Constipated 5 Year Old

[Exel01]

Hi,

I wonder if anyone is going through the same thing or may have some advice for us.

Our Daughter has had constipation since she was about 6 months old. Looking at the Bristol chart, she has never done a poo which is type 2-4 as far as we can remember.

She is currently on 3 movicol sachets a day (1.5 per morning and evening). Whilst this does mean that she has movement, it is basically type 6/7 on the scale.

Everyday she soils herself about twice a day (luckily not too often at school) and it is very rare for her to use the toilet for a poo. When we ask her about this, she states that she does not know it is coming out. She is not afraid of using the toilet and we have encouraged her to it on for a number of minutes to let nature take its course but we have not have any joy this way.

As you can imagine this is a difficult situation and we are hoping that other people may have some advice or support the can give us. We are speaking with the hospital (appointment tomorrow actually) and constipation service on this but at the moment do not feel we are getting anywhere and that they will probably just recommend adjusting the Movicol dose etc.

Does anyone think that we should push for her to have some sort of scan? Can anyone recommend any sort of food that may help? We do give her brown bread and fruit etc.

MAny thanks in advance to anyone that can help.

[Exel01]

Also to add we keep going into cycles of where he stomach become enlarged and then goes down a little...

[Trascal in reply to Exel01]

Hi your daughter sounds very similar to my daughter

My daughter has had problems with soiling and constipation not long after she was toilet trained did a sore poo one day and that caused the withholding and soiling to start! She has pretty much been on lactulose twice a day since then!

She is now 6 and a turning point for us was finding the Eric website and this forum about 6 months ago!

In the past 6 months we have introduced a regular "toilet time" routine where my daughter will go to the toilet after a meal e.g breakfast or dinner and sit there for 10mins - we have also given her a Disney frozen padded toilet seat and step as she found the normal toilet seat too comfy!

When she is on the toilet we have found that getting her to blow up a balloon or use a party blower helps to get her body to do the pushing motion for a poo! (I think my daughter had genuinely forgot how to push as it's been so long) it took a few days to get going but now she will do a full poo most days and no longer tells me she has a sore stomach!

We seen the hospital in September and all they told me was to continue what I was doing and I was half way there to cracking it! I was also advised that relapses (soiled pants/constipation) are common so not to stop what I was doing when she had a relapse but to make sure my daughter had plenty fluids, fruit smoothies etc and fibre in her diet to keep the poo soft and easier to come out! They didn't change her medication!

If you don't have a regular toilet routine try and introduce one its hard to get it going especially if they initially resist but it's helped minimise the soiling and get my daughter going regularly

Good luck and feel free to rant on here as it's a great place for advice and support xx

[squizita in reply to Trascal]

"The Ins And Outs Of Poop" has some good tuition on pushing too - well worth buying that book.

Also physio for constipation - google it, there are some good exercises.

[Trascal in reply to squizita]

Thanks we have the book but my daughter didn’t like doing the exercises - she loves the noise of the party blower lol I will have a look online for the exercises tho thank you

[Trascal]

Sorry I should have also said that some changes to my daughters diet have helped! Along with the smoothies she has snacks that contain fibre e.g oatcakes, popcorn I've limited her milk intake just with cereal in the mornings weetabix is good for evening meals I've introduced wholewheat pasta to go with pasta sauces etc and make sure she has plenty homemade soup with lentils in and also provide things like baked beans on toast for lunches

These diet changes have made a difference x

[squizita in reply to Trascal]

I found balancing 'soluble' and 'insoluble' fibre really helped. I didn't even know there were 2 kinds but too much of one makes the stool too bulky, too much of the other too soft.

[Exel01]

Thank you, I will have a chat with my other half to use some of your techniques x

[Luella19]

Melon, lots of melon as it's full of water. We get through lots of melon in our house!

[squizita]

6 or 7 is very runny - I understand it might be frustrating to be asked to change the dose, but if it is very runny and she's on 3 sachets a day, could the dose be too high? My daughter was very very prone to constipation and had this issue, turned out we were so used to needing more and more she was having too much.

We now stagger her intake (1 sachet some days, 1/1/2 on others). Her stools tend to be a 5 or 6 now which she can control most of the time. I assumed her soiling was leakage but actually she was a little better and her overly soft stools were just due to the high dose. It's SO fiddly to get the dose right! We tweak ours, 1 sachet plus lactulose most days, more if she didn't produce much the day before.

Like others have said, training her to have a toilet time is really good. We make ours go every evening after tea, before bed time. Just as her muscles learned to withold, we hope they will learn to release at that time!!