So many post did any of you get any answers?

Digestive health
1

My son is 2yrs 2 months old and has suffered Constipation for 10 months ...

it started when i went away for a weeked and he had his first weekend without breastmilk...

3 days late he was screamin in pain and had a stool stuck I was a bout to take him to hospital when in dropped enough for us to remove it,

the problem got more fequent over the commin weeks desipte alot of research on web tryin all kinda things increasing his fluids (which just made him wee more) and changing his diet (we tried more prunes, brown bread rice pastas, water melon and watery fruits cutting out bananas and other foods)

and he was perscibe Lactulose by the dr, whom told me it was just something toddlers get at this age,

but it got worse as we weaned him on to cows milk and the dr just increased his does of Lactulose over and over ... and saying would be 2 years until he would ref him to hospital.....OMG was my reaction,

he passes stools most days but all are firm large and dry like rock the poor thing is in tears trying to pass them.

his hanging of funtuire like his in labour and there telling me this is normal at his age.......

so with yet more net research tried yet more diet changes no milk at all , goats milk, pre and probotics, excirses, massage still to little or no effect

he now has senna from the dr too but the dr is still refusing to give him a ref, but my Hv has aleast said there is a problem she thinks its \"slow bowel\" so currently trying to find out more on this as i am at my wits end and running out of things to try to relife his pain its breaking my heart,

I know this is also now becomming phyiclogial too and who can blame him when it hurts him so much, I am worried it will effect his happy go lucky nature being in pain for months on end.

not to meantion he starts pre-school in nov and i am worried if this isnt sorted by then what i am going to do

so any ideas or suggestions please i am so tried of getting no help from gp and i just dont know what else to try...........

i have read all the posts on here and noticed alot posted in 2006 how are any of those children doing now did you find any answers?

2

HI,

My daughter who is now 11 years old suffered from constipation from around 1 yr old. Your GP seems to be very lax with the referral and if I were you I would demand it be done. My daughter was left to suffer so long she had to go to hospital on a daily basis to have enemas inserted to empty her bowels. This too was painful for her as with any constipation drugs she got bad cramps. Her bowels are now classed as slow and they have considered fitting a colostomy bag to rest her bowels. This is something no-one wants young children to have to do. Go back to your gp and demand the referral, keep fighting for it, It will benefit your child in the long run as my daughter has all her confidence from being poked and proded so much. I hope this info helps you decide. Diet changes and fluids also did not work for us either.

Good Luck and let me know how things go smile smile smile

3

Hi i posted the comment starting wow what an interesting read a while back and have just updated our situation if you would like to read it there. I think the key thing is that all children are very different and the doctors must see lots of very worried parents and it must be hard for them to determine which cases need further investigation and which will right themselves by diet etc. My advice would be do keep a diary of intake and output but also note how much pain and the behaviour of your child etc. The more information you can provide for the drs, who only see our children for a small amount of time( and never in the extreme pain we see them in!)the better picture they can have of the situation. I have 2 children and have now taken to writing notes for professionals now if ever we see them as I feel it helps to explain our concerns. Hope this helps, good luck as you can see you are not alone. Remember that you know your child the best and keep going back until you are happy with their answer or your child improves.Let me know how you get on.

4

thank you so much for your responses it really is appercaited,

we went back to the GP this am and yes more lactulose and suppositorys but we did get the golden ref. to hospital much to my relife a small step but aleast it is in the right direction,

C.G in fact your posts was one of the first i read on here, just wanted to say thank you because it reassured me i am not going crazy....

anyway i have decided to keep a kinda blog of our experience on here so will keep you all up to date.

