Hellobee

Mr. Bee and I have blogged about pretty extensively about childhood constipation because it’s such a common problem, and one that’s affected Charlie, Olive, and me since