What can I eat to help my DS poo?

[fermy]

My DS is 17 weeks and is becoming increasingly more constipated. He was always an every 3 day pooer but it now becoming every week. We are now on day 7 with no poo. He is being fed on demand with 1 bottle of formula at bedtime. With my 1st DS when I ate strawberries he was always guaranteed to poo. But they jave no effect with DS2. I've tried giving him diluted apple juice with no effect. I don't want to give him extra water ect as he should be getting enough fluid from my milk. Just wanted to know if there was anything I could eat which might help him poo?

Is he actually constipated? It's normal for ebf babies to go 10 days or more between poos. If he's constipated I would drop the formula though as that will be what's causing it - not sure if anything you eat can get through your milk like that.

Yup, mine was a once a week/every ten days poo-er.
when it came, it was all hands on deck! be prepared.

he is only constipated if the poo is hard and pellet like, or if he is in real discomfort. Is he OK/growing/smiley, apart from no poo? if so, don't worry, and as I said, prepare for one huge poo party in a few days

fermy, this sounds normal and not constipation at all.

Nothing you eat will encourage the poo - really. The strawberries-poo connection you noticed before was coincidence.

As others said, it's perfectly normal for a bf baby of this age not to poo for even 10-14 days and does not mean they are constipated.

Eat cherries, apricots or other summer fruit.

How would that help, bonsoir ? Nothing wrong in eating any of those, of course, if you like 'em, but how could they help the baby poo?

:)

My sister and I both used to laugh at how immensely predictably our fully breastfed babies (four in total) would poo uncontrollably if we ate even a handful of summer fruits - no leaving home on a whim within the hour! And, talking to other mothers, it is a common phenomenon!

I don't really understand either - isn't it the fibre in fruit that makes you poo? How can the fibre get into the mother's blood stream and then into the milk?

No it's not just the fibre in fruit that makes you poo (fruit isn't as high fibre as cereals etc). Prune juice or fig juice (no fibres) work to relieve constipation.

It's fructose (the fruit sugar in all fruits) that stimulates the bowel, and probably the liquid of prune juice helps soften the stool.

Neither of these will affect the breastmilk - though I know there are individual experiences that convince the individual that something has worked for their baby :)

Fruit juice contains fibre too I think Bonsoir - prune juice is higher in fibre than other fruit juice.

Ah, I see tiktok knows more.

No I don't, Rita :) There may well be fibre in prune juice as well!

Prunes contain a natural laxative (isatin) and it is that in combo with the fibre they contain which make them so good for constipation.

By definition the fact that something has laxative properties means that very little of it passes through the gut wall and into the bloodstream, which in turn means it won't turn up in breastmilk. So I really doubt there is anything you can eat that will affect the frequency of your baby's poos.

But does your baby seem distressed at all? Pooing infrequently is normal for bf babies and only an issue if pooing makes him unhappy or has given him a sore bottom in which case you should have a chat with your GP.

Well, I still beg to differ, and while we are on the subject of breastmilk and the impact of maternal diet, don't eat asparagus while breastfeeding - your breastmilk comes out with the same vile smell that urine does when you have eaten asparagus.

Not for me it doesn't Bonsoir- I'd never even heard of asparagus wee until I discovered mn.

You need prune juice.

Admittedly asparagus breastmilk is a much milder scent than asparagus wee .

There's some genetic variation that affects whether your urine (and presumably also breastmilk) smells after eating asparagus, IIRC. Mine never does.

so if you are bf and eat asaparagus does your milk honk and your wee smell daisy fresh? Assuming you are one of the smelly sparrowgrass wee people in the first place...or is it all a stink fest?

Thank you peeps. We have had an explosion in the poo factory today. And a very normal poo. I will try the summer fruits if DS goes a week again, thank you for the tip Bonsoir. It can't do any harm to try.