Female content: My dd, age 12 cannot stop sobbing....

[Jackie in NE]

I'm sure she's getting her 1st period. She is also having some stomach cramping. I've never seen anything like this. She is just sobbing uncontrollably, but she says there's nothing wrong. She says she just feels like crying, and can't stop. She is embarassed, so I'm trying to help her feel like there's nothing at all to feel bad about..... I just got done holding her and rocking her for 20 minutes, which seemed to help things to pass. Poor little darlin'. Is there anything else I can do for her? I'm not asking for advice on drugs..... just natural ways to help this difficult time pass more easily.

 

Jackie

[k2bdeutmeyer]

Awwww!!! The poor thing!! Sorry, I don't have any advice.

[FaithManor]

I've heard that eating sources high in calcium and vitamin D really does help even 20 or 30 minutes after eating. I'd be tempted to put on some of her favorite music, pull out the nice china cups, and have a mommy/daughter tea with the best cookies you can whip up in a jiffy.

 

In the future, you might try vitamin d drops and added calcium plus a two or three times per week cup of red raspberry tea if she will drink it. I've heard that it is good with honey. Oh, and if she's crampy, a heating pad or hot water bottle (or one of those rice/flax seed bags warmed in the microwave) right across the abdomen is very soothing.

 

Faith

[melissel]

Chocolate, of course! :D And lots and lots of rest and reading in bed, preferably with aforementioned chocolate, or at least hot cocoa.

 

Poor kid, she must be so confused :( Have you discussed the whole hormones thing with her, so she can at least understand what's happening on some level? If her tummy's hurting, maybe a heat pack? And definitely more hugs and rocking from her mama.

 

:grouphug: to you both.

[AK_Mom4]

When DD(now16) was going through this, we found that physical exercise helped with both the cramps and the crying. I'd combine it with all the other recommendations - go with her on a long walk outdoors, followed by hot chocolate (and cookies!) and then tuck into bed with a gook book.

[Kebo]

Poor thing!

 

I'd supply a heating pad, Motrin, a neck rub, some form of chocolate or ice cream and a good movie to watch together. And maybe a hot shower or a bath with Epsom salts.

[Jackie in NE]

Yes, we've talked about this whole hormone thing over the last 2 days. This is her 3rd day of feeling this way :( We have hot cocoa in hand, and I've assured her that, yes, M&M's are sometimes considered a breakfast food.:)I know she'll be fine, but I hate to think of what this will mean for the rest of her womanhood. Poor thing.

[Jackie in NE]

Thanks for all the good ideas. It's at times like this that I'm most thankful that I 1.) Homeschool, and 2.) Don't have to work outside the home! I'm so glad I can be here for her!!

[Amy in NH]

When I was young I was told by a physician:

no caffeine

vitamin B complex

 

Raspberry tea also worked wonders.

[melissel]

I know she'll be fine, but I hate to think of what this will mean for the rest of her womanhood. Poor thing.

 

I wouldn't assume that at all, actually. My cycles have varied WIDELY based on the season of life I was in, the amount of stress I was under, how I was eating, etc. Since I cut back on carbs due to gluten issues, I've seen my cycles shorten from 7-8 days to 3, and the period of horrible cramping I underwent in the middle disappeared entirely. When I was a teen I never had back cramps, but experienced miserable lower abdominal cramps, but when I was in my 20s, I had terrible back cramps along with them. Now's a good time to start teaching her how her nutrition all month long can affect her cycles, both positively and negatively. Heck, I'm 36 and just found out that carbs in general contribute to estrogen production, which explains why I feel so much better when I'm eating few carbs (and why I was SOOOO miserable during my period in November--stupid Halloween candy!).

 

Anyway, my (long winded) point is that how it is now is almost definitely not how it will always be for her.

[Starr]

I think love is the best and you are doing that. :D At our house I'd say to take an ibuprofen for the cramping.

[fairfarmhand]

don't assume that it will be like that forever.

 

The week before my dd started, was, hands down the WORST week of my entire parenting career. I thought I was loosing my marbles or she was. When she started the next week it was a huge sigh of relief to the entire household.

