VERY Constipated BLW'd baby.. HELP!

[TheFantasticFixit]

Argh.. I'm at my wits end. Poor little DD is SO bloody constipated and I KNOW that there must be something that we are doing wrong but i don't know what. Hopefully fresh eyes can help..

She is formula fed now, and has 4 210ml feeds a day. We offer three meals (and the occasional snack) but really she is only interested in actually 'eating' two meals - usually breakfast and dinner. Breakfast is usually porridge with fruit (dates/apples/blueberries, occasionally honey)/ scrambled eggs and tomatoes/ toast (homemade bread, either wholemeal or white) with tangerine segments. Dinner usually meat or fish with veggies, mainly green like broccoli/sugar snaps/etc and sometimes sweet potatoes/ new potatoes (you get the idea). She's offered cheese, salad bits, celery sticks, rice crackers, occasional chocolate biscotti things. She tries things off our plates like olives etc occasionally as well. She has yoghurts every other day.

We offer water with every meal (she used to have a doidy cup, but now a sippy because i was concerned how much water she was actually having) and during the day. She has full, wet nappies at least 3-4 times a day. She sleeps through the night fine for a good 12 hours a time. Naps are fine. No night time feeds - all milks are during the day.

BUT she is passing hard, solid stools that are soft brown/ sandy coloured and that are causing her real pain. She cries out when she 'goes' and is only passing a stool every 2-3 days, (she was regular as clockwork, every day). She has torn her bottom passing a stool (there was blood on the wipe yesterday). We've taken her to the GP who have prescribed lactulose and suppositories, which helped for a couple of days but now only intermittently. She does appear to 'hold' her poo in at times and I have seen when changing her nappy in the morning that she has some traces of poo around her bottom but nothing in the nappy.. like she had 'sucked' it back in?!

Any ideas what else we can do or what we are missing? Is it normal that poo changes to solid and it is part of the process of her getting used to it? Should i cut a milk feed? I can't bear to see her in pain and very worried that it is going to become a vicious cycle.

(Sorry this is such an essay)

[5madthings]

when mine were constipated i pureed prunes and mixed it with natural yog or porridge.

eggs are binding as are bananas so keep her off them. give her watery fruit and veg ie pears and cucumber.

also baby massage can help, rub her tummy clockwise and do pedal legs, move her legs like she is riding a bike and press them up into her tummy, firmly but gently.

warm baths will help and if she has a sore bum she may have an anal fissure which would cause ehr to hold her poo, a bit of vaseline on her bum hole may help!

how old is she, she shouldnt be having honey if she is under one.

and she needs 20oz of formula a day until one and then 12oz a day, this can be supplemented with cheese/yog.

[TheFantasticFixit]

I say occasionally but she has had honey twice. Will bear that in mind - she is 11 and a half months.

We've kept her off eggs since the constipation has started and it's continuing - have been doing baby massage and warm baths etc. Will try the pureed prunes as well and perhaps cut out a milk feed i think and see if that helps.

[Pastabee]

Is it the follow on milk that you use? AFAIK it has quite a lot of iron added which can cause constipation and as she is a milk lover perhaps this is contributing? You could cut a milk feed or try using more 'first' formula.

I second prunes. They really helped my DD when she went through this. I mixed them in her porridge and also gave 'Ella's Kitchen Raisin and Prune Baby Brekkie' as a pudding. DD isn't a fan of pouches and jars (BLW'er) but she liked these.

[MamaBear17]

I found that having a water cup within easy reach all day helped with my dd, plus watered down orange juice with meals.

[TheFantasticFixit]

Thanks everyone. Will try the fruit juice watered down again - she didn't like it when we first tried but hopefully she'll take to it! She does have access to water all day - literally i'm not sure we could offer any more! Will also consider the Ellas kitchen prune thing as a pud, that sounds good! She is definitely still on the first milk, not follow on.

It's a bit of trial at the moment! thanks all for your suggestions.

[Aspiemum2]

What formula is she on? One of ours got constipated a lot when I stopped breast feeding. We were using sma and mw suggested aptamil. Ended up switching them both on to that as it really seemed to make a big difference

[madnortherner]

I'm a while away from the weaning stage but I remember reading that too much fibre is constipating too. So maybe replace the porridge for something else. Obviously look into whether or not I remember that correctly before doing it.

I notice you said you swapped Doidy cup for sippy because of concern over how much she was drinking - do you mean you felt she was having too much or not enough?

[TheFantasticFixit]

Yes she is on Aptamil - has been since about 5 months. She was bfed before that.

@ Madnorthener - I had read the same recently, especially about high fibre breads etc. We've been careful since reading that - we haven't stopped porridge though because of the milk content. We haven't stopped using the Doidy, we've just stopped it being the main cup that we use with her as I was worried that she wasn't drinking enough water (a lot goes down her front!).

Well we haven't really changed a lot in the last 24 hours but she has had about 4 mini poos in that time so her system for some reason has changed a little bit. It's so odd!

[NoNoNoMYDoIt]

Do you give her banana at all? Even a few bites of banana would bind my son up terribly as a baby.

[Isntitironic]

Sweet potato, boiled and mashed. With cinnamon, if she likes it. Don't ask me why, but where even stewed plum failed, sweet potato got my LO's bum going like the clappers. Stewed plum and pear are meant to be good too, as are prune juice, pear juice and figs.

I'd second going easy on bananas, they act as a binder, as do high-pectin fruits like apple.

[Wrigglebum]

Pears and strawberries always worked wonders for ds1.

[MilkRunningOutAgain]

I tried everything suggested so far but found what worked best for my dd was cutting out anything whole grain. I hated doing it as it wnt against my principles to seve up refined stuff, but it worked. But her main problem was simply not drinking enough, milk or water or anything else, so different to your dd.

But she held pops in and did the same sucking up thing you've described.

Good luck!

[Leahsmommy2015]

Hi Thefantasricfixit
I k ow it's been ages since this post but I hope you are still on here and can share how this resolved. You literally are describing the issue my daughter is having at 14 mo and I have tried probably all things that were suggested with GP saying laxtative is what they will prescribe. and still struggling.

[melonribena]

What helped my ds was freezing puréed prunes in an ice cube tray then each day id mix one with some fruit or in porridge. He loved it and it worked really well