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.

To Pee or Not To Pee

I woke up this morning at 3am to the sound of someone peeing on the floor next to my bed. At first I thought it was the dog and was ready to yell “bad doggie!” Imagine my surprise though when I turn on the light and I realize it’s … Christopher. Say what?

I’m half asleep and not at my most patient. So I yell, “WHY ARE YOU PEEING ON MY FLOOR? STOP PEEING!” So he stops. Thankfully.

Now I need an answer to my question. Why were you peeing on my floor??

Christopher was afraid of the dark and he didn’t want to go to the bathroom all by himself. So he chose to pee on my floor instead. The logic of this escapes me but I’m not a five year old kid afraid of the dark so who am I to judge?

I’ve now upset him with my yelling though and so I need to stop and calm down. Christopher asks me, “do you still love me”? It breaks my heart a little to know that he’s afraid he wouldn’t be loved anymore for one pee incident. So I hug him and tell him, “of course I still love you. I just don’t *like* that you peed on my floor”.

This makes him stop crying, thankfully. And at this point I give him a roll of paper towels and tell him he’s got to clean up the mess. He’s five years old and needs to understand the repercussions of his impulsive actions. He did a half-okay job and I did the rest. I mean hey this is my bedroom and I do not want any pee left on the floor. Ewww.

Potty training has definitely been a challenge for this kid and at the age of 5-1/2 I thought we were done but as last night shows, we’re not quite done yet. We were only able to stop wearing pull-ups to bed last February and we only stopped them then because there had been a huge snow storm and I couldn’t get out of the house to buy another pack after running out. Since then, Christopher has often been up two, three, four times a night to pee. This is because he had the sensation of needing to go, even if he didn’t really have to. I actually took him to the doctor for this and he ran tests and found nothing wrong. I had a test scheduled with a radiologist at Children’s Hospital but as it took several months to schedule the appointment, Christopher’s need to constantly pee had subsided in that time. I really do think it was just a potty training issue.

The way I look at it is, with Christopher some stuff will just take longer since he had such a traumatic history. Potty training is one of those things. And so I need to remember that next time Christopher pees on my floor at 3am. This of course isn’t easy to do when I’m exhausted and trying to sleep but I do the best that I can.