No Poop For You!

My son does not handle change very well. No matter how minor the change seems to us, anything that deviates from the normal routine sends my son into a tailspin.

With spring here, the days are longer and my son has an extra abundance of energy because of it. Additionally, his first grade teacher left about a month ago to go on maternity leave, after giving birth to a set of twin girls. At first Christopher's class had different substitute teachers but now thankfully they have settled on one teacher for the rest of the year.

That's a lot of change and Christopher has responded by refusing to go to the bathroom. At first, this resulted in poop accidents in his pants. That happened several times out of the blue. Now, however, he has gotten better at holding it in so now he becomes horribly constipated as a result.

When he does go, the stools are huge and rock hard. Imagine a golf ball passing through a 7-year-old's colon and rectum and you can imagine the screaming, crying and bleeding that has been going on in our house of late.

Last week, I took the kiddo to see his pediatrician and the doctor prescribed a tablespoon of Miralax once a day, in order to soften the stool and make it easier to pass. Several days later and with no noticeable change, I upped the dosage to two tablespoons (with the blessings of his doctor of course). Yesterday, even after two tablespoons, Christopher still hadn't gone in two days and was screaming, crying and in pain. At this point I gave him a kiddie laxative, feeling somewhat desperate.

This worked and he pooped twice. In his pants of course because he's still too afraid to sit on the toilet. And it was still rock hard although definitely smaller in size and no blood this time. Yay for small miracles I guess.

I think I'm going to have to resort to daily laxatives and then 30 minutes later make him sit on the toilet to get the poop out of him. I feel a little like I'm potty training again but like I said, change does not happen well in our house and this is clearly regressive behavior based on change.

Let's hope that this issue clears up sooner rather than later because I'm already doing my second load of laundry today because of it.