6 month old baby - constipation?

[Petsville]

DS hasn't pooed for 5 days and is in real discomfort (straining, going red in the face, really struggling to get something out, but not succeeding in passing anything except wind). We took him to GP yesterday and she prescribed lactulose (2.5 ml twice daily) which isn't having any effect yet. We're giving him prune juice and fruit and trying to make sure he has plenty of fluid. I'm BF and we've been weaning for about 4 weeks, but I didn't think he'd actually eaten much yet.

Anyone have any advice or experience? Poor baby is so uncomfortable and it's waking him up at night every hour or so, and then he needs soothing back to sleep. We're doing tummy massage and bicycling his legs, but it doesn't seem to have any effect except to make him very temporarily more comfortable.

I think you need to give veg instead of fruit. Pureeing fruit does, I think, create pectin, or brings out pectin or something like that, which is the gluey stuff that makes jam. So beans and carrots rather than apples.

Also water. And bananas clog up a baby chronically.

Though if you are happy to give a bit of oj that's supposed to help actually.

Our baby was very constipated so we did cranial osteopathy, but it was different, he was constipated on breast milk.

But we weaned onto beans illegally early because of it.

Ask at the chemist for glycerin suppositories. I'm sorry not sure of the age you can buy them over the counter. But it would be a good way to unblock him as I can imagine a very hard dry poo stuck there by now!

Alas, they won't give out glycerin suppositories for a baby under 1 - we'd have to go back to the GP and get a prescription, and since she didn't seem to think there was anything really to worry about I'm a bit loath to bother her again just yet. But thanks for the tip: at least I know what to ask for if it won't budge and we do have to go back.

Appletrees, no puree here - we're doing baby-led weaning, so we've been offering him whole pieces of fruit - but more veg might be a good idea anyway: thanks for the advice.