I've just got of the phone to ERIC who advised doing disimpaction with my 15-month-old. I'm really upset. Has anyone else done it with a child this young?!
To give some background... she was exclusively breastfeed for first year and was slow to start eating much food. I think this was partly because she didn't get any teeth until she turned one as that's when she started eating more and her poos became more solid and less frequent. We started to get more and more solid poo and then only once or twice a week. She would get quite upset when passing. I thought this was normal until friends enlightened me their babies were going more regularly. We went to the GP a month ago and he thinks the trauma of a painful poo led her to withhold and the witholding has led to futher constipation. (Her diet is full of fibre and she drinks fluids well so I don't think it's that). He prescribed movicol, one sachet a day, but he didn't mention disimpaction. Since we started movicol she had some big bowl movements at the start and now is going pretty much every day and they are much softer.
We're due to do a follow up appointment with GP tomorrow, but he is on holiday so we will be seeing someone else... Anyway I called up ERIC for general support and was told DD would still have a blockage despite her poos being more regular and soft, and that we need to do disimpaction; going up to 8 sachets a day! I've not idea how on earth we will do that as she eats very little still. She's a good drinker but that's a lot of fluid for her to drink a day! I'm also worried the trauma of going through disimpaction could lead her to withhold more... She's not at an age where I can explain why we're doing it.
Any advice or similar experience would be much appreciated. ERIC mostly talk to parents of 2-4 year olds and their advice didn't always seem relevant for a child of this age.