I never have the urge to go- anyone else??

Hi Ginny,
Oh that is an annoying thing that can happen with pop! does this mean you only get the urge 1x a week with magnesium, or do you more often but not regularly?

thoughts... no scientific evidence here, just my experience and that of what others have said...

--keeping everything toooo soft can cause problems, maybe because you don't get the same signal. not to say don't do that, just now it can also cause a problem...
--first thing in the morning is a good time to try to get things going. hot water upon waking can be helpful, followed by a good fibre-ey breakfast--oatmeal and fruit, something like that
--i find that a good lunch of beans / pulses, plus a good walk can work
--magnesium daily isn't bad for you. are you worried about taking magnesium daily? it is something we need, and few people get enough. after reading about it i've started taking it daily, and noticed that i'm far more likely to have a second BM if i do take it
--Louise talks about sitting on the toilet 20 minutes after eating to try
--also others talk about twisting to the right on the toilet
--could you have any food intolerances?
--if i really need, i'd rather drink a coffee (for me decaf) than take a laxative. don't drink them often, but might be an option every now and then...

it is annoying but i do have faith it is something that we can find answers to through diet...keeping experimenting is key.

Hi Ginny

I don't know whether or not this is relevant to you, but I will relate the story anyway.

My daughter was pretty much totally daytime incontinent until she was six. Night time was fine. She had a lot of medical specialist treatment, which didn't help one bit. I finally realised that she didn't know whether or not she needed to go, and did not know when she was urinating or pooing, which she was doing. She seemed to have no sensation in her bowel or bladder fullness or emptying. Yikes! The only way she could poo was to wait until her body literally forced the poo out, which was messy, embarrassing and unmanagable. We would sit her on the toilet 20 minutes after a meal, and if we were lucky her body would respond to the normal digestive process and push her intestinal contents along when her meal had been in her stomach for 20 minutes. This was while we used laxatives and psyllium every night, and even following a behaviour modification program, which only frustrated all of us.

I figured that had to mean that the sensory nerves were being blocked somehow, so I took her to a chiropractor, once a week for a few weeks, then monthly for a several years.

She developed some sensation after the first visit, and was 90% normal after about 6 weeks. By the time she was 12 she was perfectly normal. She never had another dose of laxative after her first chiropractor visit.

Have you tried a chiropractor? We were lucky and had one locally who was gob-smacked that his treatment worked, but if you have a choice, shop around for someone who might be familiar with solving bowel problems.

Sorry I didn't post earlier. Your initial topic slipped past my eyes.
Louise

Hi Ginny,
I take magnesium citrate, about 250mg, which i take daily. I wouldn't take something super strong daily....you don't want to start training your body not to listen to the signals that are there. as Louise says, you need it to listen. (I agree re osteopaths--i think they are great).

You say about IBS....I have a personal theory that a lot of people with IBS really have food allergies. I say this as I had all the symptoms and was sooooo ill for a long time. discovered I am severely gluten intolerant. since my pop, i can't have cheese or chocolate anymore either. I also have to ensure i have a ton of fibre every day (about 35 to 40 whatevers they measure it in), made of nice raw veg, pulses, fruit....

have you experimented with diet before? you have to cut out a food for 3 weeks to know if it is the culprit, but might be worth a try?

Kiki

Hi Ginny

I have a problem in that I have the urge to go, then go a bit and the urge stops before I have finished! Leaving me with the feeling that there is still something there, really aggravates pop! I get it for a week or two, then it resolves, I haven't made a connection with any particular reason as yet. I do take magnesium citrate if it gets bad, it seems to help. I just had a week or so of this problem, so am going to keep taking the magnesium and see if it prevents it again.

I have to agree with Louise, that chiropractic is helpful for this. I also had problems with my daughter getting constipated when she went onto solids and found chiro brilliant, and that day she went without crying or straining for the first time. I took her about 4 times and the problem resolved.

For myself I find chiro helps with back pain, and definately helps the gut. Sometimes I feel nauseous after my appointment, which just shows the effect it does have.

Aussie Mum

AussieMum, you know about LoPo don't you? Put it into the search box. I think the topic is Pooing in the Animal Kingdom, or something like that.

