Apr 8, 2010

What the (missing) Crap???

***WARNING***this post contains content not suitable for those with poopy-phobia. If you are not interested in reading about my child's bowel movements, you should probably stop reading now.....

Ok, I warned you. In my last post I mentioned that MC has been having some difficulty "getting things going". My pediatrician said this was common, especially when using the Isomil soy formula. Anyway, as I also mentioned, since she has rebelled against drinking her juice we opted for prunes as her first baby food. As you can imagine from the pics and video, I was expecting to have a HUGE surprise waiting for me at some point in the evening. However, I waited... and waited... and waited.... NOTHING! I thought to myself, ok, surely this prune-filled baby will wake up at some point during the night with my long awaited surprise. I slept. She slept. I awoke the next morning fearing that my sweet darling had spent the entire night in her not-so-sweet prune poopy. I leaned over the crib and did the sniff test. Hmmm, I smell sweet baby, not poop. I took her to the changing table and changed her pee pee diaper wondering "where's the poop???!!!" I thought she might be saving it up for today, however, NO POOP! It is currently 9:30 pm and even after a second dinner feeding of prunes, MC won't let it go. I am stumped. Severely stumped. How does one make a baby poop normally???

Speaking of night number two of baby food, here are a few more pics... (I let her play with the spoon this time after she ate and she LOVED it! As you can see, the spoon even made it to her right eye a time or two and left its prune-y mark on her eyebrow haha)

In addition to being baffled by my child's stools, I am also completely confused by this whole "introducing solids" thing. I mean, I started putting rice in MC's bottle at about 2 1/2 months to help her sleep through the night (Surprising I know. I am typically so worried about doing things perfectly, that I rarely veer from mainstream opinions about child rearing - and as we all know, rice in the bottle is not reccomended. However, I was raising this baby alone for the first three months and when you are doing things alone, you HAVE to get some sleep. Granted, the rice didn't help her sleep any better, but that is another story) Wow, that was quite a long tangent. Anyway, as I was saying, I started putting rice in her bottle so now I am concerned that with the rice and the baby food she is getting too many calories. I am also confused about how much and how often to give her the baby food. And do I decrease the amount of milk now that she is getting baby food? And, why did he not have us start with rice cereal? Is it because we were already doing that in her bottle? Ah, so many questions. I LOVED my new pediatrician but he is very laidback about everything. I am more of a "specifics" person and he is more "go with the flow".

At our appointment he said we could start giving her baby food now. I said "oh great, how much how often, what kind, etc". His response was "Oh you'll hear/read all kinds of things about starting with vegetables,starting with yellow things, etc, but really it doesn't matter. Since she's staying constipated you might want to try some prunes or something, but basically just give her whatever you want whenever you want. You can feed her three times a day or just one time. She may not drink as much milk, but still just continue giving her the bottle as you have been doing." Not so great for me who would like to hear "Well, give her X amount of milk X times a day and give her X amount of baby food X times a day". I know babies don't come with a handbook or specific guidelines, and that makes me super nervous. I don't want to screw up. The point of this rant is I would love some input from those of you who have or have had babies. How does this whole solids thing work? I appreciate any knowledge you might be willing to share! Thanks!!!

6 comments:

Lisa N. said...

If MC isn't irritable because she is constipated, I would say she is okay. However, I completely understand your stress. As for the poopie no-show, I am surprised! Prunes always gave LC diaper explosions. Other natural laxatives: Pears & Apples - try those. If that doesn't work, the Doc is probably going to tell you to try Karo - but it never worked for us. Maybe she needs help pushing? Put her knees to her tummy and check her temp (the themometer helps the booty muscles contract...that sounds so weird!) If that doesn't work, there is always Pedi-lax. (A baby enema..it'll do the trick in about 3 minutes flat! haha!) Hope that helps! Kiss MC for me!

Anonymous said...

Ok, I know exactly how you feel!!! We went to our 4mo apt and the Dr. gave us the go ahead w/baby food as well. Then he says, "only if you're ready". He then mentions that the AAP (wasn't sure what that was until I googled it later) says I can wait until 6mos. He is very easy going and gives me pretty much the same info your dr. did. I have been asking my friends about the whole feeding thing for a month now and so far every answer is different. I did baby wise and loved it bc/I like having a detailed schedule. I'm going crazy trying to get this baby food thing figured out. I'm going to keep checking to see what people say on your blog bc/I need answers too. Let me know if you get it figured out bc/I'm so type A and confused!

