Constipation clinic - home appointment?

[SixImpossible]

Ds has been referred to the constipation clinic. We've just received the letter from them to arrange the first appointment. They want to do a home visit. Why?

Probably because they want to talk & see what you're feeding him.

Constipation is all about what food & drink he eats.

So will they want to ferret about in my kitchen? . That does not make sense. What if the appointment is the day after a party and the day before I go shopping?

Besides, if constipation is purely about diet and drinking, then ds shouldn't have it: he eats shed loads of fruit and veg, very little processed food, and drinks enough that his wee is pale.

Bump

Just a reasoned guess, but I would think it's just so your child is more relaxed so they can talk to both of you in the child's environment.

Does he eat whole wheat cereal, brown bread ? These are the foods that dry out their gut & make the poo hard, dry & difficult to pass. They are insoluble fibres do need massive amounts of liquids to pass through the body. Try soluble fibre like oats, dried soaked apricots, prunes.

Then their rectum stretches, so the urge to go doesn't occur until the poo is big & probably dry.

Short term medicine is needed with immediate & long term dietary changes.

We had a similar home app with speech and language who were assessing our DD's ability to swallow safely and rule out that she was aspirating her food and drink, causing recurrent pneumonia. They told us that they will try to schedule appointments around the child's meal times so you can carry on your day as usual and the child will be more relaxed and more likely to eat and drink like normal. It's nothing to worry about, just check the appointment date and time your food shop for the day before.
Our dd also happens to get horrible constipation despite the fact she eats better than any other child we know. We tried her on literally all the fruits and veg you can purchase in the well know supermarkets and she hasn't turned down any. She also only drinks water so no juice etc and doesn't ever have take aways, crisps, or any junk so another example of how it can't be her diet causing her to be so blocked up and in pain. Please keep us updated x

It just seems really strange, in these days of tight budgets, when even frail elderly people and sick little children stand an ice-cube's chance in hell of getting a home visit, that a perfectly capable boy, with a minor chronic condition and a perfectly capable mum, should get a home visit.

I confess that I am somewhat about this prospective visit. If they tell me to up his fibre intake and give him wholewheat or bran, I shall definitely . I can't say I have ever had a good experience with NHS nutrition. I've even had to explain things to dieticians, such as non-dairy, non-supplemental sources of calcium. I'm not a dietician, just someone whose immediate and wider family have various food-related conditions, so I've done a lot of reading (and MNing!). This chronic, hidden, constipation is a new one to me, though.

Hope your dd's condition improves, Coffeemonster. Have you looked into food intolerances?

I second what you said about the NHS dietitians. Although they were great more recently when DD was in hospital for a long time and failure to thrive and told the doctors to put a tube down to feed her high calorie liquids to give her the energy to fight her illness. They suspected a cows milk allergy and sent us some info in the post like a list of what we should and shouldn't give her. On the list of 'can haves' were black coffee, lucozade, and nesquick made with soya milk.....hmmm she was barely 7 months old. Did they really think we would start pushing coffee down her feeding tube??? Honestly though if your child is already eating a good diet, changing a few more little things like more fibre etc isn't going to change things is it? Lots of fruit and veg and water should keep things moving normally .

How old out your DC ? If over 2 ask for sodium docusate. Google first -it's a great medicine for getting kids unconstipated.

Now you can eat all the fruit & veg in the world, but if you eat bran/wheat you'll bung up. Then it hurts to go, the poo gets bigger etc.

The sodium docusate gets the poo soft, no loose stools like with lactolus or movical. I had to insist me gp prescribe it (looked it up in their book etx & it's legit). You have to be consistent though, because it may take months before going again is ok.

It's miserable - another thing is buy still mineral water as the magnesium in that CAN make a difference.

Now I'd have quite welcomed a home visit because in our case I think it's much more a psychological/emotional issue than a physical one, although obviously it has physical aspects. I think I'd have felt that we were being seen holistically, not just as a set of physical symptoms. And, yes, I think my DS would have been more relaxed at home - he hated going to the clinic. But I can see why you are given how hard it is to get a home visit for anything these days. Maybe you are just lucky though.