21 week old baby has constipation

[allotmentgirl82]

Hiya
we started weaning our baby 3 weeks ago and she loves her food.
She has her milk and baby rice in the morning, then fruit puree for dinner with water and a jar of savoury food and a bottle of milk at tea time. She is still having 6oz bottles at 4am and 11pm.
Recently she has become constipated and is really straining, turning pink and crying.
We are giving her extra water between feeds, have tried prune juice and are reducing food with banana in. What else can we try- she has been bunged up for 4 days now

baby rice can be constipating too. Is she still having all her milk feeds? Food should be over and above her milk feeds not instead of them so dont miss out milk feeds at the expense of solids. I would offer extar water alongside the solids too.

Could give her a little bit of orange juice, apparently that's supposed to help.

Massaging the tummy helps - keep going with the prune juice!

I'd be inclined to swap out the baby rice for an oat-based porridge (you can get gluten-free oats if that is a concern) or just something else that isn't baby rice. And I'd try to mix a couple of spoonfuls of stewed prunes/apricots into her fruit and savoury meals.

Drinking more water might help but at that age you don't want her replacing any of the milk with water so it's a bit tricky to strike a balance.