Solid Food Woes

Baby started her solid food adventures with avocado at 5 months.  She had showed so much interest in what we were eating, starting in her fourth month, so I felt that she was ready a month later.  I figured it was safe to follow her lead on how much and how often to eat and boy was she voracious!  Soon pears, bananas and yams were added to her diet (pureed and diluted with breast milk).  She couldn't seem to get enough!  Soon her poo turned the consistency of peanut butter, but then very quickly it turned into "adult" poo and then she was constipated.  I continued feeding pears since they say it can help constipation and I gave her prune juice, but she remained constipated.  This past Saturday she had 1/4 jar of pears and then I stopped all solids and continued with lots of nursing.  Sunday morning in the fourth week of feeding her solids, she had a horrible, painful passing of stool.  I was crying along with her, it was AWFUL!  We tried to help it along with glycerin and again Tuesday she passed more hard stools.  Thankfully this morning (Wed.) she had a good old-fashioned breast milk poo.  I was so happy for her! 

It was quite an ordeal and hopefully your little one won't go through this.  We are waiting at least a week before giving solids again and we will go VERY slowly.  One important thing I learned from this is that babies can go up to a year on breast milk alone, so there is no rush!