Bowel movement question

[chisub]

Not sure if this is the right section, please move if it isn't. Anyways, my almost 6 month old is a once a week pooper. He's had one other week where it was about 9-10 days before his big poop. He is exclusively breastfed and I know it can be normal for this to happen, but now he hasn't pooped since last Friday (not this past Friday, but the Friday prior). What is that 10 or 11 days now? He's sleeping fine and not extra fussy, nor does his tummy feel hard, but this is the point where I start to wonder if he should have pooped already. Oh, about 2 days ago he just had a little smudge of poop (like the size of a quarter) so we thought it was coming, but nothing since then. When he poops it's not pellets or anything, but is there anything I can do or eat to help? I'm sure he'll poop right after I post b/c that's what babes do! At what point do you become concerned? Well, I know I'm somewhat concerned otherwise I wouldn't be posting, right?

[charleysmama23]

My dd pooped about every 5-7 days when she was EBF, and at 6 weeks she actually went 14 days! She pooped on day 14 because I took her to our pediatrician who did rectal stimulation to make sure she wasn't compacted, but out came totally normal looking breastmilk poop. I made sure to get loads of fiber in MY diet, and drink lots of water. I also encouraged her to nurse a lot during the day to make sure she was hydrated. We tried giving her juice (prune, orange) but none of that made a bit of difference. I ended up having to give her glycerin suppositories about once/week until she was about 6+ months old and started some solids (I made sure to start with things that might help her poop, not rice cereal!).
But, my pediatrician gave me some great guidelines:
1. It can be VERY normal for EBF babies to poop infrequently, every couple of weeks can be fine.
2. Watch her cues. If she was eating fine, comfortable, sleeping normally, and just basically being her normal self, I would hold off and let her body do its thing. When she started refusing to be laid down and was only comfortable sitting totally upright (even though she couldn't sit up yet) I knew it was time to intervene.

The problem with dd, we discovered, was that she needed to poop so infrequently that she actually seemed to lose the ability to poop. Like, she wasn't constipated or straining, she just held it all in and wouldn't push it out. The suppositories would usually stay in for all of 15 minutes and then out it would come with a giant bowel movement and she'd feel so much better (and her bm's always looked like normal breastmilk poop). I think starting solids helped give some form to her stools and cued her body to get rid of it. She's 10 months now and poops twice/day. Oh!! She also started pooping more consistently on her own when she started moving more! Try reclining your lo (like in a bouncy seat) and bicycling his legs for a few minutes a few times/day, that helped dd)

(I'm not necessarily advocated starting solids early, she was ready between 6-7 months, your lo may not be.)

Ha ha, was that long enough? Hope it helped!

[chisub]

That was actually very helpful! I need to up my water intake, but my fiber is good b/c I'm regular and then some since I've been trying to eat things to help him go, but it's only working on me! We haven't introduced any juices or stuff like that yet, but I'm hoping that when he's on solids that his bowel movements will be more regular (or maybe I'm not looking forward to that).