Your child is experiencing cramping or pain in her stomach. Providing she does not have severe symptoms, such as weight loss, vomiting that does not cease, pain on the right side of the abdomen, a high fever or your child is doubled over with pain, conservative treatment methods, such as the ones listed below, may help.
Heat Therapy
When your child's stomach hurts, applying some warmth via a hot water bottle can provide comfort and soothe ache, according to MotherNature.com. If your child is young than age 12, you should not use a heating pad, but instead a warmed hot-water bottle. You can further soothe your child by placing the bottle on your knees or stomach and allowing your child to lie across your knees.
If your child is older, a heat pad can be used, but only when turned on low. Instead of allowing your child to lie on his stomach with the heating pad underneath him, have him lie on his back with the heating pad placed over his stomach.
Abdominal Massage
In addition to providing a healing touch, massaging your child's stomach helps to move harmful irritants away from the stomach, hopefully to exit from the intestinal tract. Begin with your child lying on his back and massage his abdomen in a clockwise, circular motion for several minutes. Your circle should extend below the chest to the sides of the stomach and just above the groin area.
After you have massaged the stomach for several minutes, switch to a counterclockwise stroke. You also can utilize up and down movements in order to provide relief. Conclude this massage by having your child lift one knee toward his chest, then the other leg. Finally, bend both legs in toward the chest to conclude.
Peppermint Capsules/Liquid
Peppermint has been linked with soothing stomach pain, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Peppermint has soothing and numbing effects as well as some mild antibacterial and antiviral properties. If your child is an infant, do not, however, give her peppermint candies or apply peppermint oil as both can cause adverse reactions. Instead, you can give your child a very small---1 to 2 mL of peppermint glycerite, a liquid form of peppermint---when her stomach hurts.
Older children may be able to take enteric-coated capsules coated with peppermint oil. When the pill reaches the stomach, the enteric coating will prohibit the pill from dissolving, yet allow the peppermint to be released into the stomach where it can soothe aches.