5

I am so glad I wrote something now. It was only because I thought I was going crazy that I came across the site myself and felt compelled to at least comment! I am very frustrated that professionals can make us as parents feel this way, when all we are are caring worried parents! Things have definately improved for my daughter but we are still awaiting appointments. All the best and I will be checking back to see how you get on. Good luck

6

Well first hospital apt today and though he told us nothing new ... (proberly due to the amount of reading i have done on the web)

He felt his tummy and said there where a number of large hard stools there ( like i didnt know that smile ) touched his bottom and said it was reacting normally so nothing medically wrong ...

he has put him on movicol to clear out the current hard stools disimpaction and then reduced movicol to maintain a routine .... just keeping fingers crossed this helps as the senna and lactlose didnt ...

im to email the dr in 3 weeks to update him and follow up apt in 8 weeks

7

We had our hospital appointment on Wed too! My daughter has had an x ray of her spine and that has thankfully come back ok although they may want to do an MRI scan in the future due to her dimples. What the scan did show was an extra large amount of compacted faeces-like you ,we thought what a suprise! He examined her tummy and said he was concerned as he thought there was too much for a girl of her age- (hang on a minute do we now have a bit more understanding after 2 years!?) He has now suggested increasinging the movical until our next appointment. Interestingly enough since increasing 2 days ago she has now not been to the toilet. She was going every other day. It was nice to hear how you are doing and I wish you all the best. Keep me posted and I will too.

8

C.G good to hear from you funny how we both had apts on same day...

Glad to hear the xray went well...

How much Movicol is your daughter on now? when is your next apt ours in Oct.

We started Oliver on his Movicol today (only just got the script through i dont know why the pediatrican didnt give it to us but wrote to the GP who then posted it on to us) as at this point he had not been for 2 weeks. the longest his ever been.

Today he has had 2 packets

Tomorrow he has 4 packets

and then day 3 6 packets ... and so on until he runs clear he told us ...

but after the apt I realised.... What if he doesnt run clear? after all the lactalose ansd senna didnt help.

how long and how much do i keep increasing it?

So have just emailed him to ask what is the max. we should go to..

cant belive i didnt think of that while i was there.

so keeping fingers crossed Movicol does the trick

9

had a email back from pediatrican his to take...

Day 1 - 2 packs

Day 2 - 4 packs

Day 3 - 6 packs

staying on 6 packs a day til he runs clear

then to reduce to 2 packs a day...

so far so good two days of Movicol in bottles and he doesnt seem to have noticed taste diffrance yet see if he does tomorrow with 3 in one bottle ....

althought so far much easier than getting him to take the senna and lactlose on a spoon,

10

smile Nice to hear how you are getting on and looks like you are lucky to have an email contact I could do with that! I started Eleanor on 1 packet of movicol daily as she was only on one every other day but it was strange as she was going every other day and then since the increase she has reduced the amount she is going? She is now on 2 a day which appears to be helping some days and not others which is my argument that there does not seem to be any consistency so that is why I dont necessarily feel that the movicol has that much effect.The more she is on the more pain she appears to be in. I still want to know why she has the problem in the first place as I am sure there must be a reason! We go back in September where I think they will examine her to see if the impaction has gone down and then maybe x ray again. Any way despite all this i do feel she has got much better so things are looking up! She is now happier to go when she needs to than 6 months ago. I hope Oliver improves and will hear from you soon, all the best x

11

P.S

My daughter appears to love the taste of movicol and actually asks for her soft poo drink!So we sometimes get strange looks.. Thought that make you smile! :lol:

12

pps!

Just a thought, you mentioned putting 3 in his bottle so do I take it you give it all at once then? Just curious as I was originally planning to that and then decided to spread it out and I give one in morning and one at night and just wondered if it makes a difference. I will ask when I go next as was not adviced either way. take care

13

Hi C.G.

Great to hear Eleanor is doing better .... I know what you mean about wondering what caused the problem in the first place ... I Actually asked him about that he said I dont know we proberly never will and he proberly hasnt got the problem anymore that we where just dealing with the aftermath of the orignal unknown problem ...... if you can call that a answer :shock:

Love the soft poo drink .... smile and it did make me smile ...

Oliver seems to like it too and im really loving fact we dont have a medicne fight anymore.

At the moment Oliver is on 6 packets a day .... so we give him 3 in the morning and 3 at night ....

as he is on this \"disimpaction / clear out\" dose which we where told to follow...

Day 1 - 2 packs

Day 2 - 4 packs

Day 3 - 6 packs

Day 4 - 6 packs

Day 5 - 6 packs

Day 6 - 6 packs

Day 7 - 6 packs

By which time his stool would turn liquid then to a clear liquid ... to show all impacted stools passed...

well today is day 7 and his stools are loose but no where near liquid let alone clear liquid ....

so not sure what to do as he said he WOULD run clear on that high dose and then reduce to 2 packs a day .... to maintain a routine.

so not sure if i should cont. past 7 days on 6 packets or not as seems a high dose to me...

