[minidiamond]

DS has been on solids for just under 4 weeks now, loving it. His poos are quite solid & sometimes like little pellets so I'm wondering if he's a little bit constipated ? He has pear and/or banana with a little bit of rice cereal in the mornings (tried apple he didn't really like it), then in the evenings we've done sweet potato, carrot, broccoli, avocado (some of those mixed together now & then). I can't really identify if it's one particular food that's causing the pellets? He's not in pain per se & is quite regular but just very hard.

I bought some prunes today was thinking of mushing those and adding a tiny bit to his breakfast.

I know the rice cereal can be the culprit, if I stop that, what's a good iron replacement ?

We are seeing the MCHN this week so will ask there but wondering about any experiences.

eta I am giving him cooled boiled water in sippy cup after each meal. He's obviously still learning so if he doesn't seem to get much I give him a few teaspoons of water

This post has been edited by minidiamond: 10/02/2013, 03:01 PM

[Kay1]

My son is exactly the same. I have tried a little prune juice mixed in with his food but it didn't seem to help much.

Bananas can cause constipation so I'd cut those out for a while. Apple actually causes constipation too apparently. Pear is good. Avo would be good too I imagine.

I think its something their system just has to get used to. When the start drinking water that helps too. You can try offering him some cooled boiled water and see if he'll drink it.

[lucky 2]

How old is your baby now?

[minidiamond]

How old is your baby now?

6 months

[AvadaKedavra]

Stop the rice cereal. You don't need to worry about iron fortification, unless you were malnourished in pregnancy. Which I suspect you weren't. Iron fortification of baby cereal is just trying to protect the most at risk babies, not the whole population.

Also remember that babies are people. If you wouldn't eat sweet potato mushed with avocado, then don't feed it to your baby!

[lucky 2]

The link below may help-
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/b...on_and_children
If you scroll down it suggests avoiding prune juice for babies under 9 months and encourages you to seek advice from your chn for babies under 12 months.
If your baby is breast fed it would be great to breast feed as much as possible.
You could also back off from solids, ie starting at around 6 months (for a bfed baby) and increasing to 2 or 3 meals a day at 8 months of age, so no hurry.
As for iron there is iron in breast milk and formula, your baby is young so there would possibly be more of an issue concerning iron when your baby is older, then you could give red meat etc.
I hope your visit with your chn goes well this week.
All the best.

[minidiamond]

The chn told me to try prune juice. Go figure.
Thanks for the tips folks.

[lucky 2]

Go figure indeed!
Good luck .

[~kacee~]

DS had exactly the same thing when starting solids. He would almost turn purple when pushing out a poo (which made for great video, but not so great for the poor little guy). I gave at least 1 cube of pureed prunes with his fruit, kept up with the pear, avoided banana, and it just disappeared. If you're pureeing your own food, add more boiled water to make it quite runny, and give him more liquid.

Also agree with the PPs as far as: stay away from rice cereal! We didn't give DS any, and moved on to pureed meats after a couple of weeks.

ETA his poos got better without us doing anything different after about 3 weeks. I'm guessing his body just got more used to digesting food.

This post has been edited by ~kacee~: 11/02/2013, 12:24 PM

[minidiamond]

thanks kacee - I did try a tiny bit of pureed prune this morning, and added boiled water. Added it to his pear and reduced the rice cereal by quite a lot. He did a softer poo (sorry for TMI) just before lunch so it might've helped.

The chn also told me to try weet bix (mushy etc) but I think I'll stick with fruits & veges for another week or two