Constipation-prone: which meal to offer protein?

[Sinfulia]

My LO is very prone to constipation.  We're off iron-fortified cereals since they always bung her up.  Just wondering what time of the day to offer the biggest meal/the meal with the most protein (which I'm assuming is harder to digest than fruits/veggies).  Right now this is what we do:

Breakfast: 2-3 cubes of fruit
Lunch: 2-3 cubes of vegetables, some cheerios
Dinner: 1 cube meat, 1 cube vegetable, 1-2 cubes fruit, some cheerios

I nurse sometimes 1 hour before, sometimes right after meals and offer a sippy cup at every meal.

So currently dinner is the biggest meal.  I'm wondering if I should be moving the meat servings to lunch time?  Does the fact that she's eating her meat then going to bed shortly after affect the ability to digest the meat?

Thanks.

[greenteamomma]

My LO is sometimes bunged up too so besides the water in the sippy I offer him prunes almost everyday or every other day.  I made half cubes so it's not that big a portion, but just enough.  I also feed him his protein at lunch and offer no cereal at that meal but I do offer oatmeal or mixed cereal for breakfast and dinner.  The reason is that oatmeal cereal has fibre in it compared to rice cereal which has none.  Not sure which you offer, but you might want to check and maybe offer some for breakfast too.  HTH

[Mimi 2]

I think that this is where you may have to experiment with the times to see what works best for your lo.  We always have the biggest meal at dinner time (meats included).  However, there's about a 1-2 hrs gap between dinner and bedtime.  There's always a snack (milk & fruits/carbs) right before bath.  It does mean that dinner is early (sometimes as early as 4/4:30pm when bedtime was around 6/6:30 pm) but this routine works for us. 

To help regulate the bms, I found that by feeding lots of fruits (esp. prunes, blueberries, apples, apricots) & veggies.

How old is your lo?  If she is on meats already then you can split the protein serving into 2 meals so that she wouldn't have too much protein at dinner. 

[Sinfulia]

She's 7.5 months.  She eats prunes every other day already.  I don't do any cereal at all (they're all iron-fortified from what I can tell) because I'm assuming naturally-occurring iron is easier to process.  She usually has dinner around 5:45-6pm and goes to bed at 7:30 - the only thing she gets between then is breastmilk.  I guess I think that's short since I usually have at least 2-3 hours of 'wakey' time before I go to bed.

I tried giving her chicken at lunch today.  I'll see how this goes.  It's been 2.5 days since any substantial BMs.  Never knew I'd be so excited to see a full diaper!

[Mimi 2]

Also try water through the day.  It does help move things along.

[firsttimemummy]

I have just posted a question about constipating/non-constipating foods too on this too (hadn't seen this post) ... wasn't aware that the iron-fortified cereals caused so many problems. Guess will stick to the Weetabix!!!

[Mimi 2]

Usually food high in iron will cause constipation but if your lo is getting enough fibre & water then everything should be fine.