14

Hi Tracey,

Thanks for that message it was really useful as whenever Eleanor starts to get poo that is too soft I tend to reduce amount of movicol but perhaps I should keep going like you. The more I read and hear about movicol it is not harmful so I really would not worry about the high dose if it has been advised and is working. I feel quite positive to hear that when we have both got rid of our childrens impaction that hopefully it may not return? We can then get back to some sort of normality and perhaps less poo conversations! My friend even text me to say she had dreamt about having a compacted poo herself! definately time to stop discussing it.All the best keep in touch heres to no more toilet talk x

15

Hi C.G

My understanding is the plan is for oliver

a 7 day plan to use in high dose to clear out / disimapct then lower doses

then we need to find the right dose to maintain a routine long enuff for the stretched bowel to be allowed to heal itself to a normal size which could take as much as 6 months then they will reduce the dose until he is off it all together...

but that he may become impacted again until we find the right dose to maintain a rountine for he or we stop maintaining the rountine until he is fully healed, and if that happens we return to step one and start all over again..... :roll:

I totally know what you mean about getting back to normality and having less convos about poo... as in our house its become a over dinner convo and you just totally forget its not the chosen subject for many :lol:

16

Hi Tracey,

Just wondered how you were doing?

We have just had a follow up appointment and been told that our daughter has to continue on the movicol for as long as she has suffered from constipation. That will be 3 years then! She is now going daily and on 1 sachet daily. I am happy that she appears better but annoyed and frustrated that if it had not been to the re referral regarding her dimples we would not have been taken seriously. 3 years we have tried to get them to listen and now I am told it has gone on too long and she will have to stay on medication for 3 years to rectify this. Whose fault is that? defianately not ours! I still reject their theory that it was caused originally by poor diet and low fluid intake. I suppose I may never no what caused it but the main thing is she appears ok now. So good luck and I hope to hear your boy is doing ok too

17

Hi CJ..

Im so glad to hear Eleanor is doing so well... I totally understand your frustrantion although we werent quite as long waiting with oliver we find ourselfs being told the same things... we havent had our follow up apt yet thats not til Oct, Ollie is on 2 sachets a day atm and seems to be going most days if not every other day,

Though our new worry is he is saying his scared of poo and still trying to hold it! ...

Ollie has just started wearing pants in the day time so we have introduced a poo fairy for poos on the potty. its such a shame cause his perfectly ok doing wees and is \"dry\" but having trouble convicing him to poo on potty or toilet,

so doubley frustrated that they have left it so long as now think we have a mental battle on our hands too!

will update again soon for now keep your chin up smile

tracey

xxx

18

Hi just thought I would drop buy and give you a update ....

After a few good months with movical Oliver started to get firmer stools again and to gain control of his movements, so on a follow up visit he had his movical increased again to 4 packets a day.... wow was my reaction, as 4 does seem alot for such a young child.

Ollie has now started at pre-school ... so manging the emotional side is worry to me and convying it to the preschool staff the importance of asking him if he needs to go when his \"in the pose\" without making a fuss or a issue of it.

how is Eleanor getting on

19

My friends son is on 12 ... yes 12 .. sachets of movicol per day and is still yet to run clear hes been constipated for over 12 months now and in and out of hosp with no info given to my frined at all, she has asked for secnd opinions but they wont refer her as say this is normal .. NORMAL?? 12 SACHETS!! Hes in agony, crying, vomiting u name it hes doing it ... what can I do to help support them? Her son is only 3yo btw =(

20

Hi,

My 6 yr old daughter has been constipated for over a week.

She is having bouts of pains that I can only compare to labour pains. These are usually at least every 30 mins, and sometimes go on for a long time. She wails and writhes around the room in agony.

She is now so scared of going for a poo that she is holding it in.

She can't walk straight and only wants to lay down.

She has never been in so much pain.

She has been prescribed Movicol, lactulose and dulcolax.

Can anybody help, reassure, provide any suggestions etc?

Thanks