- Prune juice - Valerie hates prune juice, nanny force-feed her using a spoon but she would cry everytime and tries to spit it out.
- More veges and fruits - Her porridge mainly consist of vege like spinach / brocolli / potato / pumpkin. After her porridge, we fed her fruits puree - banana, papaya, pear, apples.
- More water intake - Don't talk about this one. She clamped her mouth shut and arched her back after 5 forced-spoonfeed.
- Fruit juices - Nope, can't get a drop into her mouth either.
- Sippy cup - I tried introducing sippy cup to her instead since she doesn't suck any water from the bottle anymore. She enjoyed holding the cup and tilted it a little until the water came pouring out. She was very wet end of it, not sure how much water got in but I could hear some gulping sound.
- Straws - Before deciding to buy a straw cup, I tried to introduce straws hoping this would trick her to drink more water. So I had 2 straws, gave her one to play while I use the other to attract her. I pretended to enjoy drinking water from it (with water dropped when I released my thumb at the other end), and she would follow. This seemed to work best now.
- We brought her to pediatrician and she said we were not feeding her enough cause she only had 2 main meal - lunch and inner. We needeed to add breakfast cereal into her diet to increase the amount of fibre. She also said water and juice were definitely not the cause - Woke up early to try to give her breakfast. She ate 5 spoonsful for the first day and totally rejected cereal for the rest of the days. She opted for milk instead. What a waste of time and energy.
- We gave her medication from the pedia every night as a means to soften her stool until constipation improves - Her poo remained hard every 3rd day so I stopped feeding her this medicine. (Really useless medication I would say)
- One mommy I met at the clinic suggested I try millet instead since white rice is constipating. Plus millet is high in fibre and has more protein and vitamins. I boiled millet porridge last Saturday, Valerie hated the coarse texture and only had a few spoonfuls. So I mixed rice and millet instead, she seemed to accept this well.
- 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil (extra virgin) into her porridge - Tried this as well last weekend
We tried option 9 and 10 last weekend, and I felt it sort of helped because Valerie seemed to want to go on Sunday but we didn't manage to get anything out. She just didn't stay long enough on the potty. (Nanny told us to remove all toys and no tv so that she could concentrate). But she just arched her back and tried to stand up. When I hit her legs slightly to get her to remain seated, she then cried pitifully. Daddy would then whisk her away. Grrhhhh...
So on Monday, we got the expected news again that it's hard poop and she bled at the end. It seems to be a vicious cycle every 3 days. No amount of high fibre food or water seems to do the trick. What seems to go wrong? I wish someone could just tell me. I have a colleague where her baby is exclusively breastfed. The baby was constipated one whole month since she started solid but after one month, her digestive system seems to be back on track. Oh well, mine is just over a month already. Just have to wait it out I guess... Meanwhile I would keep trying all those in the list. >:
