Too Much or Too Little Movicol..3 Year Old. First Post!

[mellywade86]

My Daughter was 3 at Christmas and was diagnosed with constipation last year. She has always been funny with drinking, in terms of she doesnt like it, so that is what caused/causes the problem in the first instance. She has got a bit better and now drinks about 250ml of fresh orange per day along with 2 bottles of milk, still not that much i know. We have never been able to do a disimpaction due to her not drinking enough, although she has been on movicol for months now im not sure theyd be any to get rid of. The problem is now when shes on 2 sachets per day ,she poos her nappy all day long. I am having to change her 5 to 6 times per day, always soft poo but not runny, but always quite small amounts. Sometimes she will do quite large ones but it still lasts all day. The problem is I dont know if I am giving her too much or not enough. I went down to 1 sachet and she started pooing all day but the poos were not as soft but not hard to pass. She cant seem to just have 1 or even 2 poos she seems to be pooing out bits all day no matter what the dosage. All i seem to do is change nappies all day. She finally has an appt with a specialist on 1st March 2021, after waiting since October. Potty training is a no no. To be honest i dont even know if she knows when shes going to have one its that soft. She always lies when i ask her if shes had one aswell its like she thinks shes going to get wrong for doing it and its dirty. She knows what the potty is for and will happily sit on it as long as she doesnt need a wee or poo at the time. Any advice appreciated. xx

[CheshireMama]

Hey! I’ve had similar experiences so thought I’d say hi.

My daughter struggled with constipation for a month or so & lactulose didn’t work, so we switched to Movicol late Nov. The softener worked & she stopped being scared & we presume passed all the backlog. However, like you I’d find myself constantly changing nappies, but jusy small amounts of poo, lots of wiping all day & very tiring for all.

Two things helped - tweaking the medication & potty training.

We’ve been playing with the medication under GP supervision. Up to 2.5 & down to 1. Still trying to find our perfect amount... we suspect it’s a case of up it when struggling & drop it when fine. (3 is too much, 1 is too little). Still not perfect. Still driving me mad, I want her to be okay and not have these issues of sometimes constipated, sometimes a poo quickly coming on.

However, we potty trained and that really helped. I thought we couldn’t potty train due to these issues but it helped us. She will sit on the potty happily (tv, IPad, book, story) so we have a routine of sitting on the potty for 20 mins after every meal and this helps her to relax the bowel and pass poos in one big go. Of course she goes other times too, but this is our routine taken from advice on ERIC & it’s helping.

She’s quite good at taking liquids, still have to play games (drinking competitions, songs etc), she also likes eating ice cubes, worth a try maybe?

[Bambie83]

Once the movicol is mixed into the correct amount of water you can pretty much add it to anything - milk, juice, cereal, jelly even.

Honestly, sounds like she is impacted and so if you can do a disimpaction by putting it in different things it could help.

[mellywade86]

Thank you for your replies. Its nice to hear other people going through similiar, although its not nice its happening. To be brutally honest i havent even tried to potty train her properly due to all this,even though shes been familiar with, and sitting on, the potty since she was 1 year old. She has only ever done 3 wees on her potty and think that was by fluke. I guess im going to have to take her nappies away to see if she actually knows when she is going to poo. It doesnt help I am anosmic (cant smell) so i cant even smell if shes been in her nappy. Im hoping when she goes to the specialist they will examine her to see if shes impacted. She used to be in pain all day, wouldnt play with her toys and followed me everywhere. She hasnt got a bloated belly anymore and is now not like that so im glad about that. I just hope i can sort this by September when she starts school nursery. 😱 x

[mellywade86]

How long do you do disimpaction for? How do you know when its done? Stupid question probably but the dr didnt tell me to do this because she couldnt feel any poo in her belly in October. x

[CheshireMama]

Go on the Movicol website and look under the guidelines for dis impacting. I haven’t done it myself (unsure if daughter needs it), but yog basically do it until the poo becomes “like rusty brown water”. Basically have a week of being at home and dedicated to the plan I think.