#babyconstipation

Week 13 – 26/12/2016

Musings of a second-time Mum

I shit you not.

14 days is the record for Darling Daughter II not pooping. 14 days! The most annoying part of it is that our health visitor had come across one other baby in her experience who'd held out (held in?) for 2 weeks, so my little anally retentive one met the record but didn't beat it.

The H.V. assures me that DDII is merely making the best use of her breastmilk and turning all of it into more baby. The G.P. backed this up when on day 13, he gave her a very full examination and could find no signs of ill health, distress or discomfort.

The poop that did finally emerge wasn't even that impressive. I was expecting voluminous excrement, it was relatively small really..... At least compared to nappyfuls she did early in her career.

Diminutive though it may have been, never has a poop between more celebrated. The family were notified immediately, having been on tenterhooks for days. The H.V. let out a whoop of joy when informed of the news.

You know when you meet a vague acquaintance in the street, and both do the "Hiya, how are you doing?" and both desperately hope for nothing more than a "Fine, thanks" back... Not that week!! "Hiya, ho...." "MY BABY POOPED" and skip gaily away.

Baby Dozer had no problems whatsoever with doing his big business a.k.a. pooing from birth all the way till 6 months. This jolly fellow dutifully ensured that Mummy had to buy lots of diapers for the wellbeing of his little bum. Back then, Mummy wasn’t using cloth diapers yet so Baby Dozer did contribute to the wastefill quite a fair bit.  All of a sudden, once he started his solids at 6 months old, the poo wasn’t so forthcoming anymore. His record was a total of 4 days. Naturally, I was alarmed. Everyone said he was constipated but strangely, he didn’t seem being in too much of a discomfort and his stools weren’t hard even after 4 days. There was once though that there was actually a little blood probably from straining to push the elusive poo out; otherwise the texture was quite satisfactory. By 6 months and 2 weeks, Baby Dozer had settled into a routine of having solids in the form of homecooked pureed porridge with vegetables twice a day, with a little sip of water after meals. By 7 months, he was having about 1/5 of an apple in the afternoons as well. By 8 months, his fruits varied between pears, grapes and bananas. And he still wasn’t pooing daily. During his 9-month checkup at the paed’s, I asked about this issue but the paed said that it didn’t really matter as long as he wasn’t having hard stools. Mothers always think they know best and I am no exception. I…didn’t quite agree with the paed so I decided to take immediate action of my own:

Step 1: Remove Offensive Veggies

I began by omitting vegetables which I felt he had problems digesting, such as carrots and sweet potatoes. I noticed carrots because they would come out in his poo whole without being digested, and sweet potatoes because he ALWAYS missed his poo after having sweet potatoes. Step 2: Puree Porridge Thoroughly

What can I say? I’m a working mum (general excuse). I’m always in a rush and I admit there were times I was a little careless with pureeing his porridge. Yes…there were times his solids were a little toooo solid. Step 3: REALLY Increase Both Fruits and Water Intake

In addition to his teatime fruit snack, I increased his fruits intake to once in the morning as a breakfast snack about an hour after he had had his morning milk. Note: this was when he was 9 months old. Now that he’s 1, Baby Dozer takes a full breakfast of milk, followed by rolled oats and fruits about an hour later. As for water, I increased the amounts given to him during his lunch and dinner. Baby Dozer had a real problem with drinking water. He would spit it out probably as it was tasteless in comparison with breastmilk but I persevered and finally at 9 months, he would obligingly drink the amounts given to him especially on very hot days. I can’t tell u exactly how much but as a rough estimation, it would be somewhere in the range of 1 to 2 ounces. A few days after I started this regime, it worked! Baby Dozer has returned to his practice of consistent pooing. These days Baby Dozer eats a variety of food including and carrots and sweet potatoes but I’m very careful to boil his food until they’re very soft and mashable. Lesson learnt!

Images taken from annabelkarmel.com, thefeedingdoctor.com and veggiegardeningtips.com

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