neocate and constipation

[bjutka1]

It's been a good few weeks now that I have stopped breastfeeding and switched Julia onto neocate. After the initial improvement, she is unhappy again because she is very constipated from it. I have been taking her to the doc and we tried absolutely everthing (lactulose, movicol, dulcolax) but nothing seems to work permanently.

Dulcolax was the worst - I gave her 2.5 ml one night and she screamed for 3 hrs. (True enought she went to the toilet on her on for the next 3 days.)

Movicol worked well at the start but in the end, even quarter of a sachet every other day made her have diarrhoea. And the day she didn't get it, she was constipated.

Very similar with lactulose.

I'm at the end of my tether. Can't believe I stopped breastfeeding for this!!

GP suggested trying orange juice (but surely not citrus if she has allergies) and prune juice (but that's high in sals  and she doesn't like sals.)

Any suggestions? She slept for 30 mins all day today cos she is so uncomfortable.

The only way to get her to go is to put a suppository up or a wind tube (a little tube that helps to get the wind and/or poo out.) But then the GP says that I'm giving her a lazy bowel using this and she will never be able to do a poo on her own. (We didn't have any of these problems when she was breastfed!!!)

[rach321]

No advice on the constipation - sounds like you've tried all the obvious things but I know it did take my LO a good 6-8 weeks to settle on neocate, not sure if that's much help to you now though. Do they have a version of that senna pod stuff for babies?

[huntersmummyinoz]

we had to put an extra 20mL water in each bottle to stop ds2 being constipated on neocate. even then we would often give warm water (1 or 2 oz) in between 1 or 2 feeds a day to help keep him going. you can also try 1/2 to 1 tsp brown sugar in warm water too. after around 4 weeks of that he settled and no longer needed the water between feeds but we didnt cut the extra water from bottles til around 12mths old.

lactulose kept my LO up ALL night with tummy pains and wind.

also, is she on solids now? pears are fabulous for constipation and very low sals

[bjutka1]

Thanks for the advice. We are back to using lactulose and it's helping a bit but as you're saying, she is up all night with wind. How big would be your LOs bottle? The problem is that my LO takes about 7 feeds a day about 120 ml a feed, sometimes less. That's just the way she is. What would be your proportion of water you add? 20ml regardless of how big the bottle is?

I have tried giving her pears but didn't make much difference to the constipation.

Should I try prune juice or would the high sals content be too worrying?

[huntersmummyinoz]

i was adding 20mL water to what was meant to be 180mL bottles. you could try and extra 10mL to all bottles first and if no go after a few days increase to 20mLs.

fresh pears or baby puree tin pears?? even now with ds2, if i give him an extra 2 tbs of pear puree it sorts him out the next day.

if she is sal sensitive i wouldnt go near prunes. will she drink the water between feeds? from 6mths i started giving 1oz (30mL) water with solids meals. mainly for practise but also for constipation for ds2.