Movical..how do I get him off it

[Beezee098]

Nearly 3 yr old son, he's been on movicol for over 2 yrs. If we miss one day he will be constipated. And the constipation is severe. Gp advises constipation will do more harm whereas movicol is harmless. He's had his bloods done for thyroid and vitamins and they all came back fine. He's a fussy eater but I don't want to be medicating him daily for the foreseeable future for his bowels to work. Any suggestions on what else may sort the constipation so he can be weaned of movicol. He's on 2 sachets a day.

My youngest had severe constipation when he started solid food. Our paediatrician advised to do a very slow, gradual reduction of movicol once he's ready because it takes a long time to retrain the bowel. From memory it took several weeks to get down from 2.5 sachets to 0.5. We reduced by half a sachet then kept it at that for a few days. If everything is still good and he still has regular, soft bowel movements, drop another 0.5. If at any point he starts to show signs of constipation, increase back to the previous level and wait a few more days.
Hope it works for you.

Is he currently on enough movicol to have daily passage of soft squidgy stool? If yes, then it's incredibly slow weaning as above. If no, then he needs to go up on his movicol to let his over stretched rectum heal up and shrink down after being distended by constipation all this time, and it's only when things have healed up that you have a fighting chance of doing the slow weaning.

It is far better to keep him on the movicol if he needs it. If you let him get constipated his, and your, life will be miserable. It is just a drink that helps his bowels to function.

Forgot to say, have you had a look at the Eric site? www.eric.org.uk

Movicol is the gold standard treatment for constipation. My 9 year old has been on two sachets a day for years. Why do you want him off it? It is harmless and being constipated can cause more harm, especially if he goes to school and soils from overflow, it can also effect your ability empty your bladder which can lead to problems with toilet training as well as just being uncomfortable. Long term constipation can also cause your bowel to become saggy, so to speak. I was told it can take as long as they’ve had the problem to resolve it.

Twice as long in many cases. It depends how damaged the bowel is and how much psychological harm there has been. Chronic constipation, witholding, impaction with overflow has serious physical, psychological and social effects and needs very careful, conscientious management. It is often referred to as a family problem and it is important that everyone in the family is on the same page with treatment. It is better to continue the treatment longer, with very slow weaning off, as pp have said, than to stop to early and have to start all over again from the beginning. Getting it sorted before the child starts school is really important.

Keep him on it if he's immediately constipated without it. My DS was on it for around 18 months but only 1 sachet a day. To see if he still needed it I reduced it to half a sachet a day, then half a sachet every other day, then every few days. He was fine, so stopped them completely.

Another voice saying he needs to stay on it.

My DS went on it at age 5; we did move on to a different medication after a year, as movicol wasn’t the right one for him, but age 11, things were finally settling down. Age 12 we are now in the process of weaning him off.

People can safely use Movicol for decades: different laxatives work in different ways and Movicol doesn't make the bowel "lazy". The most important thing if you eventually want to come off it is increasing fibre in his diet. Would ground flax or similar go in a smoothie or sprinkled on breakfast? Hidden veg in sauces? Switch away from all white bread, pasta and rice and choose brown and reduced refined sugars. I know all of this sounds easier said than done, I'm posting from experience though.

Hi i appreciate the advice . He's been on 2 sachets daily from around 6mnths old. He's nearly 3 now. If he doesn't have it for a day or has only 1 sachet he's constipated the following day. With movicol his stools are soft. My main worry is he's growing up reliant on medication. The experience of yourselves makes me anxious that he will b on it for the forseeable future. I was hoping he'd be ready to come off as he's much older than wen he strted

@Beezee098 6 months is young - what was said at the time? Early weaning is a notorious time for digestion to go a bit haywire but also usually settles down if there's not an underlying backstory (it presumably wasn't being a fussy eater then)?

Both my kids (older than yours) need constipation medication every day; it's just one of those things for some reason. They have pretty healthy diets, both drink plenty of water but their bowels aren't capable of working properly on their own.

With mine I notice when we are away from home for a few days, and we eat more junk, less fruit and veg, less fibre then they need their meds increasing. When we get home they return to normal. This suggests to me that they could possibly both come off the meds completely if they had a super healthy diet, with no junk at all and no treats, but honestly I prefer them to have a reasonably healthy but more balanced diet and take this very safe medication alongside. It's an incredibly safe medicine with little-to-no side effects or risks.

