Gulp! A wad of gum takes me back to my childhood

by Deborah Parkhill Mullis

I was having a pretty good Monday until I swallowed my chewing gum shortly after lunch.

Here I am, a 37-year-old mother of two, and I've committed one of the biggest no-no's of childhood. Don't talk to strangers. Don't play with matches. And for goodness sake, don't swallow your gum.

How could I swallow my gum? Obviously, I haven't done that in a while - if ever. Surely, I swallowed my gum a few times as a child. Why else would the words "your insides will get stopped up" have popped into my brain?

Such a comforting thought. Why do parents say things like that?

It sure felt funny, like half of my gum agreed to hang on to the back of my throat while the other half bungee-jumped down my esophagus and into my stomach. Should I call a doctor? Nah, little children survive this every day, don't they?

Yes, according to Chris Fitch, a pediatric nurse at Matthews Children's Clinic, they do. "As far as I know, I've never heard of any medical problems from children swallowing gum," said Fitch. "It really doesn't get digested very well but it really doesn't do any harm."

Why, then, do parents perpetuate these terrible tales of intestinal trauma?

"I think parents say those things to kids because they don't want them swallowing their gum," said Steve Deal, a gastroenterologist at Charlotte Clinic for Gastrointestinal and Liver Disease.

Deal's professional opinion regarding the occasional ingestion of one's chewing gum is, "This, too, will pass."

Gum is a nondigestible solid and unless you have a substantial abnormality it should pass without event, he said. "Your intestinal tract is a remarkable organ. It has the ability to digest those things with nutritional value and discard the rest."

"I certainly wouldn't advocate swallowing gum or other indigestible substances," said Deal, but "it doesn't pile up in your colon and turn into a big gum ball." Good. That's just a rumor.

My own children, to my knowledge, have never swallowed their gum. That would be too simple. Instead, when the oldest one was between 3 and 4, he stuffed a well-chewed piece of chewing gum into his belly button. After a few failed attempts at removing it, he came to me fearing the only way to free his "innie" from the sticky filling was an operation. Dabbing at the gum with a cotton swab I'd soaked in alcohol, it was all I could do to keep a straight face as I did my motherly duty: extracting chewing gum from a child-sized navel. Incidentally, he never did that again.

All in all, swallowing my gum was more of psychological upset than a stomach upset. I did have a little indigestion, which I attribute to one of two things: Either the gum didn't agree with the tuna and crackers I'd eaten earlier or no matter your age, swallowing your gum is a major taboo.

(This article was published in the Charlotte Observer Family Section)