Louise

I sometimes find i don't need to initially splint, but if the urge stops a little splint resolves that...or someone suggested putting one foot up on the toilet, which can straighten things out... experiment is key!

Yes, I have tried lopo before, I find a foot stool better but this has been discussed before. I try twisting from side to side which also helps, and bending from side to side. It is weird though, it just resolves itself after a little while, then comes back unexpectedly. I wish I could work out a connection to the cause.

I tried splinting, and it did not work for me though. How do you put a foot up on the toilet kiki? Do you mean get off and put foot up, then sit back down?

Yes, I think we need to note as many techniques as we can. Nothing works all the time, and sometimes you can combine tricks for better effect. I think this is because our digestive system is one dynamic tube, that is never the same as it was last time we looked. There is nearly always a variety in our diet, and we tend to not graze over 24 hours, but eat lots at once, then not eat for a few hours. So there are full bits of intestine and empty bits of intestine all the way along the tube, 24/7. Our guts move around a lot to accommodate this.

It is annoying when you have half a poo, and know that there is a heap more in there, but I find that it usually goes up again out of the rectum and the discomfort eases. Then a few hours later I will get the urge again, and might only have another bit of a poo. For some reason, somewhere along the line, I have a full empty out. The best course of action is for me to not worry about it, and just wait for the urge to come again, which I know it will, and always attend to it when it does come. Trusting your body is the hard bit.

Louise

Too true!! I find it lasts days though and causes a lot of discomfort. I am thinking maybe a food diary might help see if there is any triggers there too. I was feeling so fantastic with barley any symptoms until the most recent episode and now notice the pop constantly again. I know it will ease up over the next few days, but ideally would love to prevent the half-poo!! :-)

What you describe sounds sort of cyclical to me...i.e. hormonally induced. Have your cycles returned since your last birth?

Yes, I have wondered this actually, no my cycles have not returned as yet, it is nearly a year. I am still breastfeeding a lot, in fact as bub is teething currently, she wants to feed even more. I did used to get a little bit constipated prior to my period, but it only ever lasted 1-2 days max. This lasts a week or more, up to about 10 days, then all of a sudden I start to have normal BMs again.

I have the same problem,and only go when I use glycerin suppositories.

Hi AussieMum

I remember that my cycles changed quite considerably after I had my first baby, becoming regular and shortening down to 5 days, neither of which I had ever experienced before. They continued this pattern through another two pregnancies until the normal changes in perimenopause. It was like a pregnancy normalised my reproductive system.

I would diary it to look for patterns. I bet you are gearing up to menstruation again, and this is how your body is telling you. Everything is new after your first baby. It is not until you fall pregnant again that you realise that you are in familiar territory again.

As I went into perimenopause and things started changing again I started making menstrual cycle notes with little cryptic symbols on my year planner. Suddenly all the strange things that were cyclical started standing out. I did think at one stage that I was sinking into depression again, but it turned out to be a few days around ovulation and just before a period, so I was reassured that it would pass, and it always did. Mind you, as I approached menopause these episodes and other premenstrual symptoms became more obvious and annoying, but it was reassuring that they did indeed pass, quite predictably in the end, and I did have quite long sequences of days when I felt quite normal, which balanced out the down days.

Louise

Hi Ginny,

How do you know when you have to go? If you do not feel it in your rectum, are there other sensations that let you know that you are about to have a bowel movement?

I have a similar problem. Most of the time I do not feel a rectal sensation, but I do know that something is there. I feel pressure in my vulvar area and in my left side. I did have pelvic floor testing done this past summer as I would sit in the bathroom sometimes for an hour with no success.
I had anal manometry, anal EMG, balloon test and all of this showed that my nerves are intact, but I was told the testing showed that I suffer from paradoxic rectal function. Meaning that I need to relax my pelvic floor. I went through four sessions of biofeedback training and it did help.

Even though I don't feel the normal rectal sensation that I used to .. (but SOMETIMES I do have the feeling, so I am really still trying to figure this out ), I can read my body signals so that I know that I need to go sit on the toilet and sure enough within ten minutes I do have success.

