Eating before bed (emptying throughout the night)

Having only recently been released from hospital, my main priority at the moment is eating. I lost a lot of weight (min=44kg), didn't eat for weeks at a time and ended up having to take TPN (total parenteral nutrition). So I am now encouraged to eat as much as possible as i'm really only just starting to get an appetite back.

I've been told by my STN not to eat before bed, but I get hungry and just cant sleep if im hungry. So the STN said food is my main priority and after I told her that i tried not eating a few times and still had to get up and empty throughout the night, she said that I might aswel eat anyway.

I currently find that I have to get up after 2.5 hours of going to bed and then after another 3 hours to empty my bag as it fills up. It's really annoying as I don't get much sleep. I'm seeing my surgeon in 3 weeks and if its still like it I may be able to take something (loperamide?) to slow it down at night.

Question: Does anyone else find they have to frequently wake up at night to empty there bags? I originally got my ileostomy on the 1st of Feb but it was redone about 4 weeks ago. I'm not sure how long it takes to 'settle down'.




Pet-peeve: Just wanted to say it: I always empty my bag before bed. It's always a nice feeling to have an empty bag. Even better when its a new empty one. But sometimes I'm sitting on the toilet finished emptying it and either cleaning it or just finished cleaning it and all of a sudden more poo comes out. Don't ya just hate that?! :p

Hi I always make sure I don't eat a big meal after 6.30pm. If I get the nibbles later in the evening will have a couple of crackers, bag of crisps. along with 2 lopermide before bed no need to empty through night, by morning bag isn't even a 1/4 full, but as summerstorm said it will be a few month to settle down good luck Bev x

Everyone is different and I don't worry about not eating after a certain time...I am careful about the foods I eat and usually only eat unprocessed foods....which tend to stay with me longer. Soft foods post op tend to travel quicker through your system:(

I really believe it takes several months to get things back to normal...your body needs to adjust and heal from the trauma.

I am a person that always has to eat before bed. With my ileo (both end and loop) I was no different. If I don't eat right before bed I wake up hungry in the middle of the night. With my end ileo once my body started absorbing more water I would wake up once a night to empty. Since this was less than I had been up with UC I was happy.

I also found that what I ate before bed made a difference in how long I could go without waking up to empty. I often ate a couple of pieces of cheddar cheese as they were filling and not liquefying for me. I can tell you that my body adjusted to waking up in the middle of the night and I would get up, empty, and go back to sleep without it making to much of an interruption in my sleep.

I remember that in the beginning I didn't sleep well even when I slept because I was afraid of the bag blowing up and making a mess and me sleeping through it. I had a couple of blowouts in the hospital while I slept - but it turned out they were just part of getting the right appliance setup. I was also adjusting to not sleeping on my stomach because it hurt (I'm a lifelong stomach sleeper). Just as a note I did wear a 7" bag - I'm sure that I would have been able to sleep through the night (5-6hrs) if I'd been wearing a standard bag after a month or two if the weight of the filling bag didn't wake me. Are you getting good sleep when you are asleep?

I made it through all 7 months of my end and loop ileo's without ever taking any thickening drugs. I used my diet to thicken and thin my output as needed (sweet potato fries did some amazing things for thickening). If your output isn't thickening up try adding some of the thickening foods to your diet. Make sure that there's nothing in them (or in your diet) that would counteract their thickening properties. I found that a lot of the juices that I was drinking to get my daily fruits had grape juice and apple juice as their first 2 ingredients (oops!!).

That is good advice from Allie. That is my method. ALso one of my surgeons held up his hands and said "Drink this much liquid" and he held his hands wide apart, and "eat this much solid" and he held his hands very close together. Am still trying to figure out if that was just post-surgical or did he mean for the long term?

Anyway, I just find eating big meal in mid-day and very lightly at night is the best for me.

Rosemary

I hated that... and sorry to say after reconnection does not make sleep much easier. I get up about three times a night and have to "empty" still!

It will slow down. I tried eating mushy foods later to thicken and slow. Also, I was lucky enough to sleep during the day when I had to. Take time to recover and learn your new body.

Good luck!

just so you know, once your belly heals, there is no reason you cant sleep on your stomach!
I have this waterproof pad that i have sewn a sheet on, so that it is soft, and as long as i have that under me i can sleep on my stomach just fine!
I think its more in my mind, cause if go somewhere and forget it, i cant sleep that way.

Wade457 said...
NOT EATING AFTER 6pm has been the rule for me.

Wow Wade4! I can't not eat after 6pm! I usually have dinner at 7pm, but even if I stopped eating after dinner i'd get hungry again. I'm not sure how soon after dinner you go to bed though, I usually go to bed around midnight (atleast). At the moment its been around 1-2am, it'l be the same once I start studying again too.

I'm not sure if I'm mistaken or not, but I've noticed when I eat a banana within the last hour or so of going to bed I am able to sleep for longer before having to get up and empty. May be just a few coincidences, so I'm guna keep testing it out... Although I cant have a banana every day, I'll get sick of them!

Ducridr said...
Are you getting good sleep when you are asleep?

Yer, I do get good sleep. I usually stay up at night doing uni work or (seeing as I decided not to do uni this semester) watching tv until I'm really tired and falling asleep. That way as soon as I hit the pillow I'm usually out pretty quickly, none of that staying awake in bed because my brain wont stop thinking about stuff :p So, basically I go back to sleep pretty quickly after I get up to empty... because I'm tired from staying up so late.

