r/Encopresis

I had encopresis from potty training to age 13. My mother gave up at around age 11. So all throughout middle school, I would basically use pads as a diaper. Every day. And you can imagine how smelling like poop affected me socially. What did my mom do about this? she just gave me exorbitant amounts of laxatives (like the liquid magnesium one), so then I would spend my entire weekend shitting my little kid brains out. But as you can imagine this never fixed it. I have ADHD. Kids with ADHD or autism are more likely to have encopresis.

For ME what needed to happen after the laxative clear out, was basically training how to use my organs properly. What’s the point of getting all the poop out if the organs don’t know what to do after?? I think I genuinely cured myself purely out of shame. I was going to high school next year, how was I gonna navigate high school with this?????

and now as an adult, I have a really weird complex about smelling bad. If I feel slightly gross, I have to shower. This is just proper hygiene, but I have to use up a bidet every single time I use the washroom (I even have a travel bidet now) because even though I wipe my ass properly, I’m just terrified of smelling like poo. in high school I felt the need to put so much perfume on myself to kind of overhaul the previous bad smell if that makes sense. Like I used to smell like poo, but now I smell like apple-honey-champagne by Bath and body Works. Both are nauseating, but one smells Way better than the other.

And lastly, all those laxatives fucked my stomach up. Maybe my mom was just abusive, but she forced me to drink an entire bottle of the magnesium citrate, multiple times throughout the year. I want to gag and cry just thinking about that stuff. Please please please do not force your children to take the laxatives. This condition is incredibly traumatizing and humiliating. Yes the kids need laxatives to help, but there’s a good way and bad way to do that. I understand his parents you can get really frustrated, but you have to understand that your kid is going through something incredibly challenging. Try to get creative with the laxatives, find a wait hide it or just make it more appealing to your kid. and for the love of God, do not post about it on Facebook and talk about it with your friends. My mom did that all the time, and it was extra humiliating knowing that all of her Facebook friends knew I was shitting myself on the regular.

sorry for any weird formatting. I wrote this with speech to text

I have one kid with a history of chronic constipation that started when she was a baby, and I've always closely monitored her pooping habits. I actually became aware of Dr. Hodges and MOP several years ago when I was looking for guidance on potty training her. But shockingly (to me), this post isn't about her. It's about my 5.5 year old, whom I have never thought of as constipated in his life...until now.

He potty trained easily at 3, with daily spontaneous poops that were reasonably soft and big. No accidents that I can really remember. He's also not even close to being dry at night, but my understanding was that it was normal to take much longer for that to happen (my daughter was night trained within a couple months of being daytime trained, but that always seemed the most abnormal).

Four weeks ago, he suddenly had multiple poop accidents in one week. It seemed like he just wasn't making it to the toilet in time, and they were all very soft and sticky and hard to clean up. I thought maybe it was some kind of mild illness and waited it out. Since then, he's had 1-2 poop accidents per week, bad enough that we've needed to throw away several pairs of underwear. Also around the same time, we started dealing with him waking up from a leaking pull-up several times a week (we've tried going both up and down a size, to no avail).

My understanding is that encopresis technically can't be diagnosed unless it's been going on for 3 months. But he starts kindergarten in a couple weeks and I've been stressed about this happening at school. Doctor recommended a Míralax cleanout, and I went down the rabbit hole and ended up buying the MOP protocol book. According to Dr. Hodges, both the poop accidents and the overnight peeing can (only) be explained by rectal backup. He also says if you catch it younger/earlier it is easier to resolve, and might not require the most aggressive versions of MOP.

So I decided to go ahead with it. We got some Pedia-Lax LGS because we're familiar with it from using it a few times with our older child. Gave it to him tonight, and it was quick and easy (his only complaint was that it made his tummy hurt right before he pooped). Some stuff came out, but not a ton. And I'm suddenly feeling a bit daunted by the thought of doing this for...months, and wondering if I am moving too fast? Is it overly aggressive to do MOP at this point, and should I be waiting longer to see if he actually continues to have accidents...? (Most recent one was two days ago.) Would welcome perspective or feedback.

My daughter, 8 (almost 9) has been dealing with encopresis since she was about 3. We have tried years of timed sits + ex lax and I thought we were on a good path when a routine of timed sits + forcing her to drink a cup or two of water a day was getting her accidents down to once a week. Then I sent her away to sleepaway camp. I thought she’d have maybe one or two accidents a week there and be able to handle it herself, throwing out underwear if necessary.

Wrong! She was unable to poop by herself at camp (despite having timed sits supervised by the nurse) and was having 3 accidents a day and the camp had to send her home early.

The silver lining is that I realized that what we were doing was not working and my frantic googling led me to the MOP method. We’ve done enemas before so she’s not thrilled about the prospect of daily enemas, but she’s on board. She desperately wants to go back to camp next year and knows she cannot unless something drastically changes.

One question is that I don’t have time to get an xray but may be able to get a little less than two weeks in, is it worth it? My pediatrician or ped GI will order one.

I wish I had learned about MOP years ago. Any other tips or suggestions?

Hello my son who is almost 6 has Encopresis has been fully potty trained since 4. (level 1 autism)

We are not sure what to do anymore. We are going through underwear at a crazy rate, (most are beyond washing) not sure what to keep doing other than to keep buying more. Is there anything we can try? He takes fiber gummies and miralax when needed. he can be accident free for a week or have 4 accidents a day for days. His pediatrician isn’t too helpful just recommended miralax and a clean out miralax schedule when it gets bad.