Nan said...

Hey Jessica,

I found your blog via Laura Tomlinson. Hopefully you don't think I am weird for commenting even though I don't know you personally, but I remember being so confused over this same subject. I don't know if there is one right way the whole 'solids' thing works, but here is how we started:

around lunch would give Leyton one vegetable (we started with carrots, peas, & sweet potatoes) mixed with a little bit of rice or oatmeal cereal. Just to give it a little more oomph so he would get full. Then we would repeat around dinner with a fruit.

After a few weeks of that, we started feeding him 3x a day. Breakfast was oatmeal cereal mixed w/ fruit. Lunch and dinner were 1 vegetable + 1 fruit. As he got older (prob 8 months) we started giving 2 veggies and a fruit for lunch and dinner. He still took his formula pretty regularly too.

Hope this helps!

Nan

Ashia said...

i totally understand how you feel. i want to do everything the "right" way, so i want to be told what to do! i learned when we started baby food, that i was going to have to give that up. you will be fine. like everything else, it takes practice, or more like trial and error! here's what we do...

started out with just 1 thing a day. i started with applesauce. i know some start with a veggie, but my mom was determined that she should have applesauce. =) i personally (and have read the same thing) don't think it matters.

austin is 6 mo now, and her schedule is sorta like this...
if she wakes up really early, i breastfeed her and lay her back down for a while before breakfast. if she sleeps until 8ish, we do cereal or oatmeal, and some kind of fruit. i have also given her baby yogurt for breakfast, but that isn't recommended for babies under 6 mo.

between breakfast and lunch, she breastfeeds.

at lunch, she gets a jar of a veggie and more milk.

around 3 she gets a jar of a fruit, and milk.

at 6 she gets rice cereal, a veggie, milk, and sometimes a dessert. now that she's gotten the hang of it, we have started stage 2 foods, so the supper jar is usually something with a meat. tonight it was apples & ham. i will also sometimes give her a little bit of hawaiian delight (she LOVES this!) as a little dessert if she eats her supper good. as she gets older, i guess she will eat more than 1 jar at a sitting, but that's what we're doing for the time being.

i got my info from gerber.com. you can enter in MC's info, and they will give you a recommended menu that you can change to your liking. this helped me a TON. by the way, i started only buying the gerber brand at first, and now i only by nature's goodness. austin seems to like it just fine and it's way cheaper!

as for the poop issues... austin had the same thing. i was using suppositories, and they worked great, but she was getting "dependent on anal stimulation," so the dr said to give her 1/2 teaspoon of milk of magnesia twice a day, then go to once a day. it worked beautifully!! i gradually gave her less and less, and now she isn't having to take it. every once in a while, i will give her a tad if i notice she hasn't been in a while.

sorry this comment got SOOOOO long! good luck! y'all will be fine! keep us updated!

Ashley said...

Hi! I know I've commented on your blog before and we still don't really know each other, but I found you through Brandy Verwiel's blog and have been keeping up with you and your cute family on occasion!
I'm a nanny currently and have done the whole starting solids thing twice now in the last 6 months. This is what works for me and my kiddos: when we started solids, we introduced one to two tablespoons of solids at one meal time. I chose lunch. Then after a week or two of letting their little tummies get the hang of digesting real food, I'd add another meal of one more tablespoon or so of food. The very first time you give them a solid, I've noticed that there's no real digestive changes until the second or third day, so don't worry too much as long as she's not acting like she's hurting. Also with the bottle plus food question: I usually do one less ounce than usual when I'm adding in food. So my current six month old gets two tablespoons of baby food and 4 ounces (instead of her usual 5) at two meal times a day. I don't think it matters really to start with a cereal, but I did notice a very distinct pooping regularity when we did an organic multi-grain cereal, so maybe you could try that? I think it's just barley, rice, and oatmeal mixed. The rice cereal we tried didn't really affect her pooping. My little one's not a regular pooper either but has become a little more regular since the second full week of solids.
Hope this is a little helpful!

Ashley said...

oh, and I always wait three days before starting a new food to make sure there are no allergy or other food related issues. Waiting helps you keep tabs of the exact food that caused the problem if one were ever to arise!

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Total Pageviews