Clare share’s her little boy Euan’s story of overcoming constipation problems after she reached out for help from the ERIC helpline.
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continence problems
Long-term bedwetting and a lasting solution
To kick off the countdown to World Bedwetting Day on Tuesday 24th May, we’re highlighting the problem of long-term bedwetting. This post was written by Andrea (not her real name), who wet the bed for many years before eventually finding a solution in her 30’s.
Progress after a long battle with constipation and soiling
In this guest post, our newest volunteer Helen Metcalfe talks us through the diagnosis and treatment of her daughter Sophie’s constipation and how the support and information she received from ERIC’s helpline got her through the hardest times.
Educating school staff about bladder and bowel health
The face of a new series of videos about children’s bladder and bowel care, Fiona Boorman, shares with us what she hopes the educational videos will achieve.
Fiona, a paediatric continence nurse specialist with Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust and her colleague Claire Lindsey, who are both ERIC trainers, teamed up with Virgin Care’s public health nursing team to create the videos. The nurses hope to increase knowledge of children’s continence among staff at local schools and pre-schools.
It’s lonely dealing with my son’s continence problems, as well as my own
Veronica, a mum of four, has suffered with bedwetting since she was 7. Here 9 year old son also has ongoing continence problems and special needs.
Dr Carol Joinson explains why more research into childhood continence problems is needed
Between April 1991 and December 1992, thousands of pregnant mums from across the former Avon area were recruited to the Children of the 90’s project (also known as The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, ALSPAC) and since then they and their babies have been questioned, measured, weighed and scanned in the name of research. The results have contributed to more than 750 scientific papers.
Teenage bedwetting – there’s nothing to be ashamed of
Today’s blog post has been written by Connor, a teenage bedwetter, who wants to share his story to help break down the stigma surrounding the problem and let other young people know they’re not alone. You can read more of Connor’s story and the experiences of other young people on the teenage pages of ERIC’s website.
I have been struggling with bedwetting for pretty much all of my life, and although thankfully things are improving now, there have been many challenges and difficult times.
When I was a young kid, I really didn’t see that it was anything out of the ordinary – I suppose I just assumed that everyone wet the bed, but obviously as I got older I realised that wasn’t the case and for a while I was very angry about still wetting the bed.
For much of my childhood I wore nappies to bed which may seem a trivial thing to get upset about, but I became very worried that somehow all my friends would know, even though there was no way they could find out. By the time I started at high school I was getting feeling very low about it all – I was convinced that I was the only teenager in the world still wetting the bed.
When I stopped wearing nappies it was good in the longer term, but hard to get into a new routine. Dealing with a wet bed is no fun, and I had many disrupted nights. It was especially worse on school nights of course – if I woke up wet in the middle of the night, there was no way I could go back to sleep without getting up and changing, which meant I had less sleep, but if I slept through until morning, it was always a rush to get changed and clean in time.
One of the biggest issues is the stigma surrounding bedwetting, which doesn’t exist with other conditions – for example I knew people at school with things like asthma and diabetes and they quite happily talked about it. However I would never even consider talking about bedwetting, and up until very recently only people within my family knew. Getting rid of this sort of stigma would be such a huge improvement – if it was easier to talk about it and know that people wouldn’t make any sort of fuss then I wouldn’t have missed out on so many things, sleepovers, school trips etc.
However I think it is important to try and see some of the positive sides. I have always had a lot of support from my parents and my younger brother. Also recently I was staying with a friend for a few days and had the courage for the first time to tell him about my problem and that I would be wearing incontinence pants as a safeguard whilst staying there – I was very relieved that he was not disgusted in any way and was happy that I had told him.
I just want to let others suffering bedwetting that is not something to be ashamed of, and although it might take a lot of time and patience, things will definitely get better.
Connor, 16
Living with a child who withholds poo!
Today’s blog coincides with the launch of ERIC’s new national awareness campaign, ‘Let’s Talk About Poo!’, which aims to alert parents to the early signs and symptoms of constipation, and highlight the support that ERIC provides. It is written by a mother of two, Sharon, whose daughter Jennifer has been with-holding poo and suffering with constipation over the last few years.
I would like to share my story in the hope that it may give words of encouragement and hope to others who may have a child that has constipation or is withholding poos.
When my eldest child, George, was born I was elated and felt truly blessed to have been given the gift of parenthood. I finally found out about the unconditional love everyone talks about but can’t really explain until it hits them. He wasn’t much of a sleeper so sleepless nights went on for some time but otherwise he was a gift and I cherished every moment. He loved cuddles (still does thankfully!) and every day I felt blessed to have him.
George was a late potty trainer compared to many of his peers and when he finally did it, it seemed to take an age to crack it. So, when my daughter Jennifer was born (when George was 2), I hoped that things would be easier. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
In contrast to George, Jennifer was a sleeper. I put her down for a nap and she slept. Good start. She was an angel in every sense. Adorable. Around the age of one I noticed that occasionally she had real difficulty passing hard poos. I had to cuddle and encourage her to let them out. I mentioned this to our Health Visitors and was prescribed Lactulose (sugary water) and told that this should solve it. It didn’t. I kept going with the Lactulose for months. By the time Jennifer was able to control her bowels she was holding them in.
Still I was told the Lactulose was the answer. On New Year’sDay, when she was 3, we ended up in out of hours clinic because she hadn’t been for days and I knew she was struggling. Again, I was told it will come out eventually (which of course it did, painfully). They also said that some children are on Lactulose for years. It is non-addictive and they should eventually grow out of the problem and can be weaned off. I took all this on board and kept hoping they were right. We stuck with pull ups much longer than most, partly because I was afraid of what would happen and kept convincing myself that she couldn’t be ready to wee in a potty with what was going on. We finally started potty training aged 3 and a half.
