Post #39 Vomiting and Diarrhea (Gastroenteritis) in Children: A Practical Guide

It certainly looks, sounds and smells awful, but vomiting and diarrhea are rarely dangerous.Vomiting, not to be confused with spitting up, is the expulsion of food from the stomach.  Spitting up is more of a laundry problem than a medical problem, and kids who spit up do not become dehydrated.  Diarrhea is a little harder to define, because watery stools are fairly common and most healthy individuals will experience it from time to time for reasons which do not qualify as diarrhea.Frequent stools can be normal too, especially in breast-fed babies, who might dirty the diaper every time they feed, up to 12 times a day. It often looks watery and yellow with little remnants that look like seeds. Despite appearances, this is not diarrhea.In general, diarrhea is a sudden increase in stool frequency, three to four times more often than usual. It has a general watery consistency, but frequency is the most important defining attribute.No matter how copious the diarrhea, in developed countries it rarely leads to dehydration because it's easy to replenish lost fluids.By far, the most common cause of vomiting is viral "gastroenteritis," a fancy medical term for an infection of the intestines that disrupts the normal digestive process.While viral gastroenteritis can present with many symptoms, including headache, fever, decreased appetite, abdominal cramps and muscle aches, diarrhea and vomiting dominate.  What to expectIn general, a child will vomit for one or two days, wi...
Source: A Pediatrician's Blog - Category: Pediatricians Source Type: blogs