Constipation

Hi, I’m Jo Lenz and I’m a pediatric or children’s dietician, and I’m going to be sharing my top tips to help with any issues you may be facing with your baby or your child’s eating.

So constipation is a really common issue that you can face with your child, and it can actually become really stressful. So I know that there’s definitely been time with my own children, that they’ve gone through these phases, um, and it can actually affect lots of different things because, you know, if it carries on it can ultimately affect their appetite.

So what I would say as my first tip is to definitely speak to a GP, if the issue is going on, and you’re finding that none of the things that you try to have helped as GPS can often prescribe something to get things going. And even if that’s not working, then go back and speak to your GP again about that. From a dietician’s point of view, there are some things that you can think about in terms of food and what you’re giving your lists of one before that I’d probably think about exercise and movement.

This is so important for little ones. So toddlers need about two hours of activity every day. And this can increase in preschoolers to three to four hours.

Now that’s a huge amount of activity and on a rainy day, your toddler might not be getting that amount of exercise. So it’s just trying to think about ways of trying to encourage that, um, trips to the parks of play, you know, movement inside out on the, on the trampoline.

Just any ways of just increasing movement cause that that can really help. The second thing would be to look at would be fluid and how much, um, your little one is getting, making sure that they’ve either got plenty of wet nappies or that they’re going to the toilet often.

And it’s a nice pale color because that will show you that they’re getting enough hydration and then food. So we know that there are some sorts of, uh, fruits and vegetables that are really good in helping to get things going.

So in terms of fruit, raspberries and kiwifruit are, UPCEA amazing. So it’s just thinking, can you try and include these in your little one’s diet?

There are certain vegetables that you can try and encourage again, um, you know, and pulses, whole grains. So the thing with whole grains and fiber rich food is you don’t want to feel your little one’s Tami up too much, but just a little bit of these kinds of foods, like some Weetabix or some whole grain pasta, um, porridge can really help get things going.