Fairly urgent help needed - 2 year old is awake and hysterical with constipation pain, but will not poo.

[Astrophe]

shes never taken to pooing in the potty, but will usually go in her nappy. But not tonight. She woke an hour after she went to bed, screaming, and saying her tummy hurts. She has had a few very hard poos of late because she holds on a lot, so I think she is scared of it hurting again. We have tried a hot bath, cuddles, warm wheat bag, calpol...what else can we do? Do we go to the hospital? She is so upset, my heart is breaking for her.

take her to gp first thing, get gp to check her tummy to make sure its just a case of simple constipation, then ask for some lactulose, im pretty sure its suitible for under 3's and its very gentle, if the constipation is severe gps will prescribe baby supposotries, however inserting then is a different kettle of fish, poor little thing though

Hey Astro there was another thread on this the other day, where the Doc recommended the brown sugar in warm water thing, that's been mentioned above! hope you get it sorted hon, give dd a hug from me and have a big one yourself too {{{{Hug}}}}

when you insert ehm it helps a lot if they are wet (water from the tap)! Didn't know that the first time I did one. Poor DD

I used pear juice or prune juice on i knew it was constipation (the GP diagnosis). But if it was my baby she would be straight down to the doctors. Better to be safe than sorry

For emergency case only, I'd say:
Give her something she likes to eat, strap her into her car seat and go for a drive. What she's eaten'll make her want to have a bowel movement and the seat'll keep her in such a position that she can't stop the poo. (Drastic I know but worked for ds this week. Screamed his head off whilst poo was coming but was a different child afterwards.) Generally we find the osteopath helps in a crisis but we couldn't get ds in to sort him out. Lactulose/senna/movicol also seem to have no effect (all psycological with ds) so doctors pointless.
Otherwise use everyone else's tips for the long term approach.

Thanks everyone. She had a bath, calmed down eventually, and went to sleep. The next morning she pooed, but it hurt her. Today she pooed and was ok, but I will take her to the docs this week to sort out a long term stategy.

Thanks again

We had the same problem with ds, made worse by the fact that he wouldn't eat fruit or take any medicine. We found in the end that he would take Milupa(from the chemist) in milk and gradually the problem went away. Sitting them in a warm bath sometimes helps - althought it's messy! Hope she's better now.