My daughter was not born constipated.
I know this, because she aspirated meconium during her birth. So there was, in
fact a time in her life that she was actually able to eliminate without
assistance. Albeit brief and ever so fleeting – that time did exist.
My beautiful girl spent the first 6 days of her life in the neonatal unit being treated, firstly for the aspiration, and then for jaundice. Somewhere in the middle of those 6 days she was allowed to come back to our room to stay with is, but she needed to sleep on, and spend as much time as possible on, a biliblanket to treat the jaundice. I was so happy to finally have my baby to myself that I spent the next 12 hours pacing our room with my squirmy bundle, ignoring the pain of fresh stitches, the aching bruises and my violently contracting uterus, in order to continually help her get back to sleep. “If you’re struggling you can send her back down stairs, it’s no problem at all” the midwives kept telling me. “Maybe not a problem for YOU! But I’ve just got her back and I’m not ‘sending’ her anywhere!” I thought silently and ever-so bitterly back to them. You see, I knew she wasn’t hungry because she was on a 3 hourly feeding schedule (medically prescribed) that would see me almost force feeding her a ‘top up’ of expressed breast milk after 20 minutes on each boob! In any case she would scream at the breast and refuse to latch on unless she was good and ready. And it didnt seem like pain, as she was so easily soothed by physical contact. It was somewhere in between the two, my instincts told me. It was discomfort. She reminded me of one of those dolls who’s eyelids have weights in them so they close when placed horizontally, and open automatically when held up vertically. Only, she was the reverse. As soon as I tried to lay her down her eyes would pop right open, followed by her mouth to let out her screams of protest, that incidentally cut into my chest like a hot knife to butter.
Alas, I didn’t know any better. This was my first baby and I assumed that maybe this is what babies do. This is what all of those parents harp on about, the sleeplessness, the lack of answers and the feelings of guilt and self-doubt. That was until later that night, or possibly at about 3am the next morning. We were being looked after by a midwife on the night shift that I didn’t particularly like. She scolded me for nursing Evie sitting up in bed, and made me move to a chair next to the bed to do the exact same thing, although with slightly more pressure on my bruising and stitches. She heard Evie’s cries and came bursting through the door “Is everything alright?” “Yes.” I told her. “She’s been like this all day. I just think she hates sleeping on that blue blanket, I can’t seem to get her to stay there, or stay asleep!” my voice was definitely quivering at this point. She smiled smugly and put her hands out, motioning for me to hand the baby over “Its sounds like trapped wind to me. When was the last time she pood?” “I don’t know.” I told her, honestly. “She’s been downstairs until today and the nurses have changed some of her nappies”. She nodded with a look on her face that told me it didn’t matter what I said, she already knew what the problem was and she also knew how to fix it. She then proceeded to lay my still-screaming bundle down on the bed, stripped off her nappy and clothes and began to massage her tummy with a pressure that made us, as new parents, wince. She bent her little knees into her chest a few times, and then massaged a bit more, in a clockwise direction, finally stopping to pause on the lower right quadrant of Evie’s belly and pressing down even harder. I could barely watch and had to choke back furious questions that were bubbling in my throat, ready to lash this lady. And then, all of a sudden a burst of air and poo came spraying out onto the towel so intelligently placed under Evie’s little bottom. “There” she said, handing me back my wailing little heart. “Try to nurse her now”. So, I did. Evie latched on straight away, fell asleep, and then finally slept for a good few hours after that, on that stupid blanket inside her bassinet.
The next morning, one of the neonatal nurses came to take some of Evies blood to assess how well the jaundice treatment had been going. Needless to say, the results weren’t satisfactory and we had to admit that we had been unable to keep her on the blanket for any extended period of time. This did mean that she went back downstairs to the unit where she was placed under lights for a more intensive therapy instead. It wasn’t the ideal situation. I was heartbroken, in fact. But what came of this (I’m a big believer in everything happening for a reason) was that golden massaging technique that I would end up using several times a day, every day, for the next 8 months.
