Neurogenic bowel and bowel management

[AllieFaye]

At almost four, it's time for my first child to start bowel management for his neurogenic bowel. I've just been struggling and begging for respite care for months. I'm a little frustrated, but excited that change is finally happening. He's not dealing with constipation, but with incontinence. It's been difficult for family and friends to understand that it's not diarrhea. I'm hoping that the other adults around him can stop making things worse with their uninformed comments.

Can I get some insight from experienced moms? I recall bowel management comes up from time to time, and I've tried to follow the discussion to prepare myself. Now that we're actually going through it, I'm more ready to process this information.

[KatWrangler]

Gabrielle has been on a bowel management program for about 2 years now. We do castile soap and water cone enemas every night.

Now, you can have diarreah and still be constipated. Have they done x-rays of the belly yet to make sure?

What did the Doctor have in mind for the program for you guys?

[AllieFaye]

Yes, I know about the diarrhea with constipation! However, he's really fortunate that he's not having either right now. The problem I'm having is they don't understand that incontinence is not diarrhea - just like they don't understand that bladder spasms are not a bladder infection.

Right now we're starting of really slowly.