A little bit of prunes goes a long way

We learned an important lesson this past Saturday: Don't give the baby a full serving of prunes if he seems constipated. We had introduced prunes last week, but he'd never had much, and it was always mixed with cereal. On Saturday we went to Wimberley to visit my grandmother, and I brought along some pears and prunes for E's lunch. He ate those prunes right up! A couple hours later, he was in his doorway jumper, and every so often he'd stop and PUSH, PUSH, PUSH, and then go back to the business of jumping. It was funny, but not that unusual. A few minutes later I looked over at him and he had his back to us and was perfectly still. I barely had time to register how strange that was before I noticed that his left pants leg was suddenly COVERED in shit. TJ and I extracted him from the jumper and soon discovered that we were in uncharted territory. He used to have blowouts all the time when he was tiny, and I don't mean to minimize their craziness, but those were the poops of a breastfed baby. This was the nasty stuff, and it was unstoppable! We were sort of paralyzed, and we weren't at home . . . hmmm. At first we tried to lay him down on his little portable changing mat, but that clearly wasn't going to work--too much poo. I was holding the poor guy out in front of me for what felt like forever while we figured out what to do. We eventually got in the tub and took his shirt off there. Within seconds the tub was dotted with poo and it was smeared on my hands and feet and all over E's legs, arms, hair, and one ear. We got it all cleaned up eventually, and in the meantime, Nana and her friend Ruth sat on the couch laughing.

Nana and her friends had a Sip and See for Eamon back in February, and I was talking to a couple of the gals about having babies close in age and how the thought of that freaks me out. It was Ruth who told me, "Honey, you don't worry about it, you just do it." And Betty, another of Nana's friends, said, "One takes up all your time, so how could two take up anymore?"

They're smart, those ladies.

Here's E, enjoying his prunes.

I knew this would happen, but it still shocked me.

Eamon had his first big-person poop today. Egads! It smelled like real poop, and it looked kinda like real poop too, even though it was soft by grownup standards. He seemed to have trouble getting it out, and then he cried and cried when I was changing him, as though he were hurting. I was afraid he was constipated, but when I read up on it I gathered that he probably wasn't as long as his stool was soft. Maybe it just didn't feel good to him. :(

We haven't introduced prunes yet, and he's not big on water at this point, so I'm not really sure what to do to make it easier on him. Maybe his system is just getting used to this new form of food. I do plan on giving him prunes soon.

Today at lunchtime he had his first two-course meal: bananas and cereal mixed with breastmilk and then sweet potatoes mixed with breastmilk, or EBM as I gather the veterans like to call it. I don't know if I needed to add much milk to the sweet potatoes, but I have a bunch in the fridge right now, so I figured I might as well. It seemed like he ate a lot, which is why I busted out the second course. Does this mean I should be feeding him solid food twice a day? I was planning on adding a second meal around seven months, but I could do it sooner. He'll be six months officially on Sunday.

Incidentally, E is asleep right now and has been for an hour. This is the first time since Tuesday that he's napped for longer than his customary thirty minutes. I put him down wide awake, too. He hardly cried at all. I don't think I can express to you how NUTS this is. Nuts and wonderful. Meanwhile, he's still batting a thousand at night. Eleven hours last night. This is the opposite extreme of where we were two weeks ago. Babies are a mystery.

I love my mystery.