Ducridr said...
Make sure that there's nothing in them (or in your diet) that would counteract their thickening properties. I found that a lot of the juices that I was drinking to get my daily fruits had grape juice and apple juice as their first 2 ingredients (oops!!).

So wait, are you saying Apple Juice is an anti-thickening food? darn, I drink 2-3 mugs of apple juice every morning, i've done it for the last 13 years or so. I'm like one of those people who can't function without there morning coffee, except I can't function without my apple juice! Hopefully the toast and peanut butter counteract the apple juice I have for breakfast, because I dont really want to stop drinking it now.

Ducridr said...
I was afraid of the bag blowing up

Speaking of blow-outs, I woke up late last week with my bag full of air. And when I say full, I mean i poked the bag and it felt solid, if anymore air went in it'd probably blow. It was so weird walking to the bathroom with what looked like a small balloon under my shirt! haha

Summerstorm said...
just so you know, once your belly heals, there is no reason you cant sleep on your stomach!

Summerstorm, so it doesn't harm the stoma at all if you lay on your stomach? It only dawned on me recently that I may never be able to lay on my stomach again (and then I saw your post! :) . Wouldn't it squash the stoma? Or can you only do it on that soft pad you mentioned.

This is guna sound stupid, but... I was at a party last year and there was this hole at the bottom of the wall to my friends shed. Not sure how it happened, but someone mentioned that I couldn't fit through it. I said I could, started getting everyone in the room to start putting money in a pot to get me to attempt to go through. Once everyone emptied there wallets I went up to the hole laid on my stomach and in one swift move slid straight into my friends shed. They were all stunned, they couldn't believe it, I made a good $30 that night too. They knew I was incredibly skinny, but not skinny enough to do it without getting stuck! But basically I guess the reason I brought that up was that it was a cement floor. Do you think someone with a stoma on there stomach could lay flat on a cement floor? (I assume I wouldnt be able to drag myself along the ground either).

OHIO76 said...
OzCrohnie~what size pouch do you use?

To be honest I'm not sure what size it is. I'm looking at the box and it says it is a SenSura Coloplast brand, a 1 piece with a "Maxi - Soft Cover" (dunno whats soft about it!) and strangely it also says "10-76mm / 30 pcs" But I can assure you my bag is most definitly not 1cm by 7.6cm's haha!. How do you find out the size? I'm seeing my STN next week so will ask her exactly what it is. I do know my STN has told me there is a smaller size that if everything works out (output etc) I MAY eventually be able to use that (Fingers crosses).



I'm loving these quote things! :p

I sleep on Oscar all the time! I totally lay out and jump around on my belly on my yoga ball. Everyone gets a kick when I do the "star fish" on the yoga ball, imitating my friend's bulldog.

-Allie

That's a good story!!

It's the length that is different...I am pretty sure Coloplast has a mini, midi and maxi...you may already be using the longest one.

It's definitely the large one. I just noticed on a bag I was cutting the hole into that it says "Maxi". So you were right, it's the Maxi one! :)

ducridr said...
your morning apple juice is thinning your output a

You are absolutely 100% correct. I did some experimenting and you were right. Output has been heaps better since I stopped drinking apple juice every morning! thanks! (although I do kinda miss it :p ).

OHIO76 said...
what size pouch do you use? I ask because yesterday I used a small pouch (I alternate the sizes sometimes) and I had to get up once around 3:30...usually I would have made it until 6am.

So after recently seeing my STN I tried a smaller size bag which I'm now happily using. It's the 'midi' one (I was using the "maxi" one).
I'm also happy to report I don;t get up as frequently (even with the smaller bag). Although I think what I do may be a tad risky:

I used to occasionally set my alarm to make sure I'm up before the bag fills up too much. Now I dont worry about it. I just empty right before I want to go to sleep. Then I somehow wake myself up to empty (usually about 2 hours or so before Im meant to be up). I think its because my bag gets full. I probably shouldn't let it happen as i know it increases the chance of leaks, but yer It fills right up and then i somehow wake up then I empty and fall back to sleep.
My surgeon told me i can take loperamide before I go to bed to stop me from having to get up every few hours like I was before. I think they worked, but I just haven't been taking them. Although when I have someone sleeping over or if im not at home I think I will just incase. As it looks odd when you have a full bag, and it'd be even weirder if you have one and your sleeping with someone.

Allison77 said...
I sleep on Oscar all the time! I totally lay out and jump around on my belly on my yoga ball.

Ohh, I ended up asking my STN about the whole laying/crawling/dragging myself along the ground on my belly thing. She said yer, its fine! Just probably dont do it with a full bag. But as far as damaging the stoma, it all should be fine.

Although, after she told me this I ended up having to get something from under my bed. So remembering what the STN said, I laid on my stomach and dragged myself under to grab it. But it felt so weird... After grabbing what I was after, I ended up backing out from under the bed with my stoma in the air and not touching the ground... it just feels... weird how its like poking... :s Did you's just get used to this? I'm fine laying on my stomach on my bed, but yer my carpeted floor felt weird, so i doubt i'll be crawling along a cement floor through a hole in a wall again anytime soon!