Help! Low weight toddler with Diarrhea

[WhiteHorse]

My son is 2.5 and is now on his 3rd day of diarrhea. I wouldn't worry except my son is very underweight and even a short illness like this could get serious quickly. He weighs 23 lb. (He is allergic to all dairy which contributes to the low wt)

Is there any treatment out there to help stop the diarrhea? I think it might be a virus since I have all the same symptoms (mild cold, sore throat and diarrhea). I heard the bacteria in yogurt can help a little, but I am not sure if soy yogurt has those same bacteria in it. Also not sure if he would eat it anyway.

[deditus]

Go to Walgreens, Walmart, GNC, CVS, Target, or whatever and get some Culturelle probiotic - give a double dose, until the diarrhea stops, then give the regular dose or a week or 2. My dd cannot have gluten or dairy and thankfully Culturelle has a gfcf version now, you just may have to look around for it. When my dd had rotavirus, it took only 2 doses for her poop to firm up.

[WhiteHorse]

Thanks so much! Is it a liquid? I will try to find some!

[sbgrace]

You can't do culturelle unless you can find some dairy free. Even that may have trace, I can't remember.
You can get dairy free probiotics (Klaire labs are fantastic) but it's hard to do them last minute notice. Can you get some non-dairy kefir anywhere?

Biotin can help with good bacteria.

My son is low weight too (he's off the growth scale right now/failure to thrive) and he's thrown up the last two days. I get your concern. But he'll bounce back from this bug.

[WhiteHorse]

I went to 3 stores and found some at CVS, but the pharmacist said not to use it in children under 3. He said the amount of bacteria might be overhwhelming for him especially since he's sick.

Instead, I chose to buy soy yogurt with live cultures and will try that tonight. He is eating a bagel now.

[Mamato3wild ponnie]

I've used culturelle on a 6month old....it is ok for kids. You do half a capsule for children under 1 and a whole capsule for children over 1.
For a under weight child i would do daily probiotics for gut healing. Really something to look into.
Hope your little one starts feeling better soon.