Toilet issues with a 6yo

[Borrible]

Hi,

I've just joined! I've got a 4yo girl and 6yo boy. I'm at my wits end with the 6yo. He constantly 'leaks' onto his pants and shorts - not enough to call it an accident, but by the end of the day, he smells grim. He's still wet at night - soaks through pull-ups etc.

However, in the last fortnight, he's been doing little poos in his pants and pull-ups. He has brilliant large bowel movements - regular as clockwork at bedtime, on the loo, every night without fail, so I'm pretty sure the problem isn't constipation.

Has anyone any experience of this? He keeps saying he doesn't realise it's coming, but he's always had brilliant bowl control until now and has been quite fastidious about going at home and at the same time. We've had another pair of soiled pants today, and he pooed in his pull up as long as doing a decent (adult sized) poo last night.

[LouiseD2100]

My 8 year old son is the same - either he is not quite making it and there is a little spot or he has pulling pants upto too quick and the 'drips' build up. He usually smells like urine when I collect him from school. We have been to a continence specialist who is currently addressing is lack of drinking and we are keeping a chart to see if drinking big drinks (250ml in one go) strengthens his bladder. We have been recording for one month now and he still wet the beds!

[squizita]

As I understand it sometimes there can be some stuff tucked up in the gut (causing leakage) even when they poo- with my daughter I was told to look for that. If it's foul and sticky it sounds like leakage. Maybe your GP could give some movicol to clear him out and see if that fixes it?

[AliStan]

The urine leaks sound very familiar. My daughter has this, along with night time wetting, and has recently (after a lot of unsuccessful hospital / GP appointments) been diagnosed as having an overactive bladder. She also holds very large poos which push on the bladder and make it worse so bowel problem could also be related although we've never had that issue.

With overactive bladder, the specialist described it as the muscles around the bladder being really tight and also twitching (doing uncontrolled muscle spasm) which she then has to use pelvic floor muscles to react to but, because of how frequently it "twitches", even with an empty bladder occasionally she just won't use the muscles in time to stop a little leak coming out.

I'm no specialist but symptoms sound familiar so might be worth looking into.