Success story with poo withholding now slipping into old habits

[Frank4321Time]

My now 4 year old daughter has had constipation issues since a baby, and after months of witholding and struggling in summer last year we went through 2 months of 2 disimpaction routines using movicol and finally had a success story. Very soft poos on the toilet every day with no dramas since. Maintenance dose of 3 sachets of movicol. Until.....

The past week or so her poos have been runny, so I reduced the dose of movicol down from 3 to 2.5 per day.

Now the past couple of days she is showing signals of withholding again. I think this may have happened due to one of her poos being slightly harder than normal due to the reduction in movicol. The poo wasn't even hard, it was toothpaste consistency.

So now 2 problems:

1. She is withholding again (last poo was 3 days ago)

2. Will this happen every time she feels a slightly harder (normal to us) poo?

Can she already be backed up after 3 days?

What do I do? So disheartening after nearly 6 months of no issues and normal pooing

Please help!!

[Le15]

This has happened to us countless times over the years! On the advice of a specialist in west Kent we give a small amount of liquid senna (5ml) to stimulate the bowls. At ‘toilet time’ each morning, my son is much more likely to go and release everything. He’s 6 and we’re on 1 movicol a day and have been using senna for 3 weeks. This is against the guidance on the bottle but we have been told is very effective in small doses with children that withhold. We are reducing the dose very slowly. Hope that helps for next time you reduce the dose but if she hast been for 3 days I would disimpact again over the weekend.