Well this is near and dear to my heart. I will start off by saying years ago, I was put on Miralax and it caused major cramping for me… so when I hear doctors say that kids don’t feel it, I am skeptical at best!
Ok, so flash forward a few years and I have a kid that had a very hard BM. It caused him pain and he was fearful and began to hold it in for fear of more pain. Typical with Encopresis, he backed up, it balled up, wouldn’t come out, but liquidy stuff came out around it. Doctors recommended Miralax to keep things moving through (I should mention here that my kid is/was on a very healthy diet and drank plenty of water!). He was starting kindergarten and I didn’t want the stress of pooping in his pants, etc so I hesitantly put him on the Miralax. He was on it for about nine months. During that time, I attempted to get him off twice. One time, we were in Hawaii and were feeding him tons of papaya! He backed up immediately. The nurse practitioner told me that it wasn’t about fiber at this point, that his little anal canal stretched out from the back ups and the Miralax kept the poop moving so it wouldn’t ball up and the canal could shrink back down to it’s normal tunnel shape. In Sept, a classmates mom let me know she is a homeopath and was very confident she could resolve this issue for my son. We decided to stop the Miralax and give him homeopathic medicine the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This gave us time at home to watch how it worked. Well, that was over four years ago and we haven’t had a problem since! And my son didn’t know we changed anything. I used to give him the Miralax in water and he really never knew the difference so it wasn’t in his head! The results were amazing! And I was so relieved to finally get him off the Miralax.
Before resorting to the Miralax, I tried almost everything, but I have to say that looking back now, there are a couple of things I missed and would try before resorting to Miralax again. I would definitely give my child Magnesium. It really helps relax you, both physically and mentally and it helps loosen things up down there. Also, I’d do chia seeds as I have had great success with that for myself.

Mandy, I can’t remember what homeopathic remedy it was, but I don’t think it’s a one size fits all anyway. The homeopath spent three hours with me gathering information about my son’s physical and emotional history. Then she spent quite some time pouring through it, along with her text books before coming up with his remedy.