Dealing with growing pains

I am writing this from personal experience - recent with my 2 1/2 year old son & from years ago with myself.

Over the past few months my son has been waking (or half waking most nights) and grizzling in pain 90% of nights. When asked what is wrong he said "I don't know" (his answer for everything at the moment), so I would ask if something hurt to which he would say "yes". Then to discover what was hurting was the hard bit, especially since he would be still half asleep and not wanting to wake up. After nights and nights of this happening I finally worked out that it was his shins/calves that were hurting & would rub  them until he fell asleep, just like I remember my mum doing when I was little.

Everything came to a head the other night when he was in that much pain that I took him to bed with me. He was hysterical & crying out in pain saying "make me better mummy, make me better" - which as you can imaging broke my heart & had the tears rolling down my cheeks. I was rubbing and rubbing, which seemed to be helping minimally, had the electric blanket on under him for warmth (as I remembered that heat used to help me) and he just kept crying and crying. Eventually a light bulb lit above my head & I grabbed some nurofen & kept rubbing (all the while hubby was trying to sleep in our son's bed with our other son waking a few times in his cot wondering why his father was in his room & not ours (and I had to put him back to sleep 2 or 3 times too!). Eventually Jack & I managed to get a couple of hours pain free sleep only to get up exhausted & both grumpy in the morning.

I rang my mother the next morning as although I remember having these terrible pains as a child I don't remember being so young when I had them. Mum said she was sure I was older too, but of course Jack is quite tall for his age & growing very fast & is also VERY active & runs, jumps and plays all day.  I also spoke to my mother-in-law online that day & she said to rub eucalyptus oil into his legs after his bath as she has trouble with leg pain & that helps her. That night I filled a hot water bottle, wrapped it in a tea towel & put it in his bed about a half hour before bed time. Then when it was time for him to go to bed I put him in & told him to lay his legs over it. He fell asleep as he does every night - quite easily - and when we went to bed we took the hot water bottle out....and guess what? He slept all night without any fuss! YAY! We have been doing this for 4 nights now and Jack has slept pain free every night.

Most doctors will tell you there is no such thing as growing pains, but there are such things as unexplained muscle pains - is it just me or does this sound like they have no idea how to fix it so they call it "unexplained"? Of course they can't fix it, it is part of growing up & unfortunately some children suffer a lot more than others. Of course if the pain is severe & nothing seems to help it go away, or it persists during the day too, take your child to the doctor as there may be something else wrong.

I hope this helps someone else out there as much as it has helped Jack. We were also having toileting troubles with him as he has been toilet trained for over a year & was wetting & soiling his pants again. Once we stopped the leg pain at night for him he started using the toilet again with no problems - amazing how some things can put your child right out of whack!