Luckily, the second child doesn’t have the same problems with bodily functions as the first child experienced. Many parents worry about constipation or diarrhea. It’s funny how in the past, I wouldn’t even examine anything that came out after has been digested. Now, as a mom, I worry if the baby is eating enough, which can measured by the number of wet and full diapers. On top of that, you start to examine the consistency, colour, and quantity of the “poo”. It’s gross but it’s just something you end up doing. I couldn’t examine much with the first child because he was and still is, at times, constipated. With the new baby, I’m fortunate that he is regular. When it doesn’t look like his usual “deposit”, I start to think back to what he may have eaten that could cause it. Since I am still breastfeeding, I would also review the foods that I have consumed and see if there is a correlation. It’s interesting to see what causes constipation that wasn’t the same for the first child. If I eat raw salmon from sushi, it turns green. If he eats french fries from the local fast food restaurant, he gets constipated. If I drink decaffeinated coffee from the same restaurant, he gets constipated (I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence that two food items from the same restaurant caused his constipation, but I just avoided those food items in general instead of placing blame). It was a scary thing when he was constipated just by my consumption of decaffeinated coffee. There was a promotion where free coffee was offered for a week. I try to avoid coffee because there is a limit for the consumption of caffeine while breastfeeding set at around 300 mg. I enjoy drinking pop, so I try to save my caffeine consumption for pop. For the week of free coffee, I drank a decaf every day for the first 4 days of the promotion. I also noticed that the baby didn’t poo for 3 days. I then realized that the only thing that changed in my food routine and his was my consumption of decaf coffee. As soon as I stopped, he pooped 5 times in one day the next day. He was quite backed up. Learned my lesson there. It’s interesting, though, how we change our gross factor with kids when there are things more important than the extent of our contact with gross things.
MommyLoquy 