Don’t be fooled – nothing changed after 8 months except for the fact that Evie no longer allowed me to massage her tummy anymore. She was fed up, and I don’t blame her. But nothing else seemed to work. We had tried homeopathics, naturopathics, chiropractic, probiotics, magnesium, elimination diets, coloxyl and infacol. We’d trawled forums and asked friends, grandparents, the child health nurse and the GP. No one had any answers for us except for “Sometimes shit happens. Or, doesn’t happen in this case, and it’s very common” (that is literally a word-for-word quote from our GP.). He told us to try parachoc and simply use it for a full year, as by then the problem should have resolved itself. I read the parachoc disclosure statement and decided that I was not desperate enough to subject my daughter to a full year of “Malabsorption of water soluble vitamins, anal leakage and itching”. So, stalemate it was.
And of course, starting Evie on solids made everything worse. And we started her early because we thought that maybe this constipation was all in our heads. Maybe she was just hungry and that’s why she couldn’t sleep and we had just let the idea that the midwife put in our heads about ‘trapped wind’ run away with us? Nope. We hadn’t. We were right, it was constipation all along (but we questioned ourselves – and everything, because that’s what good parents do!).
Months 9-14 were much the same. Only after 12 months we had the added stress of her refusal to eat anything, ever. It was fine and dandy to let her refuse meals when she was under 12 months (food before one if just for fun, after all!) but now that window had passed and we could no longer get by thinking that if we could just hang in there, this was just going to clear itself up and no damage would be done.
Exhausted and desperate, I turned to a new naturopath who educated me about antinutrients, oils and the power of fibre - all very useful and even successful for the first few days. But in our particular case, we needed more than fibre. The food Evie was having wasnt exactly absent of fibre, it just wasnt 100% fibre like the suggested meal plan. So I knew that there was more to the issue than a lack of fibre. And it certainly wasn't dehydration as my breast fed baby happily sucked back a few sippy cups full of pure water every day.
So I set off on my own, following my intuition into a land of research articles. It was these, comboned with the naturopath's wisdom that seem to have brought my daughter and her little belly to a happy place. I know that constipation is the number-one problem that toddlers present with, and that’s why I am sharing this information in the coming posts. I KNOW how hard this seemingly trivial issue can be on a family, and if sharing this knowledge can help anyone, who may not have access to the same resources, in anyway, then I am more than happy to do so. So, stay tuned because there is a light at the end of this particular tunnel that, for once, is not a train.
My beautiful girl spent the first 6 days of her life in the neonatal unit being treated, firstly for the aspiration, and then for jaundice. Somewhere in the middle of those 6 days she was allowed to come back to our room to stay with is, but she needed to sleep on, and spend as much time as possible on, a biliblanket to treat the jaundice. I was so happy to finally have my baby to myself that I spent the next 12 hours pacing our room with my squirmy bundle, ignoring the pain of fresh stitches, the aching bruises and my violently contracting uterus, in order to continually help her get back to sleep. “If you’re struggling you can send her back down stairs, it’s no problem at all” the midwives kept telling me. “Maybe not a problem for YOU! But I’ve just got her back and I’m not ‘sending’ her anywhere!” I thought silently and ever-so bitterly back to them. You see, I knew she wasn’t hungry because she was on a 3 hourly feeding schedule (medically prescribed) that would see me almost force feeding her a ‘top up’ of expressed breast milk after 20 minutes on each boob! In any case she would scream at the breast and refuse to latch on unless she was good and ready. And it didnt seem like pain, as she was so easily soothed by physical contact. It was somewhere in between the two, my instincts told me. It was discomfort. She reminded me of one of those dolls who’s eyelids have weights in them so they close when placed horizontally, and open automatically when held up vertically. Only, she was the reverse. As soon as I tried to lay her down her eyes would pop right open, followed by her mouth to let out her screams of protest, that incidentally cut into my chest like a hot knife to butter.
