Potty training was one of the most stressful things I have experienced so far in raising my daughter. She was potty trained by 2 1/2 but we continued to have pooping problems for a whole year.  She would only poop in a pull up or she would refuse to poop at all and hold it for days.   We used poop rewards, children’s suppositories, children’s laxatives, prune juice, probiotics, whole grains, cutting holes in diapers, but nothing worked; her will to hold it in was winning. When she finally could not hold it any longer, she would scream and cry when her giant poop would come out.

The fight to make her poop on the toilet or just simply poop at all, peaked one day we had been trying for 4 days every one of our methods, on the 10th day she was crying in pain and agony and I finally broke down and brought her to the emergency room.    When I got her to Children’s Hospital they did an x- ray to rule out blockage, and they found no blockages, just a ball of poop that was so big it was now impossible to pass naturally.  She ended up having to have a mineral oil enema and when that poop came out, it was so large it blocked a hospital commercial grade toilet.  When we got home from the hospital we started her on poop training.  She had Miralax laxative daily to keep her poop soft and impossible to hold in, and she had to sit on the toilet after each meal.  After the seven days of Miralax laxative was over, she started to go back to her old habits of holding it in, and we needed to try something else. No external rewards, or internal pain was going to make her poop.

I started researching and found many wonderful reviews about a book called It Hurts When I Poop!: A Story for Children Who Are Scared to Use the Potty. The Book is about a little boy named Ryan who is afraid to poop in the toilet.  He tries to hold it in because he is afraid it will hurt, he meets with his Dr. who tells him a story about a coyote who does not clean his house or throw things away, and eventually the trash has to come out somewhere.  The Dr. teaches him how food turns into poop and which foods will help make his poop softer and which foods will make his poop harder.  My daughter loved this book so much because I believe she felt like someone else understood exactly how she felt, the book even touched on pooping in pull ups.  We read this book over and over and over again multiple times each day.  Now, I can proudly say that her pooping issues are a thing of the past, she is a super, duper, toilet pooper now!

I highly recommend this book to other parents who are going through this horribly stressful poop holding experience with their toddler. Try buying this book and read it to your child and hopefully it can help empower your child to poop in the toilet, and not hold it in.