From this point on we were in a viscous circle. Jennifer would withhold the poos until a little slipped out. A little would keep slipping out all day. I am not exaggerating when I say that some days we would change 15 pairs of knickers. Wherever we went copious amounts of knickers and trousers went with us. It became our main topic of conversation every night when my husband came home.
We were becoming totally absorbed in the enormity of it all and it ruled our lives. George was amazing through all of this and never once complained about it. Bless him, he tried to encourage her to let them go. I read so much about it I felt like an expert but I still didn’t know what to do.
At that point in time, I didn’t know about ERIC and the support it provides parents through the website and helpline. Netmums had been a great help and we learnt to ask the GP for Movicol which worked very differently to Lactulose. We were told to give one sachet a day and this softened the poos slightly but she was still withholding. At this point she had never let a poo out willingly into the toilet.
It all came to a head after Jennifer started Nursery at the village school just before she was 4. The school were amazing, and still are. They totally understood what was going on and were only too happy to help and support us. They were encouraging and never complained. But I had had enough. I had tried star charts, gentle persuasion, bribing, you name it. We had lived with this for what seemed like an eternity and we were worried about the effect it was having on us as a family.
We needed help because we couldn’t do this alone. I sat in the GP surgery and I burst into tears. It wasn’t the first time I had cried. I had cried so many times in the privacy of home but this was my first public ‘outing’. I thought finally they would listen and would help me. I went home and waited…..
Then we had a breakthrough. A good friend of mine, a child psychologist, by chance found us a specialist consultant who was local and dealt with this exact issue. I was elated. We contacted him and he sounded perfect. My husband persuaded our GP that we needed a referral and within a few weeks we had our first appointment with the consultant, who has been wonderful. He told us to use as much Movicol as we needed to keep the poos soft and talked to Jennifer about Happy and Sad Mr Poo. After a massive evacuation of a stack load of poo (encopresis) we have found that 3 sachets a day works for Jennifer. She still withholds but she regularly lets them out willingly. She smiles. We smile. We all laugh together. She gets rewards. We made so much progress that we went on a shopping trip and she chose some pretty new knickers. A real achievement.
We are not totally there yet but I do see the light at the end of the tunnel. Six months ago she was withholding everything. Now we rarely have soiled knickers and we are assured that with time and continued medications she will get there. This time I believe it!
My message to anyone who has a child showing early signs of constipation – don’t wait until it is too late. Visit your health visitor or GP and insist on help. If we had been given Movicol earlier and used the right dose I truly believe we could have saved a lot of tears and NHS funds!
Sharon
The Right to Go: A helpline perspective on ERIC’s new continence guidance for schools
“My son has been avoiding drinking anything whilst he’s at school and even ended up having an accident because not all of his teachers will let him leave class to use the toilet. I don’t want it to be like this for him or other children in the same position.”
“I was called into my little girl’s school last week because she’d had an accident earlier in the day. She’d been left in dirty pants and I had to change and comfort her before scrubbing the carpet in her classroom. Is it fair to me or her that this is happening?”
I work on the ERIC helpline and these comments were made recently by parents who were feeling helpless and desperately looking for a way to resolve these problems for their children but not knowing who to turn to.
They are also, sadly, typical of scenarios we hear about on a regular basis whereby an already upsetting situation has been compounded by a less than sensitive reaction to an accident at school. From calls such as these to our helpline, emails and message board posts we know that children and their families are often left feeling socially isolated with the issue taking over their lives both at home and school.
At ERIC we feel strongly that no child should be suffering in this way and that schools need to take positive action to support the estimated 900,000 children in the UK with continence issues, and their families. A survey we commissioned with the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) in early 2012 also suggested that 62% of primary school staff in the UK have noticed an increase in the number of children wetting or soiling themselves during the school day over the past five years, which increased to 71% amongst those working specifically with three to five year olds.
This survey highlighted the need for schools and nurseries to put in place effective policies and procedures to support children with continence issues, and the importance of schools providing information on potty training at the time that a child’s place in school is confirmed.
So, in partnership with PromoCon, we launched an exciting new resource last week called ‘The Right to Go’, available as an 8 page leaflet and a more detailed 20 page Guide – both of which are available as a free download from the ERIC website: www.eric.org.uk
They have been designed as a ‘best practice approach’ to help schools and educational settings manage wetting and constipation and soiling problems for the children in their care. They give an overview of the issues, why they occur, how they can be identified and guidance for creating workable continence policies for all children including those with special needs.
The Guide has been written with busy teachers in mind to provide concise and easily accessible information, with a topic on each page to make printing easier. Both the leaflet and Guide are ideal resources for teachers, healthcare professionals and parents to share with colleagues and networks.
I’ve already taken several calls since we launched ‘The Right to Go’ where I’ve been able to tell parents that this is now available and they have been reassured that there’s now a document they can read and take into their child’s school. We’ve also had a great response from healthcare professionals since the launch so hopefully by working in partnership and following this guidance a consistent approach can be made towards helping children in the future.
Alina
Research into the emotional impact of bedwetting on families
The emotional impact of bedwetting on a child and their family can be considerable; in children, numerous studies report feelings of embarrassment and anxiety, loss of self-esteem and effects on self-perception, interpersonal relationships, quality of life and school performance. A significant negative impact on self-esteem is even reported in children with bedwetting episodes as infrequent as once per month.
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