According to BM, when SS is with her he complains of severe stomach pain. She says that this has been going on for over a month now. We have had him twice in that period of time - once for a full weekend, and once for a regular one day visit. When he was with us, he didn't complain of his stomach at all. Apparently when he's with BM it's so bad that he begs her to take him to the doctor. She took him to the ER, who told her that he needed to poop. She said they were stupid and took him to a children's hospital about an hour and a half from her house. They were there for almost 12 hours. They did MRI's, scans, X-rays, the works and can't find anything wrong with SS. She took him there again a few days later and they did more tests, still finding nothing. She took him to her regular family doctor who also found nothing. Now they're referring SS to a neurologist.

EDIT: I almost forgot to add that we were informed YESTERDAY that SS is on homebound now, and apparently has been for a while. BM called BF multiple times during a 15 minute period and during one of those calls BF tried to direct the topic of conversation to SS since that's the only reason she should be calling (she was asking him about court dates, why they were getting pushed back, the phone harassment charges, who his lawyer was, etc.) He kept hanging up on her after telling her that what she was calling for was inappropriate, but when he asked how SS was she said "He seemed fine when I left." He asked if SS was at school or at home. "There is no school." When will he be going back? "Well he's on Homebound." WHAT? Why? "Because he's missed so many days for being sick." Is he going to fail? "No, he's not gonna fail." We had no idea the kid was on homebound and she didn't even tell us until we happened to ask her something about it. Isn't that something that the dad should at least be informed of, if not consulted for? And do you think she would have even told us at all if we had not asked about it? GRRR

I just KNOW it's stress. Especially since it always seems to be worse around BM. Plus she has a tendency to exacerbate problems anyway by constantly asking about them. "Does your stomach hurt?" "How are you feeling?" "Does it hurt now?" I bet if anyone asked the poor kid it probably hurts worst right after he gets home from being with us! I couldn't imagine all the questions he is asked, especially considering how she treats him when he is with us. "Is she there? Where is she? What is she doing? What is she wearing? Has she spoken to you? What did she say? Did she speak to your dad? Has she touched you? What did you have to eat? Did she get it? Did she give it to you? Did she pay for it? Did she go with you?" We've heard several of these conversations on speakerphone so we know that's exactly what happens and usually more. BF's mother has been really worried, apparently BM isn't telling her much information which is pissing her off, but when we told her what was going on she immediately said it was stress. I also told my mother about it and she said the same thing.

My hope is that the neurologist will find nothing wrong with SS, see what's going on, and refer him to counseling. In the meantime BF is going to get a hold of his lawyer as soon as they're open again and ask if we can try to get SS into court-ordered counseling considering the problems that he's having. I told BF I know exactly what's going to happen. The poor child will be placed into counseling either by his neurologist or by the court, and after a few sessions he'll start saying things that BM doesn't want to hear, and she'll do whatever it takes to get him pulled out of counseling. I think that in itself would be enough to tell a judge who should have custody, but I'm interested to know what happens from here.

I worry so much about SS. I was in his exact same situation at his same age and I had major depression problems all throughout my teen years because no one took care of me the way we'll be taking care of him. I had ulcers by the time I was 12. I felt like no one cared about me because I had so many issues and no one spent the time to find out about it or try to make it better. I just hope he doesn't have to go through what I had to go through. BM's been taking steps in the right direction by taking him to doctors to try to figure out what's wrong...I'm just afraid that when they tell her it's nerves, and when she finds out it's mainly her causing the problems, she'll freak out and things will get even harder on SS.