Alternative to movicol for disimpaction?

[Laurenx85]

Hi everyone; really hope someone will have some advice for me because I’m beginning to go crazy! So, my daughter is 6 years old and has started with holding her poop.. it all started at the beginning of March - I think it was due to the anxiety of having to go back to school after being homeschooled for so long. She was convinced I would keep her home and not send her to school because of the accidents she was having! I’m pretty sure she was impacted as she was constantly having soiling overflow accidents and her appetite had massively reduced and by 25th March she was vomiting every time she ate something so we got movicol to disimpact her over the Easter holidays but she just vomited the movicol back up every time.. so I started doing loads of googling and came across a study that compared lactulose vs movicol for disimpaction. She will take the lactulose with no problem at all and I think we must’ve managed to get her disimpacted because for the first week back at school after the Easter holidays, she had no accidents and was having normal looking poos every day! However I started reducing the dosage of lactulose (thinking this was the right thing to do) and we are now back at square one and to top it all off I think she’s back to with holding and hasn’t pooped since 16th April. we’re also back to having overflow soiling accidents but this time the lactulose doesn’t seem to be having an effect on her (been giving her 40ml a day). So I gave her 5mg bisacodyl as well as the lactulose but this has also done nothing. From reading all the posts on this site, it seems movicol is the best for disimpaction but is there any other medicine I can disimpact her with? She hates the movicol and vomits it back up. Maybe I just need to up the dosage of lactulose? I don’t know whether to try and get hold of some Senna and maybe try that? Or potentially give her 10mg of bisacodyl? Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance

[Yaleamanda]

How were you giving the movicol?did you mix it with the correct amount of water first then add it to drinks afterwards?

[Laurenx85 in reply to Yaleamanda]

I was mixing it with water as per the instructions then adding vimto but I’ve been doing more reading on this site and seen people adding it to Fanta to really hide the taste, which I might have to try. I’ve now taken to bribing her though - bought her a little flying fairy toy that she’s been wanting and I told her she could only have it after she does a poo on the toilet. Well, she went to the toilet straight away and did a decent sized poo within 2 mins. However, she’s still having what looks like overflow soiling even after the poo so there’s obviously more in there 😩 bribing her obviously isn’t ideal so I just want something that I can give her that will prevent her from with holding!

[Yaleamanda in reply to Laurenx85]

As long as you mix the sachets correctly you can add it to anything else afterwards. It sounds like you need to fully disimpact her.

[Bambie83]

There’s also Laxido - it’s the one I’ve always been given. You can get it plain and I just add apple juice to it once it’s dissolved in the amount of water needed. We’ve not had a problem with it so it’s worth a try.

[Eldrapo]

My 6 yo daughter is under urology and had regular prescribed medication to keep her bowels moving. Senna worked very well for her for a disimpaction but she now regularly takes sodium picosulphate (dulcolax) to keep her moving. Both of which you would need prescribing for children though and you won't be able to ask a pharmacist for the 6 yo. However I would defo ask your GP as we tried movicol for over 3 years with varying degrees of success, we found it very unpredictable and if they don't want to drink it, it's even harder. I hope that helps in any way x

[Laurenx85 in reply to Eldrapo]

Did you disimpact your daughter using senna only?

it’s now been 6 days since my daughter has poo’d and I’m really struggling; just wish there was something to clear her out instantly! She’s having overflow soiling constantly and now having wee accidents as well which smells almost as bad as the overflow soiling. I can barely get her to eat or drink anything so I think she’s now very dehydrated. She’s still having lactulose daily so I think she’s just full of soft poo now but she refuses to go to the toilet and with holds it. I’ve told her we will end up back at the hospital and she cries and gets very upset but she still will not even try to have a poo. Really don’t know what to do at this point, I cannot for the life of me get her to drink movicol. Going to phone the gp tomorrow and pray something stronger is prescribed.

[Frantastic84]

My 5 year old was severely constipated earlier this year... she was prescribed Movicol and Lactulose, neither of which made any difference. I can’t comment on medicines as they’re the only ones I’ve tried but after a couple of traumatic trips to A&E one paediatric doctor told me to just cut out everything in her diet that wasn’t fruit until she was ‘flowing freely’. She did carry on sipping movicol but I didn’t think that made any difference.... it was the fruit that was such a help. She pretty much ate nothing but grapes, strawberries, pineapple... all the high water content fruits, for a couple of days and it worked like a dream.

I wish you all the strength, these are the grim realities of parenthood and it can be so hard. No pun intended. Let us know how things pan out x

[Laurenx85]

Thank you to all who have replied to me. So glad I found this site and now know there’s other parents out there who deal with similar issues.