Advice about 9 year old with bowel problems

[Camlet]

My 9 year old son has had bowel problems his whole life & drs do not believe he will ever get full control of it. He leaks all day long with pretty much no control over it. Despite this his school has always insisted on him wearing pants although he is actually classed as incontinent by his doctors. I worry to much about him getting bullied to let him wear a nappy/incontinent pad so agreed to let him wear pants anyway & he has now worn them for years, the only problem is he makes such a mess in them I really struggle to get them clean washing them in the washing machine & also find rather than cleaning them it just covers everything else in his poo (sorry tmi) his poo is very sticky & hard to get out by hand & even when it looks like just a small mark it makes a huge mess! So I have been having to throw away the pants quite a lot & as you can imagine it costs a fortune to do! Anyway I have absolutely no experience with cloth nappies but have heard that there are ones that you can put an insert in & then the insert is thrown away? I was wondering if any of you ladies who may have a child with similar problems have ever used anything like this & if so if could give me some advice on them? Like do they make them for older children (if they even exist at all lol) & if they actually look anything like normal pants or at least don't stand out as much as a disposable nappies? I really don't know what to do tbh as I can't just keep wasting pants & I think it may be a bit cruel to put him in nappies after all this time! Any advise would be greatly appreciated xx

 

[mummy2o]

My son had those, but he was younger in reception. He decided he wanted to be toilet trained in year 1 and that was that. However his ones were proper pants made from cloth. So like a pullup and I know you get the inserts from boots. I can't remember for the life of me where you get the pants from. Maybe my mother remembers. I don't know what size they go up to though but I know my son was in the biggest size nappy before using these.

 

[Camlet]

Ooh they sound like they would be perfect if they did have his size! I'll have to have a look in boots when I'm next in town maybe they have something on the packaging that I could look up? xx

 

[mummy2o]

Apparently they were brought in boots. However if they don't do his size I did look for some and a few places in the states go up to age 12 on cloth pants, if you didn't mind paying for postage. Although I did find this site https://www.eric.org.uk/Shop/product/62 Might be worth a look. Sorry I can't help you more, as like I said he decided one day he wanted to be toilet trained and that was more or less that.

 

[purplerat]

ERIC is an incontinence charity who could definitely help. They do proper pants that look like normal pants to all, with absorbent inserts. You can also buy panty liner type inserts for his normal pants which are discreet also. X

 

[Mrsmitch80]

Hi, what bowel issues does your son have? Has he got a diagnosis? My daughter has tethered cord therefore has nerve problems and sufferes chronic constipation, she was on stool softeners but they have her the same issues as your son.

Have you got a continence nurse? They have great solutions as I would think that it would be better for both you and your son to aim for medically managed continence if possible so that he is clean all day. There are suppositories that he could 'clean' his bowel out each evening or a type of 'colonic irrigation' called peristeen that can be used. My daughter is 5, we started using this when she was 4 and it improved her quality of life no end.

I find it really sad that you have been given this outlook but don't appear to be getting any help.

Please feel free to pm me if you have any questions xx