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A five-year-old boy was so scared to poo that he would hold it in for up to four months – and was admitted to hospital after vomiting faeces.

Little Jake Clark, from Warrington, Cheshire, stopped pooing at the age of 18 months, but has now been fitted with a colostomy bag as an emergency measure.

His phobia became so bad that it took his parents six months just to teach him that it was OK to break wind, because he used to either hold it in or go and hide because he was embarrassed after he’d done it.

Mum Carrie Brocklebank, 23, was told by doctors it would be best for Jake to be fitted with a colostomy bag in December last year.




It took two-and-a-half hours to clear his bowel before surgery.

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Stay-at-home-mum Carrie said: ‘Jake was absolutely fine until he was about 18 months and we don’t know what happened but all of a sudden he was refusing to go to the toilet.

‘It might have been that he’d tried going once and it had caused him pain but after that he just didn’t want to do it anymore.

‘I think what he’d done must have really traumatised him because after that every time he needed the toilet he would scream and cry and wouldn’t let you anywhere near him.

Picture Mercury Press

‘It was awful, it had started off as just being mild constipation which he was being medicated for but we knew it was something more serious when he went four whole months without passing poo properly.”

Jake had his colostomy bag fitted at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool in December last year, just after his fifth