 

We still have some rough weeks but not quite like that first one.

 

Some months I have worse PMS than others.

[Plucky]

Have you called her doctor? This seems like a lot of trauma for a first period. I'd see if I could get anything to help her get over this hormone hell.

[Crimson Wife]

I apologize for the personal question, but is there any family history of endometriosis? That is one common cause of very painful cramps prior to and during the woman's period. Increasing intake of omega 3's, fiber, and cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, etc.) and decreasing intake of refined carbs is recommended for those at risk of endo and is good for general health even if the symptoms aren't caused by endo.

[Jackie in NE]

I have endometriosis, so I know what you are referring to. This dd, however, is adopted, so there's obviously no connection there. I think that if this goes on for a few months, I will contact her birth mother and ask her if she had a similar experience. We have an open adoption..... another thing I am extremely thankful for.

[melissel]

I apologize for the personal question, but is there any family history of endometriosis? That is one common cause of very painful cramps prior to and during the woman's period. Increasing intake of omega 3's, fiber, and cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, etc.) and decreasing intake of refined carbs is recommended for those at risk of endo and is good for general health even if the symptoms aren't caused by endo.

 

Sorry, I can't tell whether you're asking the OP or me. If you're asking me, no, no endo in the family. And actually, my cramps were never to the level I've heard endo sufferers talk about--just yucky and achy. The bad ones that I have mid-period are only really bad if I'm wearing my Diva (sorry, maybe TMI!). Once I figured out how to predict when they were coming, I could use an alternative and was fine. And THEN once I figured out the carb thing, they were totally gone, which blew my mind. It's amazing how much what you eat affects every single bodily process! I really never knew!

 

ETA: Jackie and I posted at the same time :D

[SonshineLearner]

Well, when I started having periods, I felt as though I had knives cutting my insides up. My mom didn't ever have pain so she didn't know to offer any pain meds... So, whatever your family does for intense pain... and then I find now that a multi vitamin helps to ease the discomfort of serious leg heaviness and pain... as well as other heaviness... :( Maybe a movie... hot chocolate... and no school :) That'd help me ;) I sooooo remember bad periods.. after babies they haven't been as bad.... So... hope for her that they won't be like this forever.... probably :)

[Jackie in NE]

don't assume that it will be like that forever.

 

The week before my dd started, was, hands down the WORST week of my entire parenting career. I thought I was loosing my marbles or she was. When she started the next week it was a huge sigh of relief to the entire household.

 

We still have some rough weeks but not quite like that first one.

 

Some months I have worse PMS than others.

 

So have you noticed any diet-related contributions to your dd's discomfort as some other posters have mentioned?

[fairfarmhand]

So have you noticed any diet-related contributions to your dd's discomfort as some other posters have mentioned?

 

 

not really...but if she hasn't gotten adequate sleep...look out!!!

[Jackie in NE]

not really...but if she hasn't gotten adequate sleep...look out!!!

 

Yeah, well, that's true of me also.... no matter what time of the month it is! :lol:

[FO4UR]

When I was a teen my periods were worse than they EVER have been since.

 

I remember one day I told my mom how bad I felt, and she sent me to school anyway. I had some choir trip that day and so I was on a school bus with INTENSE cramps...so bad I couldn't sit squarely on the seat (it felt similar to birthing pains - no joke - only I couldn't describe them as such b/c I had never HAD birthing pains before). It was misery. My teacher saw me as we were getting off of the bus and sent me to call my mom...who had to get out of work to pick me up and take me back home.

 

Take 2 ibuprofren - take a long hot bath (soaking in hot water until the ibuprofren kicks in really helps) - heating pad - in bed with chocolate and a good fluffy book.

[LidiyaDawn]

At our house I'd say to take an ibuprofen for the cramping.

 

Yep - always found that it worked better than tylenol. (for pretty much anything!)

[Melissa in Australia]

Chocolate, of course! :D And lots and lots of rest and reading in bed, preferably with aforementioned chocolate, or at least hot cocoa.

 

 

:grouphug: to you both.

