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My baby takes three days without pooping
If the baby is irritable, straining, has a firm belly, failing to breast feed and miserable, it requires being taken to its paediatrician who may want to check out medical conditions that may lead to constipation.
What can I give my two-month-old baby who takes three days without pooping? I inserted soap in the bum and it worked but the problem resurfaced. Mercy
Dear Mercy
Stool in adults is mainly made from undigested food, worn-out digestive tract cells and small organisms such as bacteria and digestive juices.
Breastfeeding babies may almost completely digest and absorb the breast milk and without much to pass as stool, may take a few days or even a week or two without passing stool.
So, if an exclusively breastfeeding baby takes a day or two without passing stool and eventually passes soft stool and is breastfeeding or playing well, this may be normal. Breastfeeding babies rarely get constipated but they may.
Using soap enema on babies may harm their health since inserting it may hurt the baby’s delicate rectum apart from the fact that soap is made up of chemicals, which can easily be absorbed into the body by the tender baby’s rectum.
If the baby is irritable, straining, has a firm belly, failing to breast feed and miserable, it requires being taken to its paediatrician who may want to check out medical conditions that may lead to constipation. Meanwhile, you require breast feeding it even more because sometimes when babies are not feeding enough, they may seem to be constipated whereas not.
Exercising the legs by pumping can be more helpful than massaging the tummy which is already sore. A mothers diet is more likely to lead to diarrhoea than constipation in an exclusively breastfeeding baby.
