I don't know what to make of the symptoms I am experiencing, can anyone help?

[LB7452]

For the past two months I have been experiencing some relatively minor symptoms that have been having a large impact on my life - primarily due to when they occur.

Sometimes it gets late at night I experience some very minor discomfort in my bowels, but every single time I lie down to go to sleep I feel the urge to move my bowels. Sometimes the urge isn't great, but I still get up to go to the bathroom just in case.

When I sit down to go however, nothing really happens aside from passing gas and small amounts of mucus. Occasionally I will pass a very small amount of stool but nothing major. Regardless of what happens when I am on the toilet about 90% of the time I will get up and with the feeling of needing to pass something still present. I will go back to bed and the urge will be gone for around 5 minutes before it returns but usually in an ingorable state which I can ignore, allowing me to sleep.

Sometimes however the feeling will return just as strongly, preventing me from sleeping and forcing me to go back to the toilet only for the same thing to happen multiple times until the urge is minor enough upon returning to bed at which point I can finally sleep.

It's gotten to the point where regardless of how I am feeling before bed I sit on the toilet for around an hour every night immediately before bed just to get the "I'm trying to sleep but I need to go" stage out of the way, though it has begun cutting into my sleep schedule in a way in which I am feeling more tired than usual during the day time.

This started when I woke up one morning with abdominal cramps after eating an excessive amount of cheese the night before, which went away after I went to the toilet that morning. That night I had my first instance of what I have been describing above and it has continued until now. I have not experienced any abdominal cramps since then.

I've looked up various things it could possibly be such as IBS, IBD and Crohn's disease but only few symptoms match for each and I have no idea which it could be. Any help is appreciated.

Some more information:

- I do not feel any notable abdominal discomfort during the day or early in the night, only roughly before it is time for me to go to bed.

- There is no blood in my stools or with the mucus that comes out.

- I have not experienced diarrhea, weight loss, loss of appetite or nausea.

- When I pass stools normally during the day I have not been constipated, however I often feel like I could pass more that will not come regardless of whether I strain or not. This has been an issue for much longer, at an estimate since around September or October of last year but it has not been a huge issue and has not effected me in any meaningful way aside from some slight discomfort for one or two hours after the bowel movement.  

[purple1234567]

The first thing that came to mind when reading your post is IBS- but you will need to get to your doctor so they can gather more of your medical history and do an 'in person' exam- some tests are likely to be required to determine the cause too.  It's important to figure out the cause so that this issue doesn't get worse or cause further issues down the road.