Just trying to get help for my 11 year old niece. She has had problems with her bowels since she was an infant. The only time she can go is with ennemas, once in awhile she can go on her own, but very rare. My sister has taken her to specialists, but they can not find anything wrong. I am praying that someone else has some good advice.

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Ginny

She may not be drinking enough water. Set a timer every hour and have her drink a glass of water, not soda pop.

Using a little water in lower part of colon is o.k. not very much at any one time. Nutrients will be washed out otherwise which the child needs.

Is she eating plenty of roufage, fiber in her diet?
If not, then she should include lots of fiber along with lots of water. Fiber with little water will only make a person constipated, but with plenty of water it helps to eliminate.

If she was given high enemas all her life it may have
caused her to lose the natural urge of the colon to have a movement, therefore stools just keep stacking up.

Marie

can i ask u how old was she when the problem started as my daughter is 3....and also has a lot of seapage with it and is still in nappys....did she have seapage and was she in nappys at the time?

I think my sister noticed the problem when she was trying to potty train her, my sister said she had problems as a baby too. Not sure of sepage though, but i know she has sepage now. Hopefully your little one will not have to go through what my niece is.

when my daughter has enimas and laxatives, they do not work so she has 2 have klean-prep's 2 empty her bowels, every month...so basically she is in pain 4 a month till the hospital can empty her bowels 4 her

Milwaukee childrens hospital has a special clinic dealing with constipation. Why not check this out and drop them a line or call them to see if they can't help. http://www.chw.org/jhome.asp This is the main link to Childrens hospital and more info and phone numbers can be found there

Shamefully, I'm glad I found this post. Not because of the problem, but to know I wasn't the only one.

I've had bowel problems since I was a baby. I'm a person who has always preferred fluids to food, yet I still get plenty of both. I find that the only time I seem to get a regular movement is when I'm eating 'terrible' foods and up until my teens, I would be lucky to get a movement once a week if not once a fortnight.
These days it's about once every 3-5 days and while that may not be normal to some people, it's normal for me. The thing I find helps when nothing else including all-bran, metamucil and the like, has been licorice.
It's a staple in my diet and while I've never been checked out to see what's wrong, I know it's not normal, but it's something I inherited from my mother.

Does she like licorice? I don't take it all the time, so I don't worry about being reliant on it, I need something either way. The tablet form of laxatives should only be used in 'emergency'.

She may find her bowels settle down heading towards adulthood, other than that, I'm not sure what can be done and would be interested in some good suggestions other than metamucil, fruit and veg in a diet as I'm one of those 'nothing works' (except licorice) cases.

My son is 8 and has chronic constipation since he was an infant. We have been to a number of specialists. Even had an MRI of his spine done. One specialist said his bowls were distended from the chronic constipation and that "training" them would help. Milk of Magnesia 2Xs a day. We also instituted a 10 minute (whether you need it or not) rule. After breakfast and dinner - he does "his 10 minutes." He has to sit for 10 minutes. We have had good success with this combo MOM and routine. At least he is not having constant accidents or bloody stools from constipation! The doctor tried to move him to Miralax from the MOM but he seems to need the stimulant properties of MOM. He also has poor sensory integration generally, and I wonder if this is just another aspect of that.

Thanks for all your replies, I just told my neice that their are other people out there like her and I think it made her feel better. She is getting more bowel movements maybe once every week, so thats alot better. Hopefully as she gets older shw will go more. Once again THANK YOU!!

Hi everybody

I'm Martin. See my reply to GlitterFairy

Regards
Martin

I'm another example of how using a "harmless" laxative on a regular basis can cause more problems than it seems to solve. For about two years, I took Milk of Magnesia two or three nights a week with the belief it was keepeng me regular. Needless to say, it sure made me go alright and I thought it was cleaning my system. After a while though, it slowly stopped working as well and I then did reading on how the colon can come to depend on laxatives and even develop a tolerance. I stopped the Milk of Magnesia and then started taking Metamucil every day. Maybe it's also because of the change in stool form created by the Metaucil but I often needed a glycerin supp. to make me go and suspect I had deveoped a lazy bowel. Now, I hardly ever need to use the supps to help me go and it seems I'm ever so slowly getting back to normal.

