Movicol and potty training

7 months ago•9 Replies

Has anyone had any success with potty training while their child is taking Movical?

I won’t be potty training anytime soon as I’d like to wean my son off this stuff first but unless he takes a sachet a day, he withholds and becomes constipated. We’ve tried increasing fluid, prune juice, pear juice, probiotics, extra fibre etc but not much has helped. I guess I’m looking for some success stories as I feel we’ve got a long journey ahead of us. Thanks. Xx

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Bmcz

7 months ago

Yes, we have had success. My daughter started withholding at about 18 months and she will be 3 in 2 months time. We started potty-training a couple of months after my daughter turned 2. She was dry within 3 days but she would not poo on the potty. For about 3 or 4 months she was on 4 satchets of Movicol each day but she was still able to withhold all day and only had her bowel movements in her sleep! We continued to encourage her to sit on the potty but she would not sit for long enough - her issues started after suffering from constipation so she was afraid.

We then started having one success per week on the potty which really helped her to know that it was possible and it didn’t hurt.

She is now fully potty trained for about a month - touch wood - and still on 2 Movicol every evening. I am not weaning her off anytime soon because when I did after the first constipation she became constipated again.

Her diet is very good - fruit, veg, grains, porridge, LOTS of water, but she still has 2 Movicol.

I guess it depends on what caused the problem in the first place. Because we have been dealing with withholding after constipation I now know that it takes a long time for them to forget the pain but also most importantly for their gut to get back to normal. On 2 separate occasions my daughter had withheld for 7 and 6 days respectively. That must have stretched her gut.

You don’t say how old your son is, but I hope this helps.

Oh by the way, the only thing that helped our daughter to sit for long enough on the toilet was playing nursery rhymes on YouTube. Initially just to get her to sit for long enough and once she started pooing consistently I would set an alarm and tell her if it went off before she pooed then I’d switch off the music and we’d go to bed.

Long reply - although we dealt with this for about about 15 months until success, it felt like forever!

Best wishes with your son and hope our experience helps you to hang in there

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Bmcz

in reply to Lou663

5 months ago

Hi. I approached it very casually at the beginning - thinking that it was going to be straightforward. So I chose a time when we didn’t have much going on and it was warm - and I let her walk around the house with a top only. After day 3 she was dry during the day and asking to sit on a potty. Once she started wearing big girl pants during the day she was never in pull ups during the day - only at night. She was withholding poos though and only pooing in her sleep and this is where we struggled. It was only after many adjustments of Movicol, changing the times we administered it etc that we had a few successes during the day - so she knew it was possible and we celebrated every poo in the potty with a sticker or a visit to the train station. But the success didn’t last until we systematically sat her on the toilet about 20 minutes after dinner (as detailed above). We would sit with her in the toilet and sometimes we took her in the toilet when we were using the toilet - trying every trick in the book. The thing is when we are anxious they pick up on it - so we tried to be relaxed about it as much as possible. We read lots of books on the subject and the best one for us was “Where is the poop” - very American but I didn’t mind. Its message is that pooing is normal for all animals. The final thing that seemed to work was to increase stick and withdraw carrot and be matter of fact. In January she started pooing on the toilet and potty. No soiling overnight since. That was after many months of carrot that didn’t seem to work. Lots of deep breaths. Let me know how you get on xx PS - she is still on Movicol 2 sachets per day. Over the last 3 weeks we have taken off pull ups at night and that has resulted in dry nights too. She turns 3 at the end of this month.

Sammy2014

7 months ago

Hi, my son started witholding when we potty trained him so he started on movicol to help the issue.

He’s been on one sachet a day for a year and goes by himself with no problem (at the start there was crying, screaming and all sorts going on). We had only revolt started to reduce his one sachet...BUT he got constipated last week as we were away and started witholding again as he had a hard bowel movement. So back to almost square one. We’ve had to go up to 4 sachets for 3 days to get him to go which he did after a couple of days. It’s been so stressful and emotional for all of us.

My sons paed has always said don’t reduce the dose too quickly, especially if you’re potty training. And after what we’ve been through the last week I understand why. We’ve set ourselves back a bit which is a shame.

A lot of my sons problem is in his mind so I’m hoping as he gets older he will learn to let go but until then we’ll be keeping him on his one sachet.

Good luck! X