hi I know some of you cope with your kids' incontinence all the way up to and including adulthood but this is kind of a new thing for me .
Ds2 started having seizures just before Christmas - up 'til then we had pretty much assumed he was NT. He's currently on sodium valproate (which seemed to stop the tonic-clonic seizures) and lamotrigine (which has been ramped up pretty slowly but has stopped the myoclonic seizures and he has been seizure free for 8 weeks now. )
Both of my boys have had patches of wetting themselves quite a bit. Ds2's always been fairly good with his poos. But for a couple of months now, as well as wetting himself a lot, he's been pooing in his pants on and off and doesn't even seem to notice that he's doing it. It's not necessarily every day, but this week it's been at least once every day and sometimes several times. His stool is fairly loose (sorry if tmi) but it's not really what I would call diarrhoea, and it's certainly not connected with other signs of a bacterial or viral infection. If anything he seems a lot perkier than usual (initally the lamotrigine really knocked him out) and his appetite has increased, which I know can be a side-effect of both drugs.
He has just reached the target dose of lamotrigine, which he started in February. Initially we were increasing it every fortnight, then every week. But the pooing doesn't seem to be linked to each increase i.e. it doesn't start a fixed number of days after each time his drugs go up. Maybe I'm trying to be too scientific about this though, and it wouldn't necessarily show a clear pattern.
There are other factors that might be affecting him. We thought both boys had threadworms a few weeks' ago and they and dp all took the 'Ovex' tablets (not the ones that might lead to more seizures, luckily). I know reinfection is pretty common so that might be another reason, although he hasn't complained of an itchy bum recently. Also I'm 34 weeks pregnant and I know some kids respond to the 'threat' of a new baby by becoming more dependant. But it's happening at nursery as well as at home, and although he doesn't show much awareness when he's pooing he usually tries to hide it when it's happened rather than smear it on the wall or anything like that. And as there are food intolerances in the family I'm always worried that he might develop them too. But again, the incidents don't seem to be linked to cow's milk, for example.
I have just logged on to the NSE forum and it seems that other parents have found their children becoming incontinent again even if they were previously continent - so I'm really starting to wonder if this is what's going on here. Anyway any advice on how to deal with it will be gratefully received.