poo question--7 months

[houseelf]

Hey all, I have a random questions about babies and their poo.

After six months of exclusive BF, we started sweet baby boy on table foods. Q is doing great on the eating side of things. However, he now has fairly painful constipation. He refuses a bottle which makes giving him additional liquid difficult. I'm working on giving him a sippy cup with mixed success. Thoughts/ suggestions?

(Hussey, your comment about if you knew what your conversations would be later on in life, you'd probably off yourself at twenty rings true here).

Kelly

[v-girl]

Feeding prunes and peaches usually helped mine when they started on baby food. I also did more breastfeeding than baby food.

Same issue with DD3, poor little bean. Momnesia prevents me from remembering the solution. What is in the sippy? If you are trying water, maybe something sweeter would entice him. Pear juice helps so perhaps some diluted pear juice in addition to some pear baby food? Prunes are great but a hard sell for my kids.

[HouseofWool]

I found that rice cereal, bananas and applesauce bound up my kiddos. Pears were a godsend. Switching to oatmeal instead of rice cereal helped a lot.

[SuzySunshine]

We are currently giving R 1oz prune juice with 1oz water to help his per the doc's recommendations.

[spotty_dog]

When you say "started him on table foods" do you mean you're doing baby-led solids? That's how we started Natalie. I only offered solids once a day at that age, and she only ate what she could get to her own mouth. At seven months she'd have been getting spears of steamed veggies, chunks of fruit, and maybe oatmeal (I like to cook it chewy, so she'd have something she could grab and pick up) and a little bit of rice from dinner.

From experience with Eddy (very frequently constipated when he was little) and from Natalie's recent round of painful poops, I can say that the 'p' foods are loosening (pear, peach, prune) and the BRAT foods are binding (banana, rice, apple, toast). Cheese binds up some babies, but dairy loosens Natalie -- I think she's slightly intolerant -- not that you're probably feeding much cheese yet.

Breastmilk is loosening, and if you want, you can cut out solids completely for a few days until he does better. "Before one is just for fun" -- solid foods shouldn't need to be the cornerstone of nutrition for quite a while to come.

[Momo]

I found that rice cereal, bananas and applesauce bound up my kiddos. Pears were a godsend. Switching to oatmeal instead of rice cereal helped a lot.

yep, what she said!

I also did the mixture of prune juice & water and had him drink from a medicine dispenser cup...it helped!

My DD LOVES her prunes and they helped us get through her early solid food woes. We always keep some puree on hand for "bad days". I started her at 6 months on bananas and rice cereal - big mistake. I quickly switched to oatmeal and pears as our main staples.

With my girl, she was a mess at first (first couple of weeks), but gradually got used to eating more solids. But even now when we introduce her to a new food, I expect it to cause some BM issues for at least a couple of days (not as severe as they were the first time!).

[Meenah]

If they like yogurt you could add a little prune puree to the yogurt.