Well it’s official: Owen’s constipated. After wondering aloud for a day or two about just how transformed Owen’s poops were becoming, a little TOO solid it seemed, he’s started passing pebbles of poop (four of them today and straining with each one). I’ll spare you any photos.
So you can scratch my little plan to focus on vegetables, then fruits. I’ve learned since doing more research that carrots and sweet potatoes – Owen’s two first vegetables – are starchy culprits in constipation for some babies. And that butternut squash I was getting ready to cook, puree and freeze in ice cube trays for the next vegetable? It’s on the list too.
Isn’t it lovely how we’re told to start babies off on the BRAT diet (bananas, rice ceral, apples – and well, I guess the toast comes later) when those are the very things that constipate a baby. (Luckily we hadn’t made it to bananas or applesauce yet).
So Owen’s eating pureed prunes for breakfast and baby oatmeal for dinner – and slurping up a wee bit of apple juice diluted in water for now. Then comes the karo syrup, recommended by the nurse at our pediatrician’s office, if I can’t get things going smoothly without it.
Hopefully his little body will start learning how to process all this strange gook soon.
To be honest, I’m kind of missing exclusive breastfeeding. Owen’s diet was so simple then.
If you’ve got a favorite constipation remedy for babies, please share.
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6 comments:
My pediatrician in Athens, an old school Indian doctor, said a fresh peach blended is the best cure for a baby's constipation. It worked for us.
prune baby food should do it -
worked everytime for us.
the "p" foods help get things going - pears, peaches, peas, prunes
When I started giving my son solids, I was struck by how "complicated" it felt. So I started doing some research. I found out there is a whole movement called "baby led weaning" or "baby led feeding", as well as a ton of people doing the same thing without calling it by a name. Basically, it means letting the baby decide what he eats, and feed it to himself. No spoonfeeding, no purees, just chunky pieces of whatever the family is eating (excluding obvious choking hazards, and highly allergenic foods). The argument goes that baby shouldn't necessarily be eating until he is developmentally ready to feed himself. Also it is argued that the risk of choking is actually reduced, because he hasn't been conditioned to slurp his food but rather to bite and chew. As far as I'm concerned, it was amazing. So much easier for me, my son was happy, and before a year he was insisting on using cutlery (with sucess!). We had absolutely no trouble with choking- gagging occasionally yes, but that is nature's way of preventing choking and didn't concern me. No trouble with allergies either. Or constipation!!
Dana
Thanks for all the input. We've tried everything (prunes, pears, peaches -- bottled and fresh now, more water, a bit of apple juice, none of the starches) and things are improving just a tad. Now I'll go research baby-led weaning some more and see where that leads...
It won't kill him. I know because my second WOULD NOT eat baby food or pureed food in any form. I never thought of it as a particularly good thing but come to think of it, he was never constipated! He got teeth early and so I'm sure that helped. . . .
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