I was like that when I first started. My mum prescribed bed rest with a hot water bottle, I missed a few days of school every month for the first little while. ( I was 9)

 

Heaps of chocolate is a real great help. as dark as possible.

[cin]

I have/had endometriosis. For my cramps I took a prescription drug anaprox DS, which is essentially 2 alleve (or generic) and went to bed.

 

Now, I just take the pill with no breaks. BEST thing that ever happened to me! :D

[DarlaS]

Could she, in addition to getting ready to start, be even slightly constipated? That's not unusual, and definitely ramps up the cramps from yucky to unbearable.

[Mandamom]

So have you noticed any diet-related contributions to your dd's discomfort as some other posters have mentioned?

 

I didn't post earlier but I did. For years, I suffered with terrible cramps an a very heavy flow. It has been very difficult. Several years ago I got on the vitamin D bandwagon and the second thing I noticed (first being increased energy) was that my cramps significantly reduced. After a while on just the vitamin D I decided to add a good multi-vitamin and since then my cramps have almost disappeared, the flow has become manageable and a lot of the irritability is gone. I suspect that I was malnourished and that if I had figured out how to eat better there would have been improvement from that. I am amazed at the difference.

 

I have two daughters, 10 and 8, and due to my issues I have started them on vitamin D drops so that I can reduce the chances that they'll have the same problems I did. We'll see what happens.

[Rosie_0801]

Take her to a chiropractor. I'm sure she'd feel more comfortable with a lady chiro, but a man will understand too. I skipped an appointment recently and haven't had trouble like that for YEARS. I spent most of the week locked in my room trying not to go ballistic at dh for everything and anything he's ever done. It was AWFUL! No more skipping chiro appointments and this month I have been as gentle as a lamb ;) The change has almost been enough to make dh believe in chiropractics :tongue_smilie:

 

It's nasty when you are just starting, but it doesn't have to be that way forever!

 

Rosie

[gardening momma]

Yes, we've talked about this whole hormone thing over the last 2 days. This is her 3rd day of feeling this way :( We have hot cocoa in hand, and I've assured her that, yes, M&M's are sometimes considered a breakfast food.:)I know she'll be fine, but I hate to think of what this will mean for the rest of her womanhood. Poor thing.

I went through several different phases of pms/period symptoms during my teens and early twenties. I thought that things would continue to change every 2-3 years, but somewhere in my mid-twenties everything seemed to go back to "normal" and I have very mild symptoms now (and that hasn't changed). I think it was the changing hormones in those years that did it.

[gardening momma]

I didn't post earlier but I did. For years, I suffered with terrible cramps an a very heavy flow. It has been very difficult. Several years ago I got on the vitamin D bandwagon ...

I just started taking 5,000 IU of Vitamin D, and I'm giving dc 400 IU (chewable) plus they're getting another 400 IU in a children's multivitamin.

 

Dh sent me this article the other day:

 

Today, the FNB has failed millions...

3:00 PM PST November 30, 2010

 

 

After 13 year of silence, the quasi governmental agency, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), today recommended that a three-pound premature infant take virtually the same amount of vitamin D as a 300 pound pregnant woman. While that 400 IU/day dose is close to adequate for infants, 600 IU/day in pregnant women will do nothing to help the three childhood epidemics most closely associated with gestational and early childhood vitamin D deficiencies: asthma, auto-immune disorders, and, as recently reported in the largest pediatric journal in the world, autism. Professor Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina has shown pregnant and lactating women need at least 5,000 IU/day, not 600.

 

The FNB also reported that vitamin D toxicity might occur at an intake of 10,000 IU/day (250 micrograms/day), although they could produce no reproducible evidence that 10,000 IU/day has ever caused toxicity in humans and only one poorly conducted study indicating 20,000 IU/day may cause mild elevations in serum calcium, but not clinical toxicity.

