I was really looking forward to the day when we could finally start feeding our little one other foods (other than breast milk) … and he took to it really well! The problem is at the other end though – we’re back to the constipation scenario now. After the usual trial and error process we found out that baby rice really isn’t great for our baby’s bowel movements.
We’ve had a history of constipation with Noah over the last few months. Apparently it is unusual for breast fed babies to have this problem but well … it just happened. Fortunately it usually cleared again after a week or so and using prune juice certainly helped. As soon as we started with baby rice that strategy went down the toilet … or actually it didn’t. The stuff is literally like glue – no matter how much water you add it always ends up sticky after a given period. I tried this out by just letting it sit in a cup with water for a while and baby rice really has an amazing capacity to absorb water. Obviously it keeps doing that even after it’s been swallowed!
So after consulting with various doctors and nurses we were advised to stop feeding baby rice, carrots, bananas and potatoes (bummer! he ate all of those really well). Instead we should feed peaches, pears, apple, melon, avocado and pumpkin. We were also given some drugs to help ease the constipation and of course we had to bring the prune juice back. After about 3 days it was beginning to take effect and we are now back in business. Still he doesn’t poo as frequently as he did at the beginning but at least he has a rhythm now. Unfortunately he didn’t take to apples and pears to well – which meant we couldn’t mix them with banana or carrot either.
So the irony for us is that the whole drama of introducing solids and getting the baby used to a new way of taking in food was actually quite easy to deal with. But dealing with the consequences of not being able to use baby rice, bananas, carrots and potatoes initially was much harder. We found that avocados are a great alternative in that they have a lot of nutrients but don’t seem to cause any constipation.