DD has been on movicol for 4.5 years and from a very young age.

Coming off of it has not been successful long term so we are now staying on it for longer. Without it she goes more than a week without a poo and has more problems eg soiling and getting distressed etc. once that started it took weeks to get back on an even keel again.

In our case I think the key is to improve her liquid intake considerably (I literally bribe her to drink more) and then I need to improve her diet as she's very picky. I think she doesn't recognize the signs of needing a poo now after so many years of problems.

We were able to gradually reduce her dose a bit though by doing 1 less sachet every other day for weeks, seeing there was no longer term effects and then going down to 1 sachet a day. That seems ok for us in the longer term.

I don't know what the long term plan looks like though until she is old enough to really understand it.

DS is finely nearly weaned off movicol at nearly 11. We tampered down to half a sachet a day then every two days over about 6months. Every so often he still has half a sachet if things start feeling 'difficult'.

You need to make sure he has a good diet and is dei king enough water before you start weaning him off it.

He pooed everyday until 4 months then he started becoming constipated. I was prescribed lactose on two different occasions and it worked in releasing his bowels. on the third occasion at around 6 months lactose wasn't working. After around 3 days of no poos I was given movicol to give until he's fully released. I was then advised to give him one sachet a day of movicol as this was a recurring problem and was told he may be able to come off movicol wen he's more active. One sachet worked until At 12 months he was constipated for 6 days and doc increased him to 2 sachets. The impaction was pretty bad and he was in a lot of pain. My son didn't crawl until 12 mnths and walked at 20 months so they always came back to that. Once he started walking they didn't really have any reasoning just told.me to keep giving him it

He's a fussy eater since 1 yr old I started weaning him at 6 months but he was not fussy until 12 mnths

Did you do a dis-impaction program initially or just the 1 and then 2 sachets of movicol to start bowel movements? If not, it may be that he is still partially impacted so every time the movicol is reduced the blockage reoccurs.
For dis-impaction, we did increasing doses of movicol until he was only passing watery stools (he actually cleared a huge tennis ball-sized blockage and nothing after that) then reduced down to the maintenance dose (2.5 sachets worked for him) and waited a couple of months to allow healing before we attempted to reduce the dose.
I'm sure you've probably looked before but the Eric website has lots of great information on dis-impaction.

Hi whenever he's been constipated he will pass a quite hard ball before he fully releases. I dnt think he's impacted now as he passes stools normallyso long as he's taken movicol

my DD was on movicol from age 6ish to 10ish. 2 sachets per day maintenance does for 2 years and then we went down VERY slowly to 1.8 satchets (make up the normal dose, then throw out 1 teaspoon worth from the cup). if things are stable after a month, then for the next month start throwing out 2 teaspoons etc. Took about 2 years to get down to 0.5 satchets per day and then she said she was ready to stop and we did.

Hi there...can anyone help or give me advice...my darling son is on movicol now peob over a year but when it got too dlrunny I would stop as didn't want the nursery having the bother with all the runny poos...then in July I had to statt again as constipated and I said when he's off nursery I'll try clear him out...on it now for 4 weeks and makes huge huge poos but still v v runny and soiling thr pants big time....now this week after 4 weeks I thought I'll try jus giving him half a sachet a day...he's still soiling big time and 2niye he done a massive long poo again Luckily in our toilet but in thr nursery I'm having 3 pants back with soiling...please help what would u suggest...do u think he's still blocked. sud I up him again but when he was taking 1 sachet a day it was chart 7 ppp pure diarrhea....I even started crying again to nursery teachers I jus feel soo helpless xxx

You need to start your own thread. But really you need to make a GP appointment and talk it through with them as they can physically examine him. Also look at the ERIC website.

the GP jus says reduce the dosage to every 2nd day to see...I dnt think they know much about it either guessing like I am 🥲🥲

I say this on every single one of these threads.
Google the poo nurses. Watch the video right to the end.
They explain everything in really simple language.
The video isn't very long.
It is worth just taking a little bit of time to listen to them in order to save a lot of misery.

googling right now haha thanks