Archive for January, 2011
Assessing the symptoms of infant constipation
January 25th, 2011 | 
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What is the normal frequency of bowel movements in infants? Well, the answer to this question depends on the individual babe and also whether they are breast or bottle fed. The molecular structure of breast-milk is more ideal for an infant to assimilate which means that in some cases, a breast fed baby may go several days without passing any stool at all as they are absorbing every ounce of the nutrients offered in nature’s perfect food. Babes who are transitioning to goat’s, cow’s, formula or solid foods, can show some colic-like symptoms, drawing up their legs, fussing and suffering more infant constipation, with harder, darker and unusually smelly stools.
If your babe is crying or turning red with the effort to push out stool, and you notice that the stool emitted is dry and pellet-like, you may need to adjust the new diet. You can safely increase the amount of water or temporarily offer more of the breast-milk while your babe’s plumbing adjusts to the new, bulkier foods that naturally emit more waste product. In some cases, you may need to apply infant massage techniques to your baby’s tummy in clock-wise, circular motion down towards the right of their abdomen where the colon dumps the waste into the rectum. A warm bath can help with infant constipation, too. If you are worried, and it’s been a few days since your baby passed stool, you may have to resort to a glycerin suppository for infants if things are more advanced and bunged up. The goal is for babe to pass 1 to 2 soft stools each day depending on the volume of milk, formula, or solid foods your babe is consuming.
If your babe is crying or turning red with the effort to push out stool, and you notice that the stool emitted is dry and pellet-like, you may need to adjust the new diet. You can safely increase the amount of water or temporarily offer more of the breast-milk while your babe’s plumbing adjusts to the new, bulkier foods that naturally emit more waste product. In some cases, you may need to apply infant massage techniques to your baby’s tummy in clock-wise, circular motion down towards the right of their abdomen where the colon dumps the waste into the rectum. A warm bath can help with infant constipation, too. If you are worried, and it’s been a few days since your baby passed stool, you may have to resort to a glycerin suppository for infants if things are more advanced and bunged up. The goal is for babe to pass 1 to 2 soft stools each day depending on the volume of milk, formula, or solid foods your babe is consuming.
Posted in infant constipation | 
Tags: constipation treatments, infant constipation, infant massage | 
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Why does Switching to Formula Cause Infant Constipation?
Your baby starts out by breathing amniotic fluid and being nourished by the placenta. Their systems are delicate and need time to adjust, after birth, to the flow of nutrition through their immature pipes. Shortly after birth, the peristaltic action of the small and large intestine is tried successfully with easily digested mother’s breast milk. This is the way nature wholly intended for us to nourish our babes. However, if the babe’s system is not afforded the opportunity to ramp up over time, receiving more and more solid food to the degree that they are maturing, colic and infant constipation can result, leaving you frantically searching for solutions and the cause for your infant’s constipation.
Most new parents are surprised to find out that it is perfectly normal for their breast fed babe to only pass stool once every week or even two! You see, the waste matter from this natural source of optimum nutrition amounts to very little. Think about it, if you ate only liquids derived from organic material that was ideally suited for your exact nutritional needs, chances are you’d experience the same phenomenon. The most amazing thing is that Mom’s breast milk is changing constantly to meet the precise needs of her baby. For example, if you are able to examine colostrum (the milk elicited right after birth) you would see the globules of rich fat floating on the top just like butter heated in a pan. Mothers with premature babes will produce colostrum for weeks instead of days like Moms with full term babies.
As your baby grows and changes, Mom’s breast milk changes in its constituent forms in order to not only nourish the babe, but also provide a natural laxative, maintaining the softness of the food-stuffs moving through the intestines that is effectually emitted as stool. It is very rare to find a constipated babe who is breast fed. In fact, it almost never happens. However, if this natural process is impinged upon due to illness or other untoward factors, the intuitive nature of your baby’s food source can be inhibited.
Infant constipation causes can be due to molecules that are too tightly packed in the formula. Sources of whey protein from cow’s milk can be too large at the molecular level for baby to handle causing pain and constriction in the intestines as your babe tries to adjust. If you think about it, cow’s milk is designed to grow a 1,200 lb. animal and a baby under 20 lbs. can interpret this food as a shock to its immature system. In some cases goat’s milk can be more ideally suited as the baby goat kid is a little more on par with a human baby’s size and patterns of growth.
Finding optimum sources of nutrition, other than breast milk can be a challenge for sure. Not all components of a mom’s breast milk can be ideally sourced in order to reproduce nature’s perfect food for the infant. Antibodies destroyed in the pasteurization process of cow or goat’s milk, or formula, is not ideal for your babe. If you think about it, a wet nurse was employed over the last 5-6,000 years for a babe not able to be suckled at his own mom’s breast. Unfortunately, infant formula derived from a powder or can, does not even resonate at the same energetic frequency of around 8 Hertz as the milk derived from mom does. This can make infant formula a tough food for babe to absorb. Soy formulas have been found to cause harm and allergies in babes and toddlers. It is a badly sourced protein structure, derived from a cheap cash crop, that inhibits the complete uptake of oxygen to the cell, causing not only infant constipation, but also breathing issues like asthma or even pneumonia in the babe later on.
Most new parents are surprised to find out that it is perfectly normal for their breast fed babe to only pass stool once every week or even two! You see, the waste matter from this natural source of optimum nutrition amounts to very little. Think about it, if you ate only liquids derived from organic material that was ideally suited for your exact nutritional needs, chances are you’d experience the same phenomenon. The most amazing thing is that Mom’s breast milk is changing constantly to meet the precise needs of her baby. For example, if you are able to examine colostrum (the milk elicited right after birth) you would see the globules of rich fat floating on the top just like butter heated in a pan. Mothers with premature babes will produce colostrum for weeks instead of days like Moms with full term babies.
As your baby grows and changes, Mom’s breast milk changes in its constituent forms in order to not only nourish the babe, but also provide a natural laxative, maintaining the softness of the food-stuffs moving through the intestines that is effectually emitted as stool. It is very rare to find a constipated babe who is breast fed. In fact, it almost never happens. However, if this natural process is impinged upon due to illness or other untoward factors, the intuitive nature of your baby’s food source can be inhibited.
Infant constipation causes can be due to molecules that are too tightly packed in the formula. Sources of whey protein from cow’s milk can be too large at the molecular level for baby to handle causing pain and constriction in the intestines as your babe tries to adjust. If you think about it, cow’s milk is designed to grow a 1,200 lb. animal and a baby under 20 lbs. can interpret this food as a shock to its immature system. In some cases goat’s milk can be more ideally suited as the baby goat kid is a little more on par with a human baby’s size and patterns of growth.
Finding optimum sources of nutrition, other than breast milk can be a challenge for sure. Not all components of a mom’s breast milk can be ideally sourced in order to reproduce nature’s perfect food for the infant. Antibodies destroyed in the pasteurization process of cow or goat’s milk, or formula, is not ideal for your babe. If you think about it, a wet nurse was employed over the last 5-6,000 years for a babe not able to be suckled at his own mom’s breast. Unfortunately, infant formula derived from a powder or can, does not even resonate at the same energetic frequency of around 8 Hertz as the milk derived from mom does. This can make infant formula a tough food for babe to absorb. Soy formulas have been found to cause harm and allergies in babes and toddlers. It is a badly sourced protein structure, derived from a cheap cash crop, that inhibits the complete uptake of oxygen to the cell, causing not only infant constipation, but also breathing issues like asthma or even pneumonia in the babe later on.
Posted in infant constipation, newborn constipation |
Tags: baby constipation, infant constipation, newborn constipation |
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