Constipated newborn, please help!

[MariaVT65]

Hi all

I have 2 week old baby girl who has been constipated for a week. She is formula fed (due to supply issues).

So far I’ve given her warm baths and done lots of tummy massage. These were helping initially but aren’t continuing to be as effective.

We’re also going to try giving a bit of boiled cooled water as the next step.

Had a brief chat with the HV who said to consider changing formula, but no idea what else to try first. We use Cow & Gate.

Does anyone have any advice please on what worked for you, or what formula to try (eg is Aptamil really that different?) and whether the constipation just settled after a week or 2?

I’m recovering from a section, exhausted with doing all the night feeds and it’s really upsetting seeing my daughter like this.

I didn’t know it had a name! Every day’s a school day!!

To answer some questions

-Not really sure how else to describe ‘solid’. She is literally doing hard, dry poos, not soft. She is having a lot of difficulty getting them out.

-I have spoken to 2 midwives and a health visitor. The advice i’ve had so far is that this may be temporary while her body gets used to digesting formula, but the solutions seem more temporary to me and i’m not sure how long i’m supposed to wait to see if it settles by itself. The HV said we might want to consider other formula, but with no suggestions as to which one, so all of this is why i’m here. I’ve been unable to get a GP appt so far so i’m contacting the HV again tomorrow for further advice. We may also look to try HIPP formula instead.

Hi OP, assume this is the same everywhere - if you can't get a gp appt at your surgery try 111. When I can't get an appt for dc that's what I was told to do and they make an appt with the out of hours gp for me.

Okay, so dry, hard pebbles definitely isn’t normal. I would photograph the stools and definitely try and speak to the GP. I’d agree with the HV if it was kinda semi sold or lumpy, but dry, hard poo isn’t right for a 2 week old.

As previous poster said we used a comfort milk formula which is less thick in consistency than regular formula and this really helped our baby. SMA is the one we used but Kendamil and HiPP and Aptamil all do them

My daughter had constipation caused by medication. She went 0-3 times a day but they were the consistency of rabbit pellets and we had literally remove them from her with a piece to tissue as she couldn't pass them on her own.

Our HV gave us a colic relief baby massage which was water wheel A for the count of 6 crunch legs into the tummy for a count of 6 then sun and the moon 6count followed by another crunches for the count of six then cuddles and start at again. We did it 3 time 2-3 times a day which helped her to keep everything moving through and we got lactulose on prescription to help soften the stools. Her stools were then a mix of firm and needing the lactulose or very loose due to her food allergies. If they were loose we missed that dose.