Pruning the Digestive Process

Ian is now eating solids, sort of. I’ve been giving him prune juice the past few days, which is at least something other than milk or formula even if it isn’t firm enough to qualify as a solid. I’m using the prune juice as a laxative. It’s actually the second most powerful baby laxative I’ve found, but Ellie won’t let me give chili to a baby. Again.

We recently gave the twins a dramatic increase in the amount of formula in their diet, which increases the likelihood of constipation. Constipation is the body’s defense mechanism; they hate the formula so much going down that they hold onto it for as long as possible to keep their digestive systems full, minimizing the amount of formula needed to consume in order to achieve fullness.

Ian’s digestive tract entered shutdown mode shortly after the increase. After giving them their bedtime bottles a couple of nights ago, I set Ian into his blanket for bedtime swaddling. He was peaceful as I lowered him, like he could fall asleep as soon he hit his crib and not wake until the sun rose, provided that dawn would come at 3am because that’s the time he’s programmed to wake overnight now. As soon as I set him down though, he started screaming like a UCLA basketball fan after last night’s title game. I checked for obvious problems like me rolling onto his foot, a painful object beneath him, or his team being drubbed on national TV. A couple seconds later, he tooted. And tooted. And tooted some more, eventually sounding like a locomotive trying to alert a cow sleeping on the tracks. Nothing but air came out in spite of the gut movements, and he continued screaming. I knew he hadn’t pooped in a couple of days, and figured painful constipation had set in.

Even when Ian was on all breast milk, he was never a super pooper. That title belongs to his brother, who even after the increase in formula still poops more by 9am than most people do all day. I knew it was time to break open the prune juice I bought a month ago as a preventative measure, but Ellie wouldn’t let me use while the twins were still pooping twice a day. I poured about a quarter-ounce in his next bottle of milk, and hoped for the burst, er, best. I wanted to try adding the juice to milk first because the last time I added something to the formula, namely breast milk, both babies rejected it like America rejected Basic Instinct 2. Abbie drank prune juice in this way for several months of her first year, and it kept her regular. Of course, Abbie was always a pretty good pooper so the prune juice may have been unnecessary, a point Ellie eventually made by dumping out half a bottle of perfectly good prune juice so I’d stop forcing our daughter to poop two to three times a day.

Happily Ian took the milk-juice concoction, and filled his diaper a few hours later. My guess is he filled it with acetone because what emerged smelled too vile to be baby poop. I held my nose and remembered the important thing is he was moving again, though it was too soon to attribute the movement to the juice. In the couple days since, Ian has pooped a little, but is likely still holding a little back. I’ll watch him closely for a week, and may end up increasing the amount of prune juice he drinks. Or I could just give him some chili.