Colonic massage........For a child.

[ohtheholidays]

Hi our DD7 has had issues with going to the toilet,bowel motions since she was about 2 years old.

5 years later and were still having problems the poor little girl.
She has been under a specialist for 5 years now at the Hospital,attends a special clinic there and see's our own DR's about it regularly.
She has been taking Movicol on and off for years.

Still no joy,I watched a program a couple of years ago about Colonic massage,not to be confused with Colonic Irrigation and I wondered if anyone knows if it's suitable for children?

She has plenty of fresh fruit and veg,plenty of fiber and plenty of fluid.

We have 5DC and our youngest is the only one that suffers in this way.
She's also scared of going on the toilet bless her which doesn't help.All the consultants keep recommending is the Movicol and trying Star charts unsurprisingly enough we've tried reward charts,special steps,a soft toilet seat,a child's toilet seat,you name it I think we've tried it.Like I said she's our 5th child so we've had a lot of experience.

Our daughter is also autistic and physically disabled so it does make this challenge harder for her and for us.She still wears Pull-Ups in the day,not at school but as her stomach has got worse she has been having a lot of accidents which isn't great.

We've tried keeping her in knickers all the time at home and I'm keen to try that again so will start that again today.My husband really isn't keen as she has gone through 16 pairs of knickers in one day before.

She doesn't seem to do proper poos,it's always little bits.Always really loose and really really sticky and the smell is awful.Worse than what you'd normally expect.

She did a Poo sample for our DR a couple of weeks ago and it has came back normal.She's had bloods taken and urine samples taken but still no answers.

If you've read all the way through Thank You.

Any suggestions,recommendations welcome.She really is a lovely little girl and she has been so poorly since the day she was born,yet she never complains.It's heartbreaking seeing her in so much pain everyday.

www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/resources/patient-information/gi/abdominal-massage-for-constipation.pdf&ved=0CCsQFjAE&usg=AFQjCNGItvMWrVWZo0ionFZhpXgboZfE7Q
There is a guide on it here in case you haven't seen it. I used to work on children's wards but have only seen it used once or twice on children so I'm not sure how affective it is. It might just be that it's underused due to the time taken to do it as it's quicker to give medication than spending 20 minutes doing a massage on a busy ward.
Speak to the continence nurses about it as they might have some experience with it. I'm sure it will be fine to try it on a child it's only stomach massage afterall.

*effective
Just cringed at my own typo

Thank you Fairgame,just tried the link and can't get it to work,more than likely me.

I'll give them a ring today and see what they say.

If you Google colonic massage it was on the first page of results. It's an nhs pdf guide of how to do the massage.
Do you also know about ERIC? It's a children's continence website and is really good.
www.eric.org.uk/

The osteopath we saw used it for ds1. Was very effective for getting him to the loo quite soon afterwards and once in the middle of a session (and for that reason he was a bit wary of her!). We also used rewards for sitting on the loo (as he became loo-phobic) and rewards for doing a poo. Took several years to sort out.