First week of BLW - should I worry that it is all coming out undigested in the nappies?

[IlanaK]

He is not eating much yet - carrot, cucumber and some pear. But it is all coming out undigested in his nappies. Is this a sign that his digestive system is not ready and I should wait? He is just 6 months old.

DD was the same in the early weeks. Nothing to worry about.

It's gross, but it gets even more gross when the turds start forming!

it's normal. at least you know some is going in

It's normal. You should try purees (well, probably you shouldn't, but as a figure of speech ) -- it comes out looking exactly the same as it went in and can put you off sweet potato for years .

I did purees with ds1 and 2, but this is the first time with BLW. I am confused though. It seems from Gill Rapley's book that they will only eat when they are ready and I assumed this meant their digestive system would also be ready. Surely if it is going through undigested, then this is a sign of not being ready?

It's "ready" in the sense of the gut having lost permeability. But AFAIK it sort of needs practice to get the hang of actually digesting solids. Think of when you move to a country with a very different cuisine (or just have a takeaway curry). Your digestive system is "ready" to digest the food, but it's not used to it and you typically get some digestive upset for the first week or so before it settles down.

Normal - and you've got a lot more of it to come, probably! My dd is nearly 9 months and there are a lot of recogniseable bits in her nappy still. Yuk yuk yuk! I've read in a couple of baby books that at roughly 6-9 months a lot of your baby's dinner will come out looking the same as when it went in, so nothing to worry about. The smell of my dd's poos is getting worse, I think that means she might be digesting more of the actualy food, whereas before they just smelt like milk poos and had bits in. Sorry, tmi, enough of the poo talk!

there are a couple of interesting discussions on my BLW forum (am aitch) about this. if they're not digesting it, then how much are they taking in in terms of nutrients etc, what with purees having a larger surface area. it was discussed endlessly, as i recall, with the outcome being decided that it was all much of a muchness, because the act of chewing is what triggers salivary amylase and other enzymes to do the digesting.
so a very interesting question, and completely normal. it's not unknown for strange people (me ) to save nappies to show to their dh...

Dear me, such spelling! That's actual food, even. And I'm sure you're wondering why I'm talking about gin, lol! Maybe to drink some to block out the smell of the poo

Normal normal normal. It's only coming out looking undigested because it isn't getting chewed with molars yet (most of digestion happens through chewing)...because babies don't get them until later

Ok, thanks everyone. That all makes a lot of sense. The smell of the poo is already very different. I could never tell he had done a poo by smelling him until this week. Now I can smell it halfway across the room!

Interestingly, it seems to take about a day and a half to come out the other end from when he eats it. Is that normal?

No, it's totally normal. I have been treated to peas and grapes this week

We had perfectly intact half blueberries this morning (I had given them to DS cut in half)

Haha! We had bolognese for the first time during BLW and it smelled exactly the same when it came out! [bleurrgh!]

weirdest things are raisins as they come out all plumped up .

TMI ALERT

I was wiping dd's bum the other day and a small piece of poo just wasn't budging. I had to use a baby wipe to get a grip of it and pull.....

it was an entirely undigested long piece of courgette skin- about 2 inches long

Very grim, but she was oblivious

We've had a whole spaghetti string here, strangely, dyed red

at least I didn't have to pull it out though eeww