 

Viewed with different measure, this FNB report recommends that an infant should take 10 micrograms/day (400 IU) and a pregnant woman 15 micrograms/day (600 IU). As a single, 30 minute dose of summer sunshine gives adults more than 10,000 IU (250 micrograms), the FNB is apparently also warning that natural vitamin D input - as occurred from the sun before the widespread use of sunscreen - is dangerous. That is, the FNB is implying that God does not know what He is doing.

note that the ultraviolet rays are what we want to block--10,000+ IU Vitamin D is not the dangerous part of the sun's exposure--gardening momma

 

Disturbingly, this FNB committee focused on bone health, just like they did 14 years ago. They ignored the thousands of studies from the last ten years that showed higher doses of vitamin D helps: heart health, brain health, breast health, prostate health, pancreatic health, muscle health, nerve health, eye health, immune health, colon health, liver health, mood health, skin health, and especially fetal health. Tens of millions of pregnant women and their breast-feeding infants are severely vitamin D deficient, resulting in a great increase in the medieval disease, rickets. The FNB report seems to reason that if so many pregnant women have low vitamin D blood levels then it must be OK because such low levels are so common. However, such circular logic simply represents the cave man existence (never exposed to the light of the sun) of most modern-day pregnant women.

 

Hence, if you want to optimize your vitamin D levels - not just optimize the bone effect - supplementing is crucial. But it is almost impossible to significantly raise your vitamin D levels when supplementing at only 600 IU/day (15 micrograms). Pregnant women taking 400 IU/day have the same blood levels as pregnant women not taking vitamin D; that is, 400 IU is a meaninglessly small dose for pregnant women. Even taking 2,000 IU/day of vitamin D will only increase the vitamin D levels of most pregnant women by about 10 points, depending mainly on their weight. Professor Bruce Hollis has shown that 2,000 IU/day does not raise vitamin D to healthy or natural levels in either pregnant or lactating women. Therefore supplementing with higher amounts - like 5000 IU/day - is crucial for those women who want their fetus to enjoy optimal vitamin D levels, and the future health benefits that go along with it.

 

For example, taking only two of the hundreds of recently published studies: Professor Urashima and colleagues in Japan, gave 1,200 IU/day of vitamin D3 for six months to Japanese 10-year-olds in a randomized controlled trial. They found vitamin D dramatically reduced the incidence of influenza A as well as the episodes of asthma attacks in the treated kids while the placebo group was not so fortunate. If Dr. Urashima had followed the newest FNB recommendations, it is unlikely that 400 IU/day treatment arm would have done much of anything and some of the treated young teenagers may have come to serious harm without the vitamin D. Likewise, a randomized controlled prevention trial of adults by Professor Joan Lappe and colleagues at Creighton University, which showed dramatic improvements in the health of internal organs, used more than twice the FNB's new adult recommendations.

 

Finally, the FNB committee consulted with 14 vitamin D experts and – after reading these 14 different reports – the FNB decided to suppress their reports. Many of these 14 consultants are either famous vitamin D researchers, like Professor Robert Heaney at Creighton or, as in the case of Professor Walter Willett at Harvard, the single best-known nutritionist in the world. So, the FNB will not tell us what Professors Heaney and Willett thought of their new report? Why not?

 

Today, the Vitamin D Council directed our attorney to file a federal Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the IOM's FNB for the release of these 14 reports.

 

Most of my friends, hundreds of patients, and thousands of readers of the Vitamin D Council newsletter (not to mention myself), have been taking 5,000 IU/day for up to eight years. Not only have they reported no significant side-effects, indeed, they have reported greatly improved health in multiple organ systems. My advice, especially for pregnant women: continue taking 5,000 IU/day until your 25(OH)D is between 50-80 ng/mL (the vitamin D blood levels obtained by humans who live and work in the sun and the mid-point of the current reference ranges at all American laboratories). Gestational vitamin D deficiency is not only associated with rickets, but a significantly increased risk of neonatal pneumonia, a doubled risk for preeclampsia, a tripled risk for gestational diabetes, and a quadrupled risk for primary cesarean section.

 

Today, the FNB has failed millions of pregnant women whose as yet unborn babies will pay the price. Let us hope the FNB will comply with the spirit of "transparency" by quickly responding to our Freedom of Information requests.

 

John Cannell, MD

The Vitamin D Council

1241 Johnson Avenue, #134

Edited December 14, 2010 by gardening momma