Help please - dirty knickers!

[wispawispa]

Name changed because I feel a bit icky writing about poo!

I need help with my DD who is reception aged, coming home with dirty knickers everyday 😟. She never has accidents, but is absolutely rubbish at wiping because her poo is so squidgy and gets everywhere. Today she had to be helped because she had smeared it all up her back and her school T-shirt. I feel sad that she can't keep clean.

She did seem to get better for a while because I removed milk from her diet (she said it made her tummy hurt) but have been using lacto-free because she seemed fine with that. Now the problem is back though.

Please don't say that I need to teach her how to wipe - I have done this for so long, but there's so much mess that she seems to struggle. It's almost like diarrhoea, but daily. I've been to the GP who basically said it's one of those things and that dairy intolerance is a bit of a fad!

She always seems to go after dinner at school, and rarely at home before or after when I could help her. I've thought about asking her to wait, but don't want to cause other problems.

Does anyone have any advice please 🤞?

Diarrhoea is not “just one of those things.”

There must be a reason for it. Don’t want to alarm you but loose stools can be a symptom of coeliac. But it could just be IBS

Either way, it’s indicating something’s not right, and your GP is just being lazy and defeatist.

Snap Italian - sorry I didn’t see your post.

Cor your gp sounds helpful🙄

I'd definitely try the school nurse as well, they often suggest different things to the gps and (should!) take the time to meet with you and give some advice and let you know about anything else that might help on while she's at school. I'm a primary sendco and really utilise the school nurse service for things like this, especially where parents aren't having much luck with the gp route as they can advise on other avenues or services that would help.

Also, don't know if it would make any difference, especially if it may be allergy or intolerance related, but if she often goes after lunch, could school try and make sure she has a chance to try and go before hand as well, just in case (although obviously not in the general hubbub of hand washing time- I don't think anyone would be able to go with all that going on!)

School nurse for advice.
Speak to school to see if she can use the accessible toilets so she can wipe, bag and bin.

Can be toddler diarrhoea as well, but if it got better no milk... Seems likely milk related.

Our dietitian told us that most people are not intolerant to lactose but to the protein in the milk so she needs to be completely dairy free. Use oat milk or almond milk. Alpro soy yogurts (the vanilla, caramel, chocolate ones are nice for little ones) x

Hang on, there’s a lot of comments referring to diarrhoea but there’s no mention of that as the issue from the op- unless I’m missing something. Poo that is hard to wipe and get rid of usually isn’t diarrhoea, as that’s usually fairly easy to remove because of the water content. I’d send her with wet wipes and encourage her to wipe across her lower back as well, once she’s done maybe? Make sure she wipes until there’s nothing on the wipe/paper and then does another one after to double check. Some people just have more of a ‘waxy’ consistency poo than others.

How about trying to shift her timetable? Over a Friday/weekend give her a high fibre evening meal to see if you can move her routine to a morning loo visit.

Alternatively, switch to a lower fibre breakfast for a few days, see what happens then.

Thank you all so much for all the replies - there's so many good suggestions. While I really want to improve the situation for her, it would also be really good if I could get her to 'go' before or after school so I can help, but I haven't managed it yet. Changing the fibre content of her meals is a good idea.

I'm going to get her to the GP as soon as I can, which will hopefully be tomorrow, but will have to be next week otherwise. I'll update on what they say and hope it's more useful this time!

I was thinking the same as @Excited101. One soft poo a day doesn’t sound like an allergy to me. I wouldn’t start excluding food groups on that basis.

I think it’s just a wiping issue, which is quite normal at that age. Ds would come home with poo on his pants till about year 2. No amount of teaching him how to wipe helped - it just took time. I know many parents who have complained of similar.

Continuous loose stools is not normal.

Op I can't comment on the medical side, but please talk to her teacher. I work in Reception and we don't bat an eyelid at these issues, in my experience many children need a little help in this department. If it's a regular occurrence at a regular time, perhaps she could let a teacher or TA discreetly know that she needs to go. While the staff won't actually be able to physically wipe her, they could offer support and talk her through it. If you send in a little bag with clean knickers, wipes and some nappy sacks they can assist her and she might be a bit cleaner and not feel too bad. Believe it or not, last week I dealt with 3 of these incidents!

Ds2 seemed to be lactose intolerant for a few years then grew out of it. It wasn't terrible and I don't think he could have been severely intolerant (maybe had some but not enough lactase) leading to runny poos. Rather than using lactose free milk and trying to completely cut out lactose, we bought small pots of lactase enzyme and added them to his milk everyday. You just add a certain number of drops per pint of milk, shake it and refrigerate it. The idea is that the enzyme removes the lactose from the milk, but I think it seemed to help in general, maybe because some of the enzyme was able to work in the digestive system although it would eventually get broken down also.

We also found using full fat milk and yoghurts etc helped because they go through the system less quickly giving the body time to digest the lactose.

This is what we used Lactase.

AllstarIsBrightbySmashMouth problem with my comment was?

AllstarIsBrightbySmashMouth lots of it is fad.or mis informed, jumping on the intolerant, gluten or dairy or whatever's popular to be allergic to this month.

I know this has probably been said but it’s a potential sensitivity to casein which is in (all) dairy.

When you’re buying her stuff look out for milk in the ingredients; lacto-free isn’t enough, you basically need milk-free.

-ASDA has a great range of dairy substitutes
-Just in case she’s got a wheat allergy too steer clear of Oatly and use Koko milk and youghurts
-Sainsburys has a wide and well labelled range of milk free stuff
-They also stock “Moo Free” advent calendars and selection boxes

Sounds like its milk and your GP is a twat. Poor wee soul x

I'd give her a packet of wet wipes and show her how to use them.

@kateandme I think the issue with your comment was implying that anyone with an intolerance is lying to cover up their dislike of food - which is nonsense. I'm gluten intolerant and there's certainly no joy in watching my colleagues eat cake knowing I can't have any, because if I did I would be off sick for days. And any GP with sense would know that.

My daughter was exactly like this! We wiped when at home as was b tricky. She had a milk protein allergy but also suspected for coeliacs. Coeliac blood test came back negative so just intolerant.
The messy wiping situation was caused by the milk intolerance I think. I would definitely cut it out for a month and see what happens. I know exactly what you mean about the mess!

Coeliac blood test came back negative so just intolerant.

The blood test isn’t definitive though, it only tests for antibodies iirc. And you have to have been eating wheat daily for several weeks beforehand to get an accurate result. To be sure you need a biopsy.

Some people can tolerate goat’s milk but not cow’s.

I see other people have mentioned it already, but what you've described sounds exactly what happened to my daughter when she was impacted. It required a really unpleasant enema or two and then pretty much a full year of daily lactulose to get her regular. Her stools are of a much better consistency now.

The squishy stuff leaks around the impacted mass and seems like a full bowel movement, but it's not. It's messy and smelly and nasty, your poor DD.

My DS is milk protein intolerant, and has goats milk instead. He’s fine with that, and prefers it to soya milk.

He can eat hard cheeses okay also, as the protein is processed out of them.

Well, we didn't manage to get in with the GP, but I did pop some wipes in her bag today and she came out so pleased with herself because she was clean

Ah bless her. Agree with all other who say that you need a second opinion and to try dairy free in the meantime

The main issue is her stools being loose, I'd say which is probably a case of finding out what she's allergic to or intolerant of.

It's not at all unusual for a 5 year old to not be brilliant at wiping but I agree that the moist loo paper and a change of knickers will help in the meantime.