was once a week, usually around bedtime. She would throw up and then be perfectly fine after she was done — happy as a clam.
I took her to the pediatrician, who suggested that Anya didn't want to go to sleep and that she was incorporating vomiting into her bedtime antics.
"Isn't that a little extreme?" I asked.
"I've seen it all, and kids will do anything to get out of going to bed," our former pediatrician said.
So I told Anya that she could go to bed later — as late as she wanted. We could do away with bedtime. Yet the vomiting persisted and became a daily event, and as the weeks went by, she started throwing up before school, too.
The vomiting ramped up
One time, she vomited over and over again, not being able to stop throughout the night — breaking her pattern of one and done. My husband took Anya to the emergency room, where they gave her a dose of Zofran, along with a popsicle, and sent her on her way.
"But why?" my husband asked.
They suggested we go to a gastroenterologist, so off we went. This was our third doctor now.
The gastroenterologist asked Anya tons of questions regarding how often she pooped and the size and shape of her poop — and he pressed her stomach in multiple places before declaring that he didn't know why she was throwing up daily.
We went for a second opinion with another gastroenterologist. This one gave Anya an ultrasound and an MRI and discovered that she had gastroesophageal reflux disease, which is essentially a severe form of acid reflux. Breathing a sigh of relief and equipped with a prescription and a list of don'ts — including but not limited to eating or drinking chocolate, tomatoes, oranges, coffee, or alcohol— we were pleased with the outcome. It seemed simple, but it wasn't.
We took her to a psychiatrist
The vomiting continued, and we were back in the gastroenterologist's office. This time, he shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing else wrong with her," he said. "Maybe it's all in her head?"
The audacity — how could she make herself vomit just by thinking about it? And why would she ever want to do this?
We, fortunately, have great health insurance, and I didn't want to rule anything out, so Anya's next visit was to a psychiatrist.
He explained that anxiety was incredibly common in children and that, often, this presented as stomach issues.
It usually happens in the morning, though it could happen in the evenings or throughout the day. Apparently, when a child is anxious or worried, their minds believe that they're in immediate danger and their little bodies go into fight-or-flight mode, whether it's necessary or not. This battle mode releases adrenaline, and their hormones interact with their gut. Their distressed stomach tenses, their ab muscles tighten, and the result is real stomach pain and symptoms such as vomiting.
He prescribed talk therapy along with an antidepressant to help quell her generalized anxiety. Two weeks later, Anya had her first vomit-free day in years. And then she did it again the next day and the next.
Anya's vomiting days aren't totally behind her, though her doctor-hopping excursions have ceased. She's in eighth grade now, and she still vomits whenever she's especially nervous: When she gets into an argument with friends, when she will be sleeping at a new friend's house for the first time, before every gymnastics meet and prior to most difficult exams.
She's a work in progress. But our insurance company is probably relieved that our doctor count has halted — for now.