Starting solids with a baby who already seems to struggle to go, scared I'm going to make things worse
okay so my daughter just turned 9 months and we started solids about 6 weeks ago. her pediatrician said to go ahead and start introducing purees and stuff. which we did. but ever since we started she is going so much less often and when she does go it is clearly harder for her. she strains, her face goes red, sometimes she cries a little and it just breaks me every single time. the pediatrician said this is normal with starting solids and not to worry yet. and I am trying not to. but I am also up at 1am reading about encopresis because someone in another group mentioned it and now I am terrified that if I make the wrong food choices now I am setting her up for that. I know she is tiny. I know 9 months is not the same as a 5 year old with full blown encopresis. but the anxiety brain doesn't care about logic at 1am. has anyone been in this place early on? like scared at the start of solids that they were going to accidentally make things worse? what did you actually feed your baby that seemed to help things stay moving? I've been doing sweet potato and banana which I just read might be the wrong call. now I feel guilty. sorry this is kind of all over the place. just scared and tired.
Replies · 9
Oh please don't feel guilty about the banana. You were just feeding your baby. That is all you were doing. My son is 5 now and we went through so much worry around this exact stage and I remember that specific 1am spiral feeling so well. You are not making things worse by caring this much, honestly.
No advice from me right now, just wanted to say that the fear you're describing, the one where you're convinced a single food choice is going to define the next five years, I know that fear. It lives in a very specific part of the parenting brain and it is loud at night. You're not being irrational. You're just tired and you love her.
the part about it being loud at night. yes. exactly that. thank you for just saying that and not immediately telling me what to do differently.
When my son was around that age his pediatrician mentioned that pear puree and prune puree were her go-to suggestions for babies who seemed to be struggling with the transition to solids. Not as a fix, just as foods that tend to be gentler. We did small amounts of pear mixed with oatmeal in the mornings and it genuinely seemed to help him. But every baby is so different, so worth asking your own doctor what they think for her specifically.
we have prunes in the pantry actually. I bought them weeks ago thinking I might need them and then didn't know how to use them. so that is something I can ask about at her next appointment. pear I had not thought of. she loves pears as a flavor so that feels like a win if it might help.
One thing I will say, and I wish someone had said this to me years ago, is that the gut stuff with kids can genuinely feel like a long game. My child is 13 now and we are still navigating it, different version of the problems but the same underlying worry as a parent. What I know now is that catching patterns early and staying in close conversation with the pediatrician matters a lot more than getting each individual food choice exactly right. You are already doing that. You noticed something, you asked questions. That is the whole job at this stage.
This. The noticing is so much of it. You can't fix what you don't see and she already sees it. That matters.
okay I am going to try to actually go to sleep now. I wrote this post feeling like I was completely losing it and reading these replies I feel a little more like a human person. going to write a note on my phone to ask about pear and prune next appointment and also to bring up the straining more specifically because I think I was kind of brushing past it when the doctor asked general questions. thank you all genuinely. this community makes the 1am stuff survivable.
Hope you got some sleep. And good call on being more specific with the doctor about the straining. In my experience they can only help with what we actually tell them, and it took me way too long to learn that. Rooting for you both.