My DD turns two in a few days. She is, by character, a very happy child. The only problem (well, I say only... ) is that she has never not been constipated.
I rang the midwife when she was a week old to say I had just realised I had never cleaned a dirty nappy, only wet ones. She told me this was normal, a week is nothing to a breastfed baby. After two weeks she made me go to the doctor. She prescribed laxatives and bowel stimulants which were given in varying amounts over the next year.
When she hit her first birthday I got fed up with people just throwing medicines at us and took her off everything. I don't like the idea of pumping possibly unneccessary chemicals into a baby. Since then we have regulated her bowel movements with the lactualose and occasional senna and it seems to work with only a few hiccups.
But I find myself questioning this. Two years of constipation? She has seen a few different GPs and had hospital appointments a few times, but no one has ever really said there is a problem with her. But I was always taught constipation is a symptom, not an illness. Am I wrong?
I wouldn't mind so much, but every poo has always been horrible for her, laxtives or not, and potty training is getting rather impossible. They always told us she would just grow out of it. A couple of weeks, they said, six months, a year, when she's a toddler, two years old... I just feel fobbed off. Am I being stupid?
p.s. sorry about length of this. If you've got this far, well done for not getting bored and wandering off!