I’m not obsessed by poo, really I’m not! But when you see every one of your baby’s excretions, you certainly know what is going on in that department!
We started Nathan on solids seriously about a week and a half ago, just slowly, slowly. Before that we just let him suck on things he couldn’t really eat, but he obviously enjoyed sucking out the flavours. Now, as stated previously, I’m used to waiting for the 7 – 12 day poo, but I did think that those days were over with the introduction of solids. Yes, we did start with only small amounts of solids, but the days ticked by and no poo. I was starting to think about constipation: In Robin Barker’s book ‘Baby Love’ it says “Breastfed babies often get a little constipated when they first start food from a spoon”. Yesterday, day 6 since the last poo, found the poor little tyke pushing and pushing and only managing one small little pellet. And this morning, a week since his last proper poo, found me holding Nathan over the bucket while the poor kid pushed and strained to no avail. I gave him a nice warm bath to see if that would relax his muscles a bit, and though he strained in the bath as well there was no output. Then later in the morning with lots of straining, screaming and crying, he managed to push out a short, fat, hard sausage that did some damage since he was bleeding a little after that.
A trip to the chemist and supermarket found us with prune juice and Coloxyl drops. We gave Nathan a single dose of Coloxyl in a small amount of diluted prune juice, and then he slept for an hour and a half!!! He has NEVER slept more than 40 minutes in one go in his cot before. When he woke up I offered him the toilet as usual (I always offer after he wakes), and he started straining. We practically cheered as he forced out the offending hard poo! And that wasn’t the end of it…he then proceeded to do numerous small soft poos throughout the afternoon. Interestingly, only when I offered the toilet or potty to him. We have now gone a month without having to deal with a pooey nappy!
We will continue with the prune juice for a while, as a bit of an insurance policy. I hope we never have to resort to Coloxyl again.
Ah it is so easy for your whole life to revolve around poo isn’t it! LOL
A few dried rpunes soften up nicely in a bit of warm water in the microwave for a short burst – easy to spoon in and better for constipation than juice. Stay WELL away from any commercial baby cereal, especially those with added iron. Banana’s too are not great, and pears are better than apples….
ah the joys of parenting…
Thanks Kate. I had vaguely thought I need to get prunes instead of juice, but I hadn’t got as far as thinking that thought through yet. We definitely don’t do any commercial baby cereals (everyone seems to think I’m nuts when I say we don’t use Farax….eh, everyone thinks I’m nuts with just about all our parenting choices so far) and I had read that banana can cause constipation. Nathan loves pears and eats them when ripe or stewed!!