Constipation

Ok yucky subject!

My girls are 9 weeks old. For 11 days now, Marley has been having poop issues. She used to poop 2-3 times a day; however, 11 days ago she started having a tougher time pooping. The first time she went over 24 hours, pooped a rock-bullet and then an hour later a large poop, which was more solid than usual. I started giving her karo syrup after realizing it had been 24 hours. Then after these 2 poops, she again went close to 48 hours, then pooped and so on.

A week ago today we went to the pedi (about 4 days after it started) and she saw that Marley was uncomfortable, it had been about 30 hours since her last poop. I told her we've been giving her Karo syrup and she is passing gas so she's not impacted. The pedi gave her a glycerin suppository in the office and within minutes she had a large poop (but had to push really hard and screamed) the poop wasn't hard but I suspect there was a rock hidden in that diaper! She said to call back if issues continue

So we continue...on Thursday I called the pedi's office and a nurse I dont generally deal with called back. I explained it had been over 36 hours again and poor Marley was just miserable. I had gone out and bought Fleet pediatric suppositorise; however, they say ages 2-5 and the pharmacist said to call to get dosing because there weren't any recommendations, but there aren't smaller ones that she knew of. The nurse said that I needed to do some rectal stimulation (my poor poor child lol) and that they aren't considered constipated until over 3 days! I said even if she's miserable, suffering and this is abnormal? She said yes. I told her the doc had said to call if it continued and she said she would talk to the doctor and call back if the doc wanted us to do something different.

Well late that night Marley finally pooped. Now she seems to go at least 48 hours despite karo syrup, rectal stimulation etc etc. She is miserable for the last 12+ hours before pooping and screams as she pushes out gas etc.

She is on Neosure and I know the iron could be causing this, she's been on it since 3 days old though.

Any suggestions/experience? She's great today because she pooped yesterday afternoon but I know that we will probably deal with this again tomorrow!

 

Ugh! I would call and see if you can talk to the Ped instead of the Nurse. I know that we had issues too and we were told to do 1/2 ounce pear juice to 1/2 ounce of water to help. It usually did the trick. I hope she gets some relief soon. :hug:

 

We had the same issue with our daughter -- you can put a teaspoon of either dark Karo syrup (corn syrup) or prune juice in one of her bottles. I put a teaspoon -- sometimes teaspoon and a fourth, in DDs morning bottle -- she is now regular. Good luck!

 

I'd call the doctor back and ask to speak with her directly. :hug:

 

Good luck getting past the gate keeper. LOL
Mine don't poop daily either and sometimes it becomes a concern. I also think it is the iron in the formula. I use the teaspoon of prune juice in the bottle trick and it works well for us.
At 9 weeks, they told me to do the rectal stim with a thermometer! That really sucked... Poor babies.
Hang in there!

 

I would ask to speak to the doctor. We would heat up some water and mix it with a 1 tsp of karo juice, let it cool and give the cooled mixture in a bottle. That always helped our little one's go. Pear/prune juice mixed with water also helped out. Good luck!

 

Once when one of our daughters got REALLY constipated our pedi told us to give her this "concoction": 2oz water, 2oz juice (we used prune), 2tblsp dark kayro syrup. They also suggested the glycerin suppositories if it didn't help. You can buy those at wal-mart. She was older than your baby is now though so I would definitely check with your pedi first. Like another pp mentioned, I've heard of doing rectal stimulation too. Our NICU would do that if a baby had not had a bowel movement for awhile before going to glycerin. I believe glycerin basically just loosens everything up and makes it easier, but I could be wrong. Hope she feels better!

 

Our Gi has them on milk of magnesia. He said is natural..and they only use a few drops a bottle a day or when I see it necessary...they poop
about 6 hours later... makes it easy to know when there will be a dirty diaper
If you do use it make sure you use only a few drops,, I think .less than 1/2 of teaspoon (just put it on their bottle) otherwise they poop to much

 

Thanks everyone! I'm giggling about the gatekeeper comment re: the nurse....so true with this nurse! There is another nurse at the practice who loves my girls and usually takes my calls but she must of been out or busy that day. She's fantastic btw!

Anyhow, after typing this lil Marley has become her regular self...we've had 4 poops in 3 days hooray!! I talked to our case worker (through the insurance because they were preemie/NICU time) and she suggested the pear or prune juice too. I will keep all these ideas tucked in my now empty mind for future reference!

I never thought I would be so all consumed with poop concerns lol

 

We had a heck of time with our daughter. She was mostly BF and went 14 days without a poop! We tried everything, supps, juice, rectal stim etc. It was scary. We finally had to do an Fleets enema to get her to go. Then we got a Calcium/Magnesium liquid from our naturopath that seemed to help. She also put her on fish oil but I could never bring myself to give it to her.

The glycerin suppositories work by irritating the rectum so I didn't like using them. My DD seemed to get out of this pattern within a few weeks. Good luck!

 

we also gave our daughter karo syrup until 4mo. We went to a GI (our daughter turned out to be gassy with a milk intolerance) who said the syrup causes gas which could be making our daughter upset.