constipated at 7mos??

[jellytalk23]

My baby has been straining to poop - her poop look like small pellets. However they are soft, and not hard. does this constitute as constipation? she has been purely breastfed since birth and after i started solids a month ago, her poop started lookng like this. i feed her solids 3x/day, no more than 1oz each time. her diet consists of rice cereal (usu once/day), a veggie, and a fruit/yogurt each day. i give her up to 1tsp of prune juice after every other feeding to try to soften up her stools but doesn't seem to be working. i miss the runny poop... she didn't scrunch up her face and turn beet red trying to poop!

help... thanks in advance...

[JBaxter]

My baby has been straining to poop - her poop look like small pellets. However they are soft, and not hard. does this constitute as constipation? she has been purely breastfed since birth and after i started solids a month ago, her poop started lookng like this. i feed her solids 3x/day, no more than 1oz each time. her diet consists of rice cereal (usu once/day), a veggie, and a fruit/yogurt each day. i give her up to 1tsp of prune juice after every other feeding to try to soften up her stools but doesn't seem to be working. i miss the runny poop... she didn't scrunch up her face and turn beet red trying to poop!

help... thanks in advance...

Stop the rice and maybe the yogurt for a while too. Try 1 oz of prune juice diluted with 1 oz of water for a few days in a row. Im not a big fan of juice with babies but if they need help to go prune juice ususally does the trick. If she doenst like prune try 2 oz of straight pear juice ( I use organic for when Nathan gets stuck) Also go heavy on pears and skip the bananas.

[elephantmeg]

no it's not technically constipation if it's not hard. As she gets able to sit more, move more it will help with moving things along :) the pp gave great ideas on how to soften stuff up. P foods are the best: pears, prunes, peaches. Pear juice may work better and one of the ways it works is the sugar load that helps keep water, so diluting the juice may counteract the effect but YMMV (I know a lof of moms that try diluted juice to get their babies going). Sweet potaotes always resulted in an instant poop for DS too.

[kmak]

My DD had this problem too, but worse. She would cry during at least half of the time she had to BM. The Gerber brand baby food has prunes in their early stage food and worked better that juice. It will have more fiber. Feeding this to with one meal a day worked like a charm.