My 6 yr ds has serious constipation,it’s so bad he can’t feel it when he poos and he is getting self conscious at school when he is soiling himself, we have been to the drs and is on laxatives and have taken wheat and dairy out of his diet but haven’t noticed any difference, has anyone else been through this,
5 Replies
Yes. We still are!
My 6 year old son is similar, but his cause is ASD. He doesn't like the sensation & doesn't want to stop playing so tries to hold it in & becomes constipated. It stresses me as he does it at school & I have to carry spare clothes everywhere we go. Sometimes multiple pairs. I've heard one child tease him about it right in front of me.
The leakage he doesn't feel is when he becomes so constipated liquid poo leaks around the constipated stool that's stuck & you can't hold liquid in.
We tried laxatives. Made it worse. The best success we had was making him sit on the loo 5 mins after breakfast & dinner & reward him if he did something. It's very up & down. Down atm, so we're going to try again!
You need to go to a pediatric gastroenterologist for these issues! They have a whole lot more experience than a GP and you def need to rule out anything more sinister!
We had this for YEARS. Turns out it was Encopresis. Our boy had a bad experience with the loo (we think he had an accident at kindy and was scolded for it), held on instead of going next time and it just snowballs into this massive thing. We had him on laxatives to try help him but it just didn’t work.
Eventually we took him to the Dr, who explained that long term constipation causes bowels to stretch, causing them to lose the feeling of needing to go. He was put on much stronger laxatives for a short period of time, to give his bowels time to shrink back. We also put him on the toilet at the same time every day, and turned the experience into a positive one for him. Lots of “better luck next time”, praise for going in the loo, we even went through a good year of him sending photos of his poos to family members to show them off (they came back with things like “wow what a big one good work!”.
Thankfully the routine and the positive attitude totally fixed the issue for us, no long term issues. Had the stronger laxatives and praise not worked it would have been a much more severe plan.
I know of one family whose little girl had the same (started when she fell into the bowl mid movement) and ended up with a 2 week hospital stay with some serious laxatives, and then surgery after that.
Good luck!
Yes I have been through this and feel your frustration.
My daughter started holding on to her poos when she was toilet training after being scolded at child care for soiling her knickers.
I gave been to countless paediatricians, Occupational Therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, kinesiologists, natural therapists, the works!!! Nothing changed. Have been doing the stool softeners and laxatives for years.
She is now ten, almost 11 and still not emptying her bowels properly. We went through a phase when she was younger if having a warm bath every night so she could release her bowels without it hurting. I was at my wit's end and thought, better out than in.
She comes home from school smelling every day. I am continuously washing buckets of soaking knickers. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.
My son has Spina bifida (not in a wheel chair because his lesion is lower on his spine) and has had quite a few different ops over the years. He had issues with both bowels and bladders due to the spinal cord, I know exactly how you feel❤️ Bladder we solved with him using a catheter to empty his bladder, he does it himself, just sticks a small tube in his penis and out comes all the wee and it fully empties. However, bowel was harder to rectify. I know this is probably drastic for your daughter, but he had the MACE surgery, it is a bowel wash out system. Since getting it when he was eight (now nearly 12), when we finally got it right, took a few months, he hasn’t soiled since. We do it every third day and that is enough because it completely empties the small and large bowel. No more laxatives, the only time he sits on the toilet is when we do the wash out, it takes about 40 minutes to fully evacuate the bowel. It is reversible, but there would be a scar on the area where the site is. We use warm water (saline) and just glycerol, the stuff you buy in the supermarket. It’s truly been a life saver.