Straining while clenching

[Yazz1e]

My 2.5 year old has been on movicol for over a year now. We finally managed to reduce his dose to half a packet every other day and had great success for a few months. Now suddenly, it’s as though he’s forgotten what to do as he’s clenching while pushing to go. He’s definitely not constipated but I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this? He’s not ready to be toilet trained yet. Just wondering how to help him as really don’t want to go down the withholding route again. We are going to increase his movicol tomorrow but it seems that unless he is very loose, his body doesn’t know what to do.

[Jellylorum]

Have you come across a book called “Stool Witholding: What to Do When Your Child Won’t Poo”? I read it when we thought my son might be witholding and I remember the author saying it can take months (and sometimes longer) for a child to break the witholding cycle and reducing their Movicol too soon can bring back the old witholding behaviour. It must be frustrating but I think you’re doing the right thing by increasing his Movicol again for a bit. Good luck! xx

[Yazz1e in reply to Jellylorum]

Hi ya. Thank you so much for your response. Yes. I’ve read that book. It was really interesting. It’s just so frustrating. He’s been withholding for a year and a half and I feel that his body doesn’t know what to do if his poo isn’t runny. I worry that Movicol is causing behaviour issues as he definitely seems worse when we increase the dose. 😪

[Jellylorum in reply to Yazz1e]

Oh no, you poor things. It's actually crossed my mind that my son does this too when he's on a lower Movicol dose (although our immediate problem is an impaction that won't clear so he's been on a high dose for quite a while now). My brother is a physiotherapist in Canada and he told me that over there they have physios who work with children with this problem so it might be worth asking whether the same applies here? He said that the colleagues in Canada he knows who do it tend to be women's health physios who also do some paediatric work, presumably because it focuses on the pelvic floor muscles so has a lot of overlap with the women's health work they do.