Bloke needs help re toddler constipation

[MumBloke]

First up, I am a Dad. Before you throw things at me for invading Mumsnet I come genuinely looking for advice. I'm not aware of an alternative Dadsnet forum and I'm not entirely sure they'd be much help anyway .

I have a 3 (near 4 year old) toddler who is perfect in almost every way other than she is a difficult eater and subsequently (at least we assume it is linked) has currently got issues with constipation.

We've tried all the obvious methods (prune juice, aloe vera juice etc) and simply "try giving your daughter some fruit and veg" isn't really an option. We can't actually force feed her. We've gone down the route of incentive charts and basically none of it appears to work.

The current situation is that she is severely constipated which has led to incontinence. She is toilet trained for wees but basically has lost all confidence with her number twos.... because of the severe state of her constipation she is more or less soiling a little bit all the time. Having read about it on the net it appears that she is severely constipated and therefore that she is, to all intents, "leaking". Sorry for the detail!

Our GP has initially gone down the softly softly approach of prescribing senna, starting with 0.25ml, then 0.50ml and finally 0.75ml. None of this has worked in that we have endured a nightmare situation of constant soiling. All of this is putting a severe strain on the family in that we can't take our daughter out anywhere with confidence. She is also due to start pre school in September and, to top it all off, we are expecting another child in September!

The GPs latest step is to prescribe Movicol.

Does anyone have any practical tips or advice? Any experience of this situation? Anyone used Movicol? I think all I'm really looking for is some reassurance that one day our daughter will be normal in this department!!!!

Any pointers welcome!

Thanks.

My friend's daughter had this really badly after suffering an anal tear which made her 'hold in' her poo because it hurt to go and then the problem escalated from there even though she ate loads of fruit and veg. She could hold on for days and days.

Anyway just wanted to say that regarding the 'leaking' I remember my friend saying this was because there would be an impacted mass and basically poo would end up leaking round the sides of it....so her daughter had no warning of it and it would just come out.
It wasn't that she wasn't toilet trained any more so to speak, just that it was part of the condition..

She is 9 now and fine, I do really feel for you though, I can remember my friend in tears on many occasions about it feeling it would never be sorted out.

For us, this was many years ago now and our yougest son is now 18.
When he was about 8 months old he became constipated with diaorreah overflow (sure sign of constpation. The GP said he probably had an anal tear and it would be for him like sh*tting razorblades!
To start with he was given quitelow doses of lactulose, but then we were referred to a paediatrician when he was just over 1. He was given an enema on the childrens ward which he held on to for 24 hours (absolutely unheard of apparently, all the nurses came out on the ward when he returned for another one the next week to see who this baby was who had held on to an enema for so long. The second enema was held for slightly less time!)
The paediatrician started him on ever increasing doses of Lactulose and Senna . Up to 30mls Lactulose and 10ml Senna a day. This was done to actually get him going.
He said not to worry about the doses as it wasn't going to last forever. He hated it to start with, but then got used to having 8 spoons of medicine a day pumped into his mouth. Once he became regular after about 2 months we would drop a spoon of medicine a month, and probably ended up with 5ml lactulose and 5 ml senna. In the end 5 ml lactulose, but when I suddenly stopped that he went slightly backwards over a couple of days so we gave him 2.5 mls for a few more weeks and then stopped and we and he never looked back.
I just wanted to say, it was a long and persevering process and the medicines are possibly different today, but I just wanted to give you hope that it can be sorted with what were high doses of laxatives. It is as a friend once said to me important to get this sorted before school age if possible and the embarassment this could cause to a child with the overflow.
Our son never again had this problem which probably involved just about a year of laxatives.
Good Luck