Milk of Magnesia is considered to be a laxative and like all laxatives, can be habit forming, so much so that it can be very hard to have a BM without its use. It can also alter the acid/alkaline balance of the stomach, which is not good either.

It is such as shame that a child so young should need to take Milk of Magnesia on a daily basis. If they can't have a successful BM without it now, then the problems of adulthood will just be ten times worse. Try and sort this out now rather than later to prevent further suffering.

I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and assume that some of you with bowel problems have had either vaccinations as infants or rounds of antibiotics at some point in life, sometimes also as infants or toddlers.

If that is the case (it was the case with me), then the intestinal flora in the colon gets all out of whack, and the good bacteria needed for good elimination gets destroyed. What is then needed is a good probiotic supplement to replace those good bacteria.

The best one I have ever tried is called Primal Defense. I used to order it off the web but now it is available at any Vitamin Shoppe.

The clear advantage here is that the product is completely natural and will not cause your bowel to become lazy or dependent, but will help it to work properly on it's own. It will also help to detox whatever pollution has been collecting in your colon so far, and eliminate it.

Rather than stick with artificial chemicals like Milk Of Magnesia and whatnot, this is certainly more than worth your while to at least try.

One thing that helps alot is flax seeds, grind them up in a coffee grinder and take 2 tbsp on your bran cereal or mixed in with something everyday. Lots of water to, I have had a problem all my life to and so does the rest of my family but the flax seeds and bran does help, include flax seed bread to. Don't take Psyllium it absorbs the free water in your colon and leaves the colon dehydrated which in turn constipated.

I just read an article the other day about psyllium and it did talk about it being constipating for some people.......I am one of them. I'm just starting on the Flax Seed. I am soaking it all day long to soften them as I do not have a grinder yet. I drink approx 1 1/2 Tbsp along with the water I soaked it in. It seems to be helping some.

can i ask u how old was she when the problem started as my daughter is 3....and also has a lot of seapage with it and is still in nappys....did she have seapage and was she in nappys at the time?
This maybe a dumb question but....what do you mean by seapage?

BCbear,
The long terms affects are not good and are well documented and you certainly have cause for being worried!!
Several problems can happen with these laxatives. Your daughter can become dependent-- losing muscle tone with Senokot and irritated intestines.So, she will never be able to have normal BMs-- sorta harsh reality!!
And, using mineral oil she does not absorb vital nutrients required for mental as well as physical development of a healthy person because the intestines are coated with oil. She will develop Malabsorbtion Syndrome and you don't want to go there--- she will develop all sorts of disorders in her life.

She needs a more natrual safe fibre program along with some fibre supplements.A person needs 20 to 30 grams of fibre daily for their intestines to function normally. Just the our Intestines WORK. You may need to consult another Doctor-- it's not mental --it's the laxatives---I think!!! And, I think your wife needs to become more knowledgable about healthy eating. I know it won't be easy??

I wish your family well and I hope it's not too late---Harry

My son is 8 and has chronic constipation since he was an infant. We have been to a number of specialists. Even had an MRI of his spine done. One specialist said his bowls were distended from the chronic constipation and that "training" them would help. Milk of Magnesia 2Xs a day. We also instituted a 10 minute (whether you need it or not) rule. After breakfast and dinner - he does "his 10 minutes." He has to sit for 10 minutes. We have had good success with this combo MOM and routine. At least he is not having constant accidents or bloody stools from constipation! The doctor tried to move him to Miralax from the MOM but he seems to need the stimulant properties of MOM. He also has poor sensory integration generally, and I wonder if this is just another aspect of that.
Hi- I just read your post about your son and Miralax. Did you ever find a solution? My daughter (4-1/2) cannot have a BM without some sort of laxative. After being on Miralax 2 yrs. I went in a natural direction and started her on Calcium Lactate. She began having BM's daily. Now though I'm trying to cut back on the amt. and it's not working. She's on an adult's dosage which is not good for her kidneys as she has Urinary Reflux. I was just wondering if you had success with your son?

It may not be a food, or fiber, or liquids problem................

Your story sounds like several others I've heard. Please, look into Hirschsprung's Disease.... see if it sounds like something that should be brought up with a GI specialist.

Hello,

I am also one of the "nothing works types"as far as any food or special diet. I have Total Hirschprung's which means my mom had Hirshprung's and so an even more severe form, where there are pretty much no functional nerves in my colon, was passed down to me. Basically it's like my colon is useless. My only options were laxitives or manual stimulation or other extremely unsatisfactory methods.

I've been to a couple of gastroenterologists, the first of which was basically a quack and didn't seem to take me seriously or help at all. I was around 21 or 22 and it was the first time I had been brave enough to go see a doctor about it, so the bad experience deterred me from getting further help for awhile. Finally after getting a little older and less self concious about the problem, especially since constipation is such a common problem, I went to a good gastroenterologist and had many test done over the course of a year, like the marker test and anal manometry and the test were they inflate the balloon... anyway.

This Dr. really couldn't do much for me either just because my problem was so severe and rare. I had tried Zelnorm and diet and all that kind of stuff, but it didn't work, and trying to rely on laxitives or medications isn't healthy. So this doctor said that my best luck would be to use an enema bag with tap water to help me go. That that was really my only option unless I wanted to have a colonostomy or something like that which would mean I would either have one of those bags attatched to me or leaky undesireable results from some other kind of operation like a pull through. He said that an enema bag is harmless and that using this to keep regular could eventually help my bowels train themselves.

So I've just accepted the fact that my bowels just plain don't work and probably never will. I have set myself on a routine and use the enema bag every other day. I just use it and hold it in while laying in a warm bath reading a book or something for 15-30 minutes until I can feel that I'm ready to go to the bathroom. I've been using this method for years and it keeps me feeling comfortable in my abdomen.

Once you get used to the routine and understand you're not doing it because you are wierd, but just because you have a medical condition, it is a pretty simple process. There are always days every now and then that I feel silly and wish I didn't have to do this to be able to use the restroom, but for the most part I keep my sense of humor about it and just think of it as what I have to do to keep myself healthy and happy.

My childhood was extremely uncomfortable because of this condition as my parents didn't understand how severe my symptoms were and didn't know enough to help me deal with this problem. I was constanly bloated and uncomfortable with almost constant seapage and stained underwear resulting from my blocked distended colon. This was accompanied by frequent urges to pass stool in class or on the playground that were useless as it would be like your body trying to pass rocks to no avail. I couldn't really run or exert myself much because it would either trigger one of these useless uncomfortable urges or I was just too tired all the time. (Now I don't get any natural urges as an adult to use the restroom and I think the problem going untreated during childhood and adolescence is what has left my bowel completely non-functional and unable to be trained) As a kid I passed a large amount of stool once or twice a month, I guess after the whole bowel would just kind of fill up and water from higher up in my system kind of diffused through the stool in the rest of my colon or something, I don't know.

But if this sounds like your or your childs symptoms and nothing else seems to work, I would definately suggest trying an enema routine. And with a child, when they get old enough, teaching them how to do it themselves. And hopefully their bowels will be able to start functioning on their own and if not, and least they won't be in pain and discomfort all the time.

Sorry this was so long, but I figured I might as weel tell my whole story for anyone else out there with similar trouble. I hope this helps somebody.

P.S.

If I am going on a vaction or a camping trip or something like that I will use something like miralax or another powerful laxative for that time, just so I can kind of take a vaction from my bowel problems and constipation at the same time, and also so I don't have to worry about trying to give myself an enema inside a damn tent or something like that. ;)