Getting desperate about 9 mo constipation

[TBC45678]

Wondered if anyone's had similar experiences - my 9 mo has struggled with constipation since weaning at about 6 months, and it's just getting worse and worse. He'll happily not poo for 10+ days (seemingly in no distress at all, eating, drinking, in a great mood). But then I give him lactulose as prescribed by my GP, it takes a couple of days to work and then he's straining and in terrible distress for days trying to get all his poos out. He gets anal fissures from pooing so much and bleeding nappy rash. So then I give him a few days off lactulose and he's back to his happy self, but with no pooing.

I'm at a loss. We've also tried macrogol (laxido) with similar results. We've now been referred to paediatrics because he's also losing a little weight, but who knows when we'll actually be seen.

I know to avoid all the binding foods, he has prunes, pears, plums, kiwi all the time and it makes no difference.

I'd love some advice whilst I wait for him to be seen by a specialist.

Update for anyone who finds this thread who's having similar issues - he's now around a year old and we have just about managed to resolve the problem by giving him one sachet of movicol/laxido daily. He generally does 1 or 2 good poos a day now. The only way we've managed to get him to take a full sachet consistently is to mix it with a bottle of milk and give it at night when he's asleep, so we do that every night. Bit annoying but totally worth it to keep him pooing!

The consultant we saw was happy there was no big physiological reason for his constipation, and was happy with his diet (thanks to a poster above who suggested keeping a food diary) and said some babies just need regular laxative use and to continue even if his poos get quite runny. We did try to reduce the amount of medication when he was having huge runny poos, by halving the dose, but after a few days of that he wasn't pooing again so we won't be doing that again!

Thanks for all the advice, everyone was right - lactulose is useless and consistent laxative use is key!