Eating Machine

I have inadvertently created a monster. Specifically, I have turned a ten-year-old into an eating machine.

Let me back up a bit here. Last week, Horse's stomach was "burning" about an hour after eating breakfast. She said she felt hungry, too, and a bit like her legs were shaky. A snack or two later, and she felt perfectly fine once more. I just figured she hadn't eaten enough breakfast.Yesterday, Horse had a similar experience, but it was much more severe. She was doubled over in pain from her burning stomach, pale as a ghost, too hot (to herself, not to the touch), queasy, and could not even walk from the bathroom floor (where she was lying down) back into her bedroom. Heck, even sitting up hurt her too much. She tried sipping a bit of water, but was afraid it wouldn't stay down. Half an hour-ish later, the burning suddenly stopped, she was able to finally sit up and then walk into her room, and eventually eat. By "eat," I mean she chowed down on three separate, full snacks. She was still a bit shaky until all three of the snacks went the way of the dodo bird.

Needless to say, I was on the phone with the doctor's office while snack number one was still being devoured. This did not seem like a stomach bug, acid reflux, or anything I could think of. Horse had been sitting quietly reading right before it happened, so it wasn't as if she was exhausted from running amok. She had lunch, which consisted of a bologna and cheese sandwich (on bread with six grams of fiber between the two slices), fruit, and a full glass of milk somewhere from half an hour to an hour before it hit, so it wasn't as if she should have been hungry or dehydrated. So what the heck was it?

Well, the nurse on the other end of the phone line was not sure either. She suggested it might be a low blood sugar thing, since that could give all of the symptoms Horse had. A conversation with a relative later brought to my attention that hypoglycemia (which is basically low blood sugar attacks) ran in the family. Huh. I never knew that. Suddenly, Horse's frequent commentary about how hungry she is takes on a whole other meaning. (Please note that her weight has always been fine, so the doctor had told me she was eating the right amount. Had she lost weight or not gained weight appropriately, I would have instantly fed her either larger portions or more frequent snacks. Given that she already eats more than I do and the doctor thought her weight and height gains are fine, I had not done so before now.)

The end result of those two conversations is that if Horse has another one of those bouts, which she claims she has every three or four weeks and just never told me about before now, we need to take her immediately to the doctor's office so they can check her out, look into her blood sugars, and see if there is anything else that is going on without our knowledge. (Strep, for example, can cause stomach upset without having a sore throat.) Heck, it might even just be a growth spurt where she needs a larger caloric intake and is not consuming enough. That could make her stomach cranky, too.

In the meantime, I told Horse she has free rein (interesting play-on-words there, with the astrological sign I use for my daughter) to have a snack if she feels hungry and it's been an hour since she last ate.

My ten-year-old has pretty much eaten us out of house and home today. In addition to breakfast and lunch, she had two snacks this morning, not including the extra breakfast she consumed, and is already on her third post-lunch snack. Dinner will, in theory, be in another hour, so I'm curious whether she will clean her plate there, too. There have been no complaints of a burning stomach, queasiness, shakiness, or any other similarity to yesterday. Here's hoping the near-constant snacking will take care of whatever ails her.

I have definitely created an eating machine.