Hard BM in 3 year old

My daughter has this. I found give her one cup/glass of PURE - unsweetened orange juice per day - And all is well...

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Hi Mumwithone

Sue is right. 100%Orange juice (as opposed to orange fruit juice drink) is a good thing to try. One glass of 100% orange juice has, I believe, between 4 and 6 oranges worth of whatever it is that is useful for sorting constipation.

Green apples are supposed to have the same effect ("An apple a day keeps the doctor away."), but I don't know whether that means Granny Smiths or underripe varieties. Actually, almost any slightly underripe fruit works. This is because underripe fruit has stuff called pectin in it. Pectin is bitter and offputting to eat, which is how the fruit tree tells animals that the fruit is not ready to eat yet (in other words the little seeds in the fruit are not yet ripe and ready to be dispersed to reproduce the fruit tree). That's why too much underripe fruit gives people a tummy ache.

So don't overdo the orange juice. Also, oranges are one of those fruits prone to bringing on allergy reactons like hives. So it is probably a good idea to mix up the foods she is eating to get over constipation.

I also remember all my friends who fed their babies artificially used to give their babies orange juice in a bottle sometimes. It was about constipation, as the baby cannot control the composition of the milk if s/he just wants the fluid, not necessarily the full blown nutrients in formula. Breastfed babies can just drink to quench their thirst because the foremilk has a lot of water in it. The hind milk is the stuff that has the high fat content that satisfies their hunger. So they have a drink first, then if not satisfied, they keep sucking to get the satisfying, fatty hindmilk that lets down after a couple of minutes.

So the other thing is to make sure your daughter drinks plenty of water, without too much sugar, and gets enough high water content foods, that don't have too much salt, which will pull water out of her system when it is taken out by her kidneys.

I am not sure, but I think sugar is a constipator too (so that means sugary drinks and dried fruit too). And I know that grains that are refined do not have enough fibre, so the stool cannot retain water in the fibre that passes through. So go for whole grains, rather than white wheat flour, corn, rice, pasta etc, so she is getting enough fibre in her grains. The fibre will also keep the digestive tract active so the stool is not in there for too long. The longer the stool is in the bowel, the more water will be drawn out of it. The caution on this one though, is that fibre also draws out calcium. Ya can't win!

The reason pectin is so useful as a de-constipator is that it digests into a kind of gel (which is what makes jams and conserves gel), so it retains water right through the digestive system, keeping the water content of stool high.

Another thing to do is ensure she eats enough oil. I am talking about the oils that remain liquid at room temperature, because they are mono or polyunsaturated. I am not talking about palm oil, and the other saturated fats (like the stuff they cook chips (fries) in. Even if the food outlet says they cook only in polyunsaturated oils, the food is fried at very high temperatures, which, according to my Wholefoods Cookbook, converts the fat to saturated fat as soon as it reaches deep frying temperature. So it is false advertising by the end of the day.

This is all just stuff I have picked up as a foodie and Mum. It is not professional advice, but it might explain why your nutritionist is recommending certain things. I would also add that our kids were never picky eaters and didn't have gut problems that were related to hard stool, so who am I to be giving you tips.

Best of luck getting through this.

Hey, just another thought, are you sure the stools are actually hard, or has she always just had trouble getting them out? The squish test will tell you this. AI watched the South Park episode about the biggest poo in the world last night, so I am connecting with poo in a big way today! ;-)

Cheers

Louise

I have some really picky eaters, so I feel your pain! my dd suffered from serious constipation from the ages of 2 - 6. my ds isn't 'constipated' but his bm's are pretty hard. both would live on cheese and pasta if they could.
turns out my dd's problems were directly related to her anxiety.
for ds, I find that a glass of grape juice every night helps soften things up.
his urologist also recommended some fiber drink made for kids, don't remember what its called, I'll try to dig it up. we never tried it though. I used to bribe my dd to drink some metamucil when things were really bad. I know, I'm not supposed to bribe kids to eat, but I couldn't have her getting impacted, ya know?

will your dd eat oatmeal? pears? soup? and make sure she's drinking enough water too.

Hi Mumwithone

Kids don't need juice. They actually need the fibre in the fruit, so give her the fruit instead, cut up so it is easy finger food. Then you can cut down the dried fruit, which is also pulling water out of her system, and drying out the stool and loading her system up with sugar.

Just wondering what your diet is like?

Here is the website of the Meerilinga Young Children's Foundation, http://www.meerilinga.org.au/Nutrition/LunchBoxWorld/About.aspx . This organisation was a major influence for me when my kids were little. The section called Lunch Box is full of good info. as most kids snack naturally, rather than have less big meals in a day, whether they spend their days at Daycare or at home. Your daughter is no different from the majority of pre-schoolers. Ya just gotta keep offering her a wide variety of unprocessed foods.

Here's another site with lots of info on food for kids, and adults too. It has some stuff on oils but you could probably find better. http://www.nutritionaustralia.org/Nutrition_for_All_Ages/Children/fact_s...

The story with oils is that mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are the ones to go for most. Avoid too much saturated fat (animal fats and solid vegetable fats). To my knowledge all oils are labelled with the kind of oil they contain.

Good luck on this. Your local child health nurse probably has more resources you can check out.

Cheers

Louise

I just learned about a mom who developed an organic drink (comes in a 'juice-box' type container) for kids. It's made from organic whole grains and fruit, and it's gluten-free. It's called 'Froose' (www.froose.com)

My three year old grand-daughter also has some constipation problems (which I think come from not eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables---lots of hot dogs/mac & cheese etc. served at her house. Sigh...) but I dare not say anything about what *I* think. So I just try to make sure she gets good food when she's at my house. I'm going to get some of this 'Froose' for her to drink, too.

I was really tickled to learn about this product---I think it's REALLY neat--and about TIME someone came up with something that's healthy, but still appealing to kids~smile~

Peace,
S&G

my kids will drink this stuff like it is candy- and a few packs a day and they are getting a ton of vitamin C-
also you can give aloe-
or magnesium

there is a powder called mama calm you can get- really good stuff to get a kid movin-

we do smoothies- I can hide anything in one.

I wanted to share something I learned while doing some 'research' for my daughter--she's trying to get grand-daughter (11 months) to try some solid foods--worried about getting her off formula by a year old. The nurse at the WIC program here (Women/Infants/Children--a program that provides pregnant women and babies/children up to 5 y/o with milk, fortified cereal, cheese, peanut butter, eggs, fruit juice and formula) told her not to worry about the formula and that if grandbaby isn't eating enough solid food at a year it's OK to continue formula.

Back to my point (I get easily side-tracked!)---I was reading about nutrition and getting our kids to eat the "right" foods---which isn't always easy. Every reliable source I've read says that it takes between 10 and 15 times of introducing a food over and over before the kid might like it and eat it. This was NEWS to me--I never thought it would take so long or so many attempts. (It made me realize that I'd been impatient with my own kids (some 30 odd years ago) and decided that they just "didn't like" some of the good stuff I gave them. I gave up to easily, it seems.)

I just wanted to share that because it's something I wish I'd known way back when. At least I know it now and know to just "keep trying" with the grandkids.

Peace,
S&G

Hi S&G

My experience with our first baby was similar, except that he only had mainly breastmilk up until 12 months, and was weaned suddenly at 16 months when I was hospitalised. Up until about 11 months he would literally gag on anything solid and spit it out. He eventually made the heart and fun connection with real food, never had special food made for him, just stuff off our plates, then portions of his own on the high chair tray and finger foods to graze during the day.

He is now a strapping great 25 year old man, trained as a winemaker, a true wine and food connoisseur, a damned good cook and a walking encyclopaedia on foods.

The second and third babies started being interested in real food around 7 months, and just grazed on our foods and a variety of finger foods, like the first baby, until they eventually had their own plates of food at the table like us. I really think that the food they had on their plates for the first 2 or 3 years was just introducing them to the social aspects of eating, plus keeping them occupied in one place while we ate our meal, plus keeping them in one place to eat so they didn't spread their food all over the kitchen. Food is such fun when you are two; lots of artistic murals were prevented. Our toddlers were all pretty 'feral' foodwise. Learning to eat was fun! The younger two love food and cooking too. Eating together is still a special time, even though it is rare that we are all together in one place.

They all eat everything, after going through phases of not particularly liking some foods. We have always eaten varied main meals, ie lots of veges, some protein, some carbohydrate, dished up everything for them, and had a saying, like a broken record, "That's OK. If you don't like it, leave it on the side of the plate."

I reckon pureeing foods for babies is a waste of time and energy. They can quite happily live on mainly baby milk until they are 12 months old, and usually acquire an interest in other foods by then, when they have teeth, and can eat much more interesting foods than mono-flavoured mush. Why create work when feeding babies, at a time when they are programmed for liquid food, ie baby milk?

I was always a bit lazy about teaching our kids to conform and learn to do what others said they 'should'. I figured that the need to conform with a peer group would eventually do the job for me. And it did.

Cheers

Louise

I breastfed all my babies (oldest son until about 7 months when one day he just turned his head away and screamed. I never did figure out what that was about. The breast milk was ALL he was eating, and so to have to stop all at once was a real problem! He was growing like a weed and all the relatives, etc. tried to convince me he was 'starving' and that breastfeeding wasn't "enough." Ugh.. My younger son lasted until about 11 months and then 'biting' became a problem, sigh... My oldest daughter breastfed until about seven months and my youngest daughter had to start drinking formula at about a month-and-a-half because my doctor (awful woman that she was!) told me I could take BC pills and breastfeed at the same time. UGH!!! I 'knew' that wasn't true--but I believed her because she was a doctor. That was very sad for me, since I knew I didn't want anymore children and that would be my last chance for the closeness of breastfeeding... I really felt that she 'robbed' me of that experience by lying to me.)

I didn't buy or make special baby foods, but I did take whatever we were having for dinner, etc. and put it in the blender and pour the extra into ice-cube trays (one cube was a perfect size serving.) Sometimes I'd do it before I put in extra salt or strong spices. Otherwise it was mostly finger foods, etc. I remember they liked Zwieback (sp?) toast a lot. And as yukky as it may sound--they ALL liked liver-sausage (braunschwieger) on a spoon with frozen peas stuck into it. I think it probably felt good when they were getting teeth. (Talking about this sure brings back memories and makes me smile...)

Thanks for sharing...
S&G