Toddler with very wet poo!

[Nightowlagain]

My, DS has always had quite runny poo, we didn't worry about it and thought it was normal and would sort itself over time. Now he's 2.4 it's still the same and I'm starting to think something's not right.

We looked into it and tried giving him lactose free milk, we thought it might be lactose intolerance. It didn't help at all, maybe it was even worse! Then we cut it out altogether, and it was a lot better for about 4 days then went back to normal. We give him tropicana with added calcium to compensate for the no milk. He still has cheese and butter. I don't think it's lactose intolerance because the lactose free made things worse.

We are thinking about trying to cut out gluten to see if that helps, but to be honest I don't feel right about messing around with his diet too much, I feel like we're experimenting on him! I'm thinking we should take him to the doctor but not sure if it's worth worrying about or if it could be something that we shouldn't be feeding him. I think he gets enough fibre, fruit etc. He's staring nursery soon and we'll be potty training later this year so it'd be nice to get it sorted out.

Has anyone any experience with this, and any suggestions as to how to sort it out? I just want to make sure we're looking after him properly, and I worry that we're feeding him something that doesn't agree with him.

Thanks in advance x

Does it hurt him in some way? (Thinking nappy rash... Stomache ache) Are you maybe giving him too much fruit?

Sorry if this isn't helpful.

Hi my son always had perfectly normal stools till the age of 18 months then he got rota virus. He is now 3 and a half and hasn't had a firm stool since. Like you I constantly tried to alter his diet, tried probiotics, naturopathic cures etc to see if anything made a difference - it hasn't .

My understanding is that this long term, general, non specific caused diarrhoea is called 'toddlers' diarrhoea' and you can normally expect your child to grow out of it by about age 5. There is nothing much you can do but it's advised you give them a diet lower in fibre and high in fat, avoid sugar, including too much fruit and fruit juice to try and settle the bowel and stomach.

If you google 'toddlers diarrhoea' you will see a few articles and bits of information. It's actually not that uncommon just not often discussed!

Thank you guys, I'll look that up and see if it fits. It doesn't hurt him at all, he gets a wee red patch very occasionally but nothing chronic. He seems fine in himself really, I just worry that I should be doing something!

I have/had this with my 2.2 year old and it did end up being lactose intolerance. He never seemed in any discomfort but I was fed up of swamp-like nappies three or four times a day, sometimes at night, and his nursery policy is to send kids home after three runny nappies, so something had to be done as I was having to leave work to collect a rambunctious, perfectly healthy child several times a month. Take a stool sample to the GP and ask them to do a test for the presence of something called reducing factors, in addition to a general screen for any possible infections, which will indicate lactose intolerance. My GP didn't tell me about the reducing factors thing until after they'd done one test for infections, so I ended up having to go in twice, a week apart, with two different samples which was a PITA. That's why I suggest asking them at your first visit to check for both at once.

I had also tried making DS lactose-free prior to this, but it didn't seem to make a difference so I assumed that wasn't it, but it was. Turned out he needed to go completely lactose free (not just the milk but also cheese, butter, everything) for a lot longer than I had previously tried it for him to 'firm up' a bit. A formed stool is still something of a talking point in our house because they're so rare, but he's not going through two or three pairs of trousers a day because of uncontainable foetid poonamis anymore.

Lactose intolerance comes and goes at that age too so you can sometimes re-introduce the odd bit of dairy on small quantities without too much knock-on effect.

HTH