7 week old poo - is this normal?

[birdybirdbird]

My 7 week old is combination fed (tldr - c section, milk slow to come in, weight loss, feeding plan, low supply etc etc).
For las 3 weeks he’s has awful night time grunts. Google suggested grunting baby syndrome, where they’re learning to use their digestive system. He is now also straining a lot in the day and crying suggesting he’s quite uncomfortable.
The last 3 nights have featured poo-mageddon around 5 am Waking us up with LOUD straining, grunty noises, followed by a succession of several huge poos on the changing mat. Some of this has been darker brown in colour, rather than the usual mustard. He’s pooing less in the day time, but still doing some, and I feel like he pooed a lot before, definitely the higher end of normal.
Do we need to take him to the gp about this? Hes well in himself, bright, alert, gaining weight. It’s just this straining and resulting mega poo! He’s got his ‘6’ week check at 8 weeks, so could just keep an eye until then. We’re taking him to a cranial osteopath next week as we thought the grunting was likely linked to trapped wind.

Just to add that we have swapped formula. From
Aptamil to SMA to see if it helped with trapped wind. Not sure if the timing but could that be a contributing factor?

Swapping formula would be a huge factor if it wasn't an issue before.

Do you use baby massage on his stomach to alleviate the trapped wind?

No need to see GP, it's just a poo.

Newborns poos go from mustard soft to foul smelling harder bowel motions, when you stop EBF / introduce anything else. His body /digestive system is adjusting but those previous lighter poos will have "smelt like elderflower perfume" compared to these new poos

He sounds a bit constipated so chat with HV about what to do to help. If he needs to see GP, HV will say. There's no blood in poo, he's eating well, putting on weight and seems well, so you're doing great!

I went through exactly the same with my DS. I started doing tummy massage four times a day for around 5 minutes and it has helped.

Thanks everyone! We have done a bit of tummy massage and I like the suggestion of doing it a few times throughout the day. Makes sense really when you burp after every feed. Going to switch back to aptamil too to see if it helps. Have a feeling it’ll end up with a choice between aptamil colicky trapped wind and sma grunty mega poops...

We had a similar situation with our baby. He was being topped up with cow and gate premixed formula and it was way too heavy for his digestive system. We switched to the hipp organic one that's meant to be a bit gentler for their stomachs and that worked a treat. We switched back to a premixed formula and this time he's been absolutely fine.
We used the baby massage technique a few times a day and haven't needed to as time went on and we used the hipp organic milk

@YoumeandlittleP we wanted to switch to hipp organic, rather than sma, as had heard it was good. Haven’t been able to bloody find the ‘first’ one anywhere though. Guess they have supply problems

We had this issue too. They stock it in boots and Sainsburys 100%.

My message didn't read clearly at all sorry. I meant we switched to hipp until he was a few months older and then switched back to the more heavy premixed, which he's absolutely fine with now. He used to get terrible wind with the heavier stuff when he was smaller so I completely get what you mean.

Ours was also combi fed and we found that when using bottles, tommee tippee anti colic bottles helped too.