4 yr old dd - problems with doing poo

[Amber76]

Hi

I toilet trained my dd just after she turned 3. All went fairly well for 6 months or so.

But for the last 6/8 months she regularly tells me she has done a poo in her undies. We go to the toilet and it's a small nugget of poo that I'll have to wipe or it may be a shart (apologies tmi!). This could happen 2,4,10 times (over the course of a day or two) before she will finally produce a poo. And I have to sit with her and distract her while the poo is being done.

I have two younger children and we're in a new house. Life is hard enough without having to deal with this.

She has not done a poo all week and we've had about 6 or 7 trips to the toilet today where I have to wipe her bottom.

It's so frustrating - I'm dreading tomorrow as we have a lot to do and it's so hard when I'm out with my three kids but keep having to go the toilet with her.

I've given her lactulose but it didn't seem to make a difference. Her diet is reasonable. I think it has become a big thing in her head now - it's horribly frustrating.

Any advice?

She's severely constipated by the sounds of it. I would take her to the GP for movicol or similar.

Ah the poor pet. It does sound like she's constipated in which case the "signal" to poo may be lost a bit so it's hard for her to know when she really needs to go.

I'd suggest trying movicol- working up from one sachet daily to two, three until she starts having soft, reasonably regular poos. You can scale down after that.

In the meantime I suppose being relaxed about her accidents and maybe suggesting a simple explanation "oh not to worry, sometimes we get hard poo and it's difficult to tell when we need to go. It's okay if you make a mistake, not your fault. We'll get it fixed in a little while and then you'll figure out when you need to poo in the toilet again. I'll help you." Etc.

HTH!