Hellobee

Wow, we were blown away by the Hellobee community’s interest in childhood constipation and our interview last week with Tom DuHamel, PhD aka Dr. Tom.

In case you missed the interview last week, Dr. Tom is a clinical child psychologist who used to be the Chief Psychologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital; he’s been working with sufferers of childhood constipation for 30 years, and just wrote a book called, The Ins And Outs Of Poop. If you haven’t already gotten a PDF copy of our interview with Dr. Tom, just input your email below and we will send you the PDF:

(We’re also pulling together a longer free course on childhood constipation, and will send that out when it’s ready.)

After our first post about constipation went up, we got a bunch of questions from worried parents asking about their LO’s struggles with constipation (both occasional constipation and the “functional constipation” that Charlie is suffering from). I am not an expert in childhood constipation though… so I asked Dr. Tom if he would be willing to guest blog on Hellobee and answer some of your questions. He was kind enough to agree!

Here’s his first guest blog for our new feature, Ask Dr. Tom! :) 

Dr. Tom –

My son is still only 5 months but I am a little concerned about how he consistently does not poop on more ‘stressful’ days that are outside our normal schedule.

For example, I can pretty much count on him not pooping on Sundays since we take him to church all day. Also, on a recent trip to SF/Napa (only a 2 hour flight from Vancouver here), he didn’t poop for 4 days straight. We joked that he would finally poop when we flew over Canadian soil…. he did.

Sonja

Dear Sonja –

It is fairly common for young children to become constipated when their normal eating and sleeping schedules are disrupted.

For example, a number of parents have told me that their child first became constipated while driving between Seattle and California to visit Disneyland, in some cases necessitating an ER visit along the way. Vacation trips are especially difficult for kids because of having to eat at different times and in different surroundings. Kids also become constipated when travelling because of dehydration and insufficient exercise.

To prevent constipation while travelling, I recommend that parents do the best they can to maintain their child’s usual eating, nap and bed times and to be sure that their child drinks extra fluids and gets plenty of exercise.

As I say in my book, our GI tract likes exercise: exercise helps us poop. So, if driving a long distance, make frequent stops to let your child walk or run around a bit before sitting on the potty. If you’re in an airplane, use the times when the food and beverage carts are not in the way to walk your child up and down the aisle a few times.

Dr. Tom

If you have any other questions about childhood constipation, you can ask Dr. Tom on his website here:

* http://www.theinsandoutsofpoop.com/insandouts/askdrtom.html

He’ll be answering some of your questions about occasional constipation, functional constipation and encopresis (aka poop accidents), both here on the Hellobee blog and on his site!

Does your LO get constipated when you travel or otherwise change your routine?

ps Since I last blogged about Charlie’s functional constipation, we started Dr. Tom’s six-step program… and yesterday morning, Charlie pooped in the potty for the first time in four months!  He went again later in the day.  I can’t recommend Dr. Tom’s book enough to any parents struggling with this terrible problem!  Will keep you guys posted on how it goes… we fully expect Charlie’s recovery to take 6-18 months.  Still, some unexpectedly early progress!

ed note: The information on this site is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and is for education purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.