Does anybody else push on their sides when they're pooping?

try more fiber, yikes

.

By "Knife hand" do you mean the hand you use to hold the Poop Knife?

You should work on your diet.

I like to climb up through the toilet seat ring, and sit on the thin part, wearing the ring around my waist like a pool floatie. I then do a kind of hoola-hoop sway against the ring to massage my abdomen thoroughly. It works better with the soft, squishy seats, of course.

Can't say I ever have. I do, however, use a little step stool to put my legs in the crouched position, and a bidet for afterwards. Use some TP to make sure there's no barnacles, then a a set of rags I keep specifically for drying off the ol' undercarriage since the TP isn't going to dry it all.

Could never get used to the seashells

Poop knife 2
The poop knife was inside the house meatbag all along.

I haven't gotten anyone else to help, no

I learned some time ago that you're supposed to squat a bit to press into your intestines so that you don't need to strain yourself. Turns out modern toilets aren't ideal for that.

Well, it's very rare I need to, what with having IBS-d. But, yah, that's a long standing thing.

Back when I was still able to work, my main job was as a nurse's assistant, I even did it for other people. When folks can't really walk, the normal extra help you get from using the muscles of your abdomen can't assist the bowel. So they'd be more likely to get backed up than usual. And, a lot of medications can change bowel motility too, including opiates. Since opiates are fairly common for bed-bound patients, and not rare with non-ambulatory but not bed-bound, I'd say close to 9 out of 10 of my patients would get constipated semi-regularly.

Giving that little massage over the descending colon helps a lot, and if you give one over the transverse during a bath, it can prevent things from getting as hard and dry. Not much point of working the ascending colon, since there's pretty much never enough water removed in that section to get backed up there.

But, for paralyzed patients, you do sometimes do a full abdominal massage to help work things along. Not all of them need it, but it usually does help anyone with paralysis to work their bowel program anyway. Prevents accidents throughout the day usually, because by the time you've gotten done with the massage, done all the movement required to get set up for the necessary activity with the bowel, you've moved things along so that you can empty the last bits of the colon fully.

Which is long winded and tangential, but I figure it might be of interest to someone scrolling through that has sone kind of difficulty with their bowels

Hmm, you shouldn't be straining. Metamucil and plenty of water can help without lots of pushing. I find that making smoothies with berries, unflavored yogurt, spinach, and milk helps too.

Apparently it's called a colon or bowel massage and you do it on your left side, which is what I always have done. TIL

That's going to give you a hernia. Not worth the time and money to fix that.

Fix your diet. Try FODMAP.