7 days old and constipated?

[aishx]

My baby is 7 days old today and his sleeping pattern throughout the night is still hit or miss, however last night he was screaming endlessly and after a couple hours of feeling helpless he pooped and instantly stopped crying.
When I changed his nappy his poo was a really small, very firm and in one piece. This then happened all over again a couple hours later and each poo since has been the same (crying, followed by a hard, small poo).

Is he constipated? As everything I've read suggests if he's still pooing as usual it's not constipation, nothing about just the consistency and crying.

Anyone have any suggestions/advice?

(hope this is posted in the right place, thanks!)

Constipation in small babies does not mean how often they are going, it means what are the stools like, Breastfed should be almost liquidy yellow maybe a bit mustard seedy. Bottle fed are firmer but more like a yellowy paste. They should not ba hard or cause distress to pass. If yoy are bottle feeding be sure you are making up the feeds properly. You might be able to feed a few sips of cooled bioled water. Talk to your midwife, I assume she has not yet discharged you

Probably should have mentioned he's bottle fed, we've made sure his feeds are made correctly. Currently in the middle of changing midwives as our usual one left so we're left without a new contact number until later in the week hence turning to here.

I'm sure you are making up the feeds correctly but it's worth checking again that you are and that anyone else who makes up feeds is too.

If you haven't got a number for the MW, can you phone the MWs at the hospital? Did they give you a number when you left?

It’s not normal to be so constipated at such a young age, so I think this needs investigation. Even my daughter (chronically constipated basically from birth, now aged 7) didn’t present with solid stools like that. It was more like squeezing thick toothpaste from a tube every six days.

Anyway - this needs checking out. The main thing to consider is Hirschprung’s disease, which means a section of bowel has no nerve endings and it doesn’t work properly. It presents from birth. Was there a delay in passing meconium after birth, at all?

Information about Hirschsprung’s: www.nhs.uk/conditions/hirschsprungs-disease/

@JiltedJohnsJulie Had a lot of complications with who to contact because of the area I live in and my gp being different to the hospital I gave birth at, they said they weren't allowed to deal with us as we're not under their county so end up being passed around a lot. But will definitely try the hospital again if things don't improve though.

@Haworthia He's had none of the of the other symptoms luckily and was no delay with his first poo (decided to do it during skin to skin!). His bowel movements are still at a normal rate and haven't slowed down in that aspect, but every other one seems to cause him a little trouble

Ds was like this poor little sod. Poo was like pebbles. Switched from sma to cow and gate and he was fine. Had to switch gradually though, swapping one bottle to the new formula at a time.