Constipation is No Laughing Matter

Meet Shaina.  This is Shaina's second I Guess Im Due moment.  Hear how her rough nursing experience (her first story she shared) led to her second story.  This second story is her little one's transition from breastfeeding to formula.  Spoiler Alert: it wasn't the smoothest of transitions...

...

The last blog I shared on I Guess Im Due was my story about giving myself the "Worst Parent of The year Award," where I shared about my daughters latching issues. Well, our resolution was to pump and feed her via bottle. Let me take just a minute to tell you:

1. How hard this is and …

2. Those ladies who do this longer than the six weeks I lasted, deserve a major award! 

Well, that's right this lasted six weeks before I had a nervous breakdown, mixed with mastitis (ouch). At this point I couldn't hack it any longer and had to pack it in. We transitioned my beautiful little baby to formula. Let's talk about the craziness that such a change can make on such a fragile system:

1. Projectile puking: if you don't pick the correct brand, or formulation, put on your raincoat because the odds of being puked on are pretty high.2. Reflux: since formula is a whole other ball game this can cause issues with the baby keeping formula down (see number one).3. Gas: baby gas is the worst. Those little sausages have a tight, upset belly and when they are that tiny and fragile the best you can really do is find the best way to burp them and do it often.4. Constipation: oh man, this one should be a separate post, but if you're going to use formula, make sure to have glycerin stick on hand, in addition to old towels and that rain coat from number one.
Now that we got that out of the way, after three long and exhausting weeks of colic, we found the golden ticket, Similac Alimentum, colic cure extraordinaire.  To the dismay of the nurses at our pediatrician's office, we ended up on Similac Alimentum, what I refer to as the formula version of liquid gold, 29.99 for a 1lb can. So you're looking at about a can a week, roughly, and even worse as their consumption increases.

My lesson: buy stock in little remedies such as gas drops, gripe water, glycerin sticks, colic calm, and bicycle the hell out of those little sausage legs. Breast is best, but unfortunately some of us don't have that option so in the mean time, don't beat yourself up and trust your parental gut, you know what is best for your child. Yes, it’s true -- I Guess I'm Due.

Tweet