Alas, I didn’t know any better. This was my first baby and I assumed that maybe this is what babies do. This is what all of those parents harp on about, the sleeplessness, the lack of answers and the feelings of guilt and self-doubt. That was until later that night, or possibly at about 3am the next morning. We were being looked after by a midwife on the night shift that I didn’t particularly like. She scolded me for nursing Evie sitting up in bed, and made me move to a chair next to the bed to do the exact same thing, although with slightly more pressure on my bruising and stitches. She heard Evie’s cries and came bursting through the door “Is everything alright?” “Yes.” I told her. “She’s been like this all day. I just think she hates sleeping on that blue blanket, I can’t seem to get her to stay there, or stay asleep!” my voice was definitely quivering at this point. She smiled smugly and put her hands out, motioning for me to hand the baby over “Its sounds like trapped wind to me. When was the last time she pood?” “I don’t know.” I told her, honestly. “She’s been downstairs until today and the nurses have changed some of her nappies”. She nodded with a look on her face that told me it didn’t matter what I said, she already knew what the problem was and she also knew how to fix it. She then proceeded to lay my still-screaming bundle down on the bed, stripped off her nappy and clothes and began to massage her tummy with a pressure that made us, as new parents, wince. She bent her little knees into her chest a few times, and then massaged a bit more, in a clockwise direction, finally stopping to pause on the lower right quadrant of Evie’s belly and pressing down even harder. I could barely watch and had to choke back furious questions that were bubbling in my throat, ready to lash this lady. And then, all of a sudden a burst of air and poo came spraying out onto the towel so intelligently placed under Evie’s little bottom. “There” she said, handing me back my wailing little heart. “Try to nurse her now”. So, I did. Evie latched on straight away, fell asleep, and then finally slept for a good few hours after that, on that stupid blanket inside her bassinet.
The next morning, one of the neonatal nurses came to take some of Evies blood to assess how well the jaundice treatment had been going. Needless to say, the results weren’t satisfactory and we had to admit that we had been unable to keep her on the blanket for any extended period of time. This did mean that she went back downstairs to the unit where she was placed under lights for a more intensive therapy instead. It wasn’t the ideal situation. I was heartbroken, in fact. But what came of this (I’m a big believer in everything happening for a reason) was that golden massaging technique that I would end up using several times a day, every day, for the next 8 months.
Don’t be fooled – nothing changed after 8 months except for the fact that Evie no longer allowed me to massage her tummy anymore. She was fed up, and I don’t blame her. But nothing else seemed to work. We had tried homeopathics, naturopathics, chiropractic, probiotics, magnesium, elimination diets, coloxyl and infacol. We’d trawled forums and asked friends, grandparents, the child health nurse and the GP. No one had any answers for us except for “Sometimes shit happens. Or, doesn’t happen in this case, and it’s very common” (that is literally a word-for-word quote from our GP.). He told us to try parachoc and simply use it for a full year, as by then the problem should have resolved itself. I read the parachoc disclosure statement and decided that I was not desperate enough to subject my daughter to a full year of “Malabsorption of water soluble vitamins, anal leakage and itching”. So, stalemate it was.
And of course, starting Evie on solids made everything worse. And we started her early because we thought that maybe this constipation was all in our heads. Maybe she was just hungry and that’s why she couldn’t sleep and we had just let the idea that the midwife put in our heads about ‘trapped wind’ run away with us? Nope. We hadn’t. We were right, it was constipation all along (but we questioned ourselves – and everything, because that’s what good parents do!).
Months 9-14 were much the same. Only after 12 months we had the added stress of her refusal to eat anything, ever. It was fine and dandy to let her refuse meals when she was under 12 months (food before one if just for fun, after all!) but now that window had passed and we could no longer get by thinking that if we could just hang in there, this was just going to clear itself up and no damage would be done.
Exhausted and desperate, I turned to a new naturopath who educated me about antinutrients, oils and the power of fibre - all very useful and even successful for the first few days. But in our particular case, we needed more than fibre. The food Evie was having wasnt exactly absent of fibre, it just wasnt 100% fibre like the suggested meal plan. So I knew that there was more to the issue than a lack of fibre. And it certainly wasn't dehydration as my breast fed baby happily sucked back a few sippy cups full of pure water every day.
So I set off on my own, following my intuition into a land of research articles. It was these, comboned with the naturopath's wisdom that seem to have brought my daughter and her little belly to a happy place. I know that constipation is the number-one problem that toddlers present with, and that’s why I am sharing this information in the coming posts. I KNOW how hard this seemingly trivial issue can be on a family, and if sharing this knowledge can help anyone, who may not have access to the same resources, in anyway, then I am more than happy to do so. So, stay tuned because there is a light at the end of this particular tunnel that, for once, is not a train.
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