One other thing that I learned during biofeedback is that the one thing that really helps me to relax is to "laugh" . I think this is absurd but it does help. It makes me relax and I can have a bowel movement.
(I can only wonder what my family thinks of me when they hear laughter coming out of the bathroom.)
Hope this helps a little. We are all different and I think any insight that helps one of us, might help somebody else.

Oh and by the way, the urogynecologist that I saw during the pelvic floor testing told me that surgery would not help with my prolapses. He said the surgery is only effective 60 percent of the time and I was not a good candidate and he would not recommend it for me.
Not sure what qualifies someone to be a "good" candidate???

Hi Karrymae

Good suggestions to cast some light on this for Ginny. Every little suggestion helps somebody.

Paradoxic rectal function. Hmmm. That sounds like your rectum is behaving in the oppostie way to how it should act. Not so much a diagnosis but a description of what you already know. It is great that the biofeedback training worked. Also great that your nerves are intact. But why are they responding to the doctor's test, but not a full rectum?

Do you ever feel anything in your anus? Sometimes my urge to go is very weak, but sometimes it is very strong, and I can feel the pressure against my anus.

I like your laughing trick. Laughing is a very low level human response, ie I think it is from the very primitive part of your brain, where instinctive and involuntary responses come from. Therefore the muscles we use to laugh are probably hard-wired, and therefore act 'correctly', ie primitively. Also, as you say, laughing is a great stress reliever. I see advertisements for laughter therapy workshops a lot, these days. I would just keep a heap of cartoon books or humorous writing in the bathroom. At least you can have fun there, and the family won't be concerned about what you are laughing at. It would probably be good for them too!

Meanwhile, how are your prolapses since you started Wholewoman? Have they improved at all?

Louise

It is also good to hear your doctor's comments about prolapse surgery.

Hi Louise,

My prolapses are better.
Yes, I can feel the urge sometimes in my rectum and then again sometimes I only feel the sensation in my pelvis. I do have diverticular disease and wonder if that has something to do with it? Or maybe my rectocele has to "fill up" first before it hits the nerves? I don't know. I do know when I will be having a bowel movement soon, so maybe I am anticpating it before it actually hits my rectum.

My rectocele has been the worst of my prolapses. I never noticed it until I had a second diverticular infection and was on some very powerful antibiotics. ( I am still convinced that one of the drugs I took- CIPRO- was a culprit in ligament relxation. I can't prove it, but it does have a history of causing tendons to rupture. )

I noticed my bladder prolapse after the birth of my first child, twenty three years ago. I had a lot of stress incontinence, but it did get better within 6 months to a year. It never really gave me problems again until I hit menopause.
Over the past two-three years, I have been to my family doctor ,who sent me to a colon rectal surgeon, who sent me to the pelvic floor center, who sent me to the biofeedback center and then I was to return to the colon rectal surgeon, but from their findings of the paradoxic rectal function, I was told I did not have to return to the colon surgeon. SO I AM NOT. I have all of my organs and will fight to keep them.

At the pelvic floor center, I was told that my prolapses are within normal range for a woman who has given birth and that my muscle tone is very good for a woman my age (I hate qualifiers! lol...) and that is why the uro-gyn told me that surgery would not benefit me. I also learned that I have a larger than normal bladder, so I try to empty it whenever I think about it, not waiting for the urge. (I wonder when it fills up, if it also drags down everything else too?)

I can't worry about it as it will drive me crazy. I do have a bowel movement daily and as long as I eat "right" and "relax" and exercise, and I use lubrication, and sometimes a tampon to prop things up and other tips that I have learned from here, I am doing fine.

This website has been a godsend! I love that info can be shared here and that we can learn from each other.
By the way, I did share the website address with my therapist at the bio feedback center and she thought it could help some of her other clients.

That's all good news, Karrymae. It sounds like you have your own body and its sensations sorted out well.

I think a full bladder is good. It is kind of like a pessary in itself. It also means that you can give your bladder a good flush out every day. I cannot ever remember having a very full bladder and feeling a bladder bulge at the same time, so it must be good for me. On the other hand I try to empty my bowels every time I feel the need. I don't give my rectum any chance at all to get too full, if I can avoid it. One little twinge and I am off to the loo, even if it only turns out to be wind. I figure my bowels need all the cooperation they can get from me, and the more practice they get the better!

Louise