4 months old infant and constipation

A few days after we started with solid foods, our little boy got constipated. We couldn’t find out which food caused the constipation, neither our pediatrician.

We started with once-a-day feeding. Of course, breast milk is still the main food. We decided to let him eat variety of foods to learn new tastes and textures, but only food recommended for 4 month old infant. We started with semi-liquid cereals and mashed apple but without any protein rich foods.

Anyways, at first week everything went smooth. Later he got constipated and we believe the reason was mashed apple/carrot mixture as well as rice cereal. All these foods could cause constipation.

The constipation itself is obviously very painful for small babies, and it’s very common that their intestines are such sensible to solid foods. The first constipation took 4 days, and we used prune juice which helped him in couple of hours. However, the night before was very rough. He woke up crying by every 2 hours and we didn’t know the right reason.

Constipation in infants could even cause anal fissure and light blood in stool. Plum juice and meshed peaches helped him to get normal bowel movement and end this agony with constipation.

Now, we added additionally more fluids along with his daily food intake to avoid future constipation sessions. Now he has regular bowel movement and sometimes even more then one daily.

Exercises for babies to start rolling over

Our son just learned to roll over but not on his own. I’ve done a couple of exercises every day and after a couple of days he just started to roll over by himself and without my help.

Actually, when your baby begins to move head forward when you wearing him or laying on back, it’s a good sign to start with such exercises. Our son is 5 months old and he seems to be ready for rolling over by himself. Here is a rolling over tutor which helped us a lot:

Lay your baby on his back on a blanket and sit behind his head, holding a noisy or squeaky toy. Hold the toy where your baby can see it. Slowly move it so he has to turn his head to follow it.

Praise your baby if he arches his back and starts to turn. If your baby turns with his shoulders, but his legs don't follow, gently push on his bottom to help him over. Save this game for later if your baby doesn’t try.

To help your baby feel what it’s like to roll over, lay him on one side of a small blanket. Gently raise the blanket to help him roll over. Reward him with big smiles and hugs.

We didn’t use a blanket, we just helped him by moving and pushing his leg and bottom a bit to the side. Now he can roll over but still can’t roll back. I hope this helps.

Does a baby sleep better with music around or without?

We tried to create best possible sleep pattern for our 3 month old son. It is very hard to define actual sleeping times, but it’s mostly an hour after breastfeeding and it last not longer then an hour. In the morning the sleep last longer then in the evening.

We noticed that the music coming from baby gadgets is not even a pleasure for ears, at least not for us, since it has some very short and annoying repeating patterns. Therefore we decided to try with other music genres starting from pop over to hard rock and hip hop.

The result was very positive, but not a surprise. Our baby sleeps much better and even longer with high quality sound then with sound coming from diverse baby toys. The genre obviously doesn’t play a role in so early age.

The conclusion: It is higher chance that your baby accepts high quality produced music played from a CD/MP3 player or laptop then cheap sound coming from baby toys. Give it a try and let us know about your results.

Baby’s first REAL smile

It’s wonderful to see a baby smiling. We noticed his first smile already 3 weeks after his birth. However, it was just a reflex smile which has gone away after first month.

Anyway, his first smile came unexpected together with his mood changes. Now he recognizes when people smile at him and he smiles back.

After he turned 3 months he started smiling frequently. Now he’s 4 months old and a smile is a necessary part of his daily life.

There’s a lot of games around you can play with your child trying to train the baby to smile, but it’s just a natural process which will come at the right time.