7 week old crying in pain to do toilet

[mummy1time]

Please help. My 7 week old son is constantly straining and crying in pain as if constipated but when he does a poo it's soft. Even trying to pass wind seems to hurt.

I've tried cooled boiled water and HV told me to try infacol (he's been on this for 6 days now). HV also said he may just be learning how to do the toilet, but I feel he's in too much pain for it to be that.

Any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated! X

Is he bf or ff?

To be honest, it does sound kind of normal. I used to despair of the wind that baby had in the first few weeks because it constantly woke her up. It will pass as baby gets bigger and more able to deal with it. Do you think he actually is constipated or is he having plenty of dirty nappies?

He is ff.

He usually goes once a day to 2 days.
I feel so helpless as he does have a really sore cry.

Thank you for your reply x

Mine went through this stage of really struggling to poo. He's much less bothered by it now at 12 weeks.

I think it's something you just have to comfort them through with a mantra of "it'll be different tomorrow".

Also IME infacol was great for burps, but I'm not sure it helped with pooing.

This is really really normal. They are learning to control their sphincter muscles etc. If the poo is soft (and not super watery liquid) and is happening regularly every day or two then he isn't constipated. Almost all babies will grunt and strain, go red faced etc when they are very young. Once their digestive system muscles etc get stronger and more practiced then this will stop. Don't panic :)

My DS went through this for a while, he was straining so hard sometimes he would make himself sick. As long as his poo isn't hard and it's regular don't panic.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply. I will bare with it for now then, my poor little man. Hopefully he will learn properly soon X

You can help by gently massaging his tummy in a clockwise direction, or cycling his legs.

Try diluting a bit of orange juice in water, it helped my ds

Gripe water. I have the same issues here. Dd2 gets 5ml of gripe water at 2pm and another 5ml at 6pm.

Trick I've learned is that the temperature of the formula matters. If it's colder the poop is more liquid. If too warm my kids got horribly backed up.

You poor things, it's really difficult to listen to, isn't it? My dd had exactly the same problem, FF and screaming in pain all the time (although she had slight reflux too - could your baby possibly be suffering from this also?) and even though she didn't have a hard stomach and had soft poos, she only went about twice a week! At your LO's age it's likely just wind and his digestive system learning to function properly. Unfortunately you may be in for a rough few weeks :(

Maybe the formula doesnt suit? If it carried on I would start looking into why, my ds has lots of problems pooing he went onto lactose free fomula which helped but did t fix it I took him off fomula at 11 months and within days of having cows milk he was totally normal. I wish I had listened to my instincts more I knew the cry wasn't normal.

Do give it some more time though.

It could be he just doesn't like the feeling, not that it hurts. Remember they are learning all of this so it must be a very strange experience for them when it looks like he is about to poo you can lay him on his back and lift his legs up to his chest to make a squating position which helps. But honestly I wouldn't worry, he will get used to it soon.

I would change his formula my eldest got like this with SMA, I changed to farleys and the problem went away.

I've changed his formula to aptimil comfort so we're trying this just now hopefully helps although he has a cold and cough so keeps being sick! He's not getting a break poor soul X

Give him a week on that. Also the plug in vapour things are great or sitting in the bathroom with the shower going for colds. Good luck

Thank you very much everyone for your help it's greatly appreciated! I was told he can't have any vapour at all as he's too young, or do you have any idea of one for babies? X

I used it under 3 months because it is only essential oils and he was suffering I only used it for an hour usually. If you don't feel comfortable use steam, saline drops and you can mix some essential oils of your own in a bowl leave it in the room, oh and a bowl of water in the room can be helpful. There are a bunch of natural remedies online

I'll give that a try thank you x