Maintenance dose of senokot and movicol

[Em2006]

Hi everyone. My 6 year old went through, what we think is, a successful 2nd disimpaction over summer. We have continued on 4 sachets of movicol as a maintenance dose and remain on senokot. We didn't see much of a result with the disimpaction until we increased the senokot to 15ml. I've just been looking at my diary and the medicine bottle and realise he has now been on 15ml daily for 6 weeks! Not what the bottle recommends. GP was vague, so haven't discussed with them.

My son has been doing really well. He returned to school and doesn't have any accidents at school, or poos. So he's clearly withholding, though I'm not sure how aware he is of this. Accidents tend to happen at the weekends and evenings for half the week. However, his regular toilet time continues to work and he definitely has increased feeling.

The past few weeks though, he has had days at the end of school where his tummy really hurts. Whilst I'm aware this is probably a result of him withholding all day, I'm starting to question his medication dose. I maybe would have started to reduce it by now, the senokot that is, but every ten days or so he goes without any poos for 2-4 days. On the amount of meds he's on, this is beyond my understanding! Until I just read on the senokot bottle that this can happen with too much medication and could cause lazy bowel. Exactly what we're trying to run away from!

I really don't want to start messing about with the meds whilst we're still establishing a pattern, but I also don't want to be giving him more than is good for him. If we reduce the meds though, and he's withholding every day (he just doesn't to poo at school, despite having his toilet, bag etc etc), I'm concerned it's going to back up again and we're back to square one.

His poos are still fairly loose, sometimes a bit explosive, sometimes more solid. Once, we had a normal poo!!! Keeping up with his water on top of his medicine is tough, but school are helping again now.

Any advice, please? Reduce? Continue on current dose? I'm reluctant to speak to the GP as they just don't get it.