Mucus in baby's stools (breastfed & formula)

[larlylou]

There is mucus in my baby's nappies when she has a pooh. She has always suffered from a bad tummy so I eliminated foods while breastfeeding. She now does part breastfeeding part formula bottles (Cow & Gate Omega Comfort). I have always suspected that she could have a possible lactose sensitivity. She does not have any symptoms to be intolerant but she does still suffer from tummy pains and smelly wind. She does not pooh daily but could go one or two days before having a whopping pooh (or 2). Her poohs are extremely green and quite runny (like runny cake mixture) but I am sure in there also is mucus - has anyone experienced anything like this? Has anyone got any experience regarding lactose sensitivity? Any advice would be great. I have been told about Colief drops - I will be starting these tomorrow I think to see if it helps. I do find my HV's (I have two) who seem to contradict one another. One said to use SMA LF but when I saw the tin it was intolerant babies on medical supervision (my dd isn't) while the other HV said shouldn't use it...? She is 15 weeks and I'm hoping that soon I will be able to find a solution to this to try and help her as she can be quite unsettled during the night with her tummy and its as though she takes hours to try and push her pooh out. Sorry about the graphic descriptions of pooh!

sounds like something isn't agreeing with her. Can you go back to breastfeeding/expressed breastmilk for a week & see what happens then ? If not an option I would book into the drs & explain about the health vistors & their conflicting info.

I could but I find it very difficult feeding her as she just pulls around and takes forever which I find very hard when I have a demanding toddler around. She does feed much better from the bottle. Unfortunately I just can't express enough for her and to be honest, she is exactly the same from breastmilk as she is on formula only her nappies aren't green but yellow (and with mucus).

tbh her pooh sounds fine! breastfed pooh is very runny and it can have stringy bits in it and all sorts!

halloweeny...that's reassuring thanks. I know that they can sometimes have a 'mustard seed' look which is OK and although very green it does say on the formula box that this is quite normal -however, although stringy it does have chunks of mucus in which is what I'm more concerned about. She isn't solely breastfeed anymore. I feed her in the morning she has 2 x 7oz bottles (rarely has the full bottle) during the day, I breastfeed her at bedtime then she has 2 x 7oz bottles at night (1 at 10.30pm) and another early hours. This is also a bugbear as she was going from 6.30pm - 5am but has now started another feed so I've started doing a 10.30pm feed which will mean she only wakes once in the night.

if you're really worried then take her to the GP and see what s/he says... seeing as your health visitors are contradicting themselves!

i wouldn't be too hasty to go along the intolerance lines or change milk too much...

Thanks halloweeny - I think I might but, like you say I'm reluctant to mess around with it all but at the same time if it is a sensitivity (I know she isn't intolerant) then is there something that I could be doing to aleviate the pain or is it something that perhaps she will grow out of as she gets older. I'm never sure!

it may be that she does have a lactose intolerance - was she the same when she was solely breast fed ( if she was ?). It could be worth considering soya formula - ask the HV or the GP.

She's exactly the same when being breastfed. In actual fact, tonight I fed her, put her to bed - she took a fair while longer than normal to settle but I couldn't decipher whether it was actual tummy ache or overtiredness but eventually she did settle. She woke up about 20 minutes ago screaming out so I lay her over my legs and did some massage and out popped fart after fart, sat her up and she burped then she had a feed cause she was hungry (so that disrupts her feed at 10.30pm so I will just let her dictate tonight as I don't want to overfeed when she has tummyache). With regard to soya, one HV told me to put her on it if I couldn't find SMA LF, so I did. I spoke to my other HV (my proper HV) and she told me to take her off it - soya is full of sugar and isn't good for her and then suggested the milk that I'm currently using. DD didn't take to soya all that much anyhow. I'm not sure if Colief will do the trick or not or whether I go and see a Doctor. I just don't really know what the right thing is to do.

Don't worry about the mucous, lots of babies just have this, my little one did for about six months.
I think some babies just produce lots of mucous and since they can't digest it it comes out in the poo.