Potty training, pooing, constipation and Movicol - help ! (longish)

[sazlocks]

Starting potty training with DS1 at 2.9 months. We went cold turkey with nappies and avoided pull ups and he has been very reliable wees wise from a couple of days in. Pooing has been much more difficult. He has been taking Movicol since he was 14 months as he has an ongoing issue with constipation. This has been well controlled with 1 sachet of Movicol a day and only flares up if he has been ill and got a bit dehydrated. We have tried several times to wean him off the Movicol but he gets constipated again very quickly.
In the 8 weeks or so since he has been potty trained he has got increasingly worried about pooing on the potty or the toilet. He usually hides somewhere and poos in his pants. In the last week he was stopping himself from pooing and got extremely constipated. We have sorted that out now by giving him extra Movicol so much so that his poos are very loose but he is still refusing to poo on the toilet or potty. He has pooed in his pants 4 times today - twice at nursery and twice at home. We have tried to reward pooing in the toilet with a magazine or chocolate buttons. We have bought a new toilet seat which has a special child seat inside the lid. We have sat together in the bathroom and blown bubbles. We have read a number of potty books including Poo goes to Pooland. Nursery are great and are helping out by encouraging him and letting him watch the other children using the toilets to poo.
After today I am slightly at a loss as to what to do. I am very reluctant to put him back in nappies but don't feel like him pooing in his pants continually can go on either.
Advice, help gratefully received.

Would DS ask for a nappy to poo in when he needs to, thus making it a bit easier for the nursery staff to change him and at least he will be doing it, not with-holding? Then he would wear pants the rest of the time. You can then get him to go in the bathroom or loo to poo, so you put the nappy on, and he does it in the correct place. If this proves successful, he could start to try with a nappy-lined potty, where you can reduce the amount of 'padding' gradually by cutting a hole in it, and then on the toilet so that he still has the feel of the nappy but the poo goes through the hole. You can buy cheap value nappies for this.

It sounds like a really long winded way of going about it, but the aim is to restore DS' confidence in pooing without difficulty or pain, in a very gradual manner. Then when the poo is in nappy-lined potty or loo you can reward him for this, because essentially it is in the right place, not in his pants. Keep up the morale boosting and the potty books as well.

Thanks - it does sound long winded but I think we will give it a go and see how we get on.
Thanks for your response.

A quick update - have got some cheap nappies and have started doing as suggested above and it is working grand. Nursery are happy to do the same and have said they have some other children who do the same thing. DS1 happy to ask for a nappy to poo in so hopeful this will help move the situation on.
Thanks again

Excellent, sazlocks. So good that nursery are very supportive too. I think that one day DS will decide he will not need the nappies any more and be happy to use the loo, although this could take a while.