I strongly encourage you to follow your pediatrician's advice and get your child back on the daily Restoralax. Forget the "unnatural" woo. This is a huge diet to avoid constipation problem for kids and it can cause real trauma and real medical issues. If his diet is as described he's probably constipated because he's withholding poo. This starts the vicious cycle. The straining that he's doing can also be him trying not to poo. Withholding also causes the poo it to sit in his colon too long and lose water. This it can cause bowel distension and they won't be able to feel when they have to go. Please don't withhold a totally safe medication from your child because it seems unnatural!
My now 3.5 year old had this problem a year ago. Started withholding, got chronically constipated. We started Restoralax 1x a day at the full adult dose. We used it religiously until her stool was consistently soft. After being on it for a few weeks at full dose we cut back slowly. We probably used it off and on for a few months on advice of our ped. It fixed the diet to avoid constipation problem. She had a similar diet to your child, lots of fruit and veg and water. She was constipated because she was withholding poo and it was getting dehydrated. After being on Restoralax her problem was fixed because it didn't hurt to poo any more and she wasn't afraid to go. She is now "regular" on the same diet she was on before.
I sincerely apologize. Seriously, I'm very sorry for implying that because I know how stressful this is. I thought that you were withholding a med in favour of a more natural solution. The stuff was like a miracle to us. The root of our problem wasn't diet though, it was poo withholding and the fear that went along with it. It doesn't matter how much fibre or water or fruit you eat, if you don't get that waste out of the colon it will 'dry out'. We also used the hilariously titled book "It hurts when I poop" for some behaviour modification along with the med. I wouldn't be worried about long term effects if the dr's ok with it, and I'd probably give the full adult dose until the poo was soft and regular. Like I said, once we got the poo soft, and she wasn't afraid any more, we were able to back off the med. Oh and yes, the price point on the name brand Restoralax is ridiculous. There is a "Shoppers" version that's about 3/4 the price.
It won't stop me from feeling terrible for the accusation though. Here's a synopsis of our program that we kind of developed with our ped. We would read that "poop" book several times a day. It's a bit weird to read a book like that but it's actually great and seemed to work wonders. (read the Amazon reviews) It's about a little boy who's afraid to poo because it hurts told mostly from the child's point of view. It talks about poop, what is is, and how it won't just go away. It talked about good and bad foods. It talked about how it is his responsibility to take care of getting rid of the poop. It was a bit beyond my 2.5 year old at the time but she basically understood, and loved that stupid book. It's probably much more appropriate for your little guy.
There are behaviour modification programs that involve timed sitting on the potty etc, but we took another route that we thought would work with our kid. Instead of constantly bugging her about the potty we totally stopped all the talk about poop. We wouldn't mention it, we wouldn't ask her to try to go, or if she went. We dismantled the power struggle and put it into her hands. It was her responsibility to poop, it was our responsibility to make sure that her poo was soft (with both diet and the meds). From beginning of diet to avoid constipation problem to the end of it was probably about 3 months in total. When the withholding went away, the constipation went away. Hope that this is in some way helpful. [Read More]
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