11 month baby - constipation - help!

[newmumcrazytired]

My poor 11 month old has terrible constipation. She just did her worst poo ever. Very hard and so painful for her and some blood when I wiped.

I’ve been to the doctors twice and they keep saying to give her more laxative, which is what I’ve been doing. It is difficult to get her to take the 5ml of lactolose the doctor prescribed twice a day. I’m doing my best though.

She doesn’t drink much water - only sips from an open cup. I think this is perhaps the main problem.

We have given her lots of prune purée and tried probiotics. Her diet is very fruit and veg heavy. She is not a big eater though - she is on the 25th percentile so quite a little girl.

Is there anything else I can try? Would an osteopath help?

She is EBF. Her poos before she started taking on solids were fine and like an EBF baby should be.

Please help! I hate seeing her in such pain.

My DD was in the exact same position! She would struggle to poo on her own, so we'd have to open her nappy and do bicycle legs to help. Nothing really helped tbh. She's now 14 months and it seems to be getting better now she's happier to drink more water, but it's not perfect! She goes through stages of having softer poos too but there's no logical reason (no change in diet or drinking etc)

My DS was exactly the same! It was absolutely awful. He used to cry so much from it. He was formula fed from 10 months which didn't make much difference, he didn't drink much of anything, be it breast milk, formula, or water. He loved (and still loves) watery fruit like watermelon, honeydew melon, berries etc so we tried to give a lot of that plus prune, pear and pea puree pouches, and soups. He has cosmocol satches prescribed for him which we used to mix into his bed time milk but he often didn't drink it all. He would have some lactulose on top sometimes when needed too. I think the cosmocol/macrogol type laxatives did seem to work a lot better for him though so might be worth a chat with GP about trying something like that? That was what our GP and various paediatricians all thought was the best first line treatment.

Warm baths sometimes helped a bit.

I will say that it did gradually improve and I'd say by the time he was 2 he stopped having problems with it. He didn't walk until he was 21 months old (some physical issues) and I think getting walking and upright really helped. Exercise stimulates the bowels and also he started pooing standing up then which was much more comfortable and meant gravity helped it pass!

We also went through this with my son. We used baby probiotic drops and prune pouches and slowly it got better. I think the brand of probiotics are called Optibac. I hope this helps.

I always buy the fruit pouches for such situations..anything prune peach mango pear.. one a day or more

Does your baby take any kind of porridge/Weetabix etc? Add more water in to help boost their water intake

DD was like this. We used all the things above, bicycle legs, probiotics, fruit pouches, added fibre, laxatives (gave her diarrhea and sore bum, stopped with that quickly) and glycerin suppositories (she quickly learned to identify these and would scream at just seeing the packet). Fruit pouches and lots of water were the most effective for us.

Not sure how this would translate to an 11 month old but in the context of potty training DD we recently read - and were amazed by the success of - adding a small amount of extra fat to her diet (good fats obviously - a tiny extra drop of coconut oil, olive oil, butter, full fat milk etc.) because the fats help to "lubricate" from the inside. Apparently if they have a lot of fibre, which we tend to give them when worried about constipation, it can "bulk" things up to the point that it becomes too big and difficult to pass again, and can make it into a vicious cycle. Also make sure they are very hydrated, because apparently a lot of water per gram of fibre is required to allow it to pass more easily. (we read this in "Oh Crap" in case you want to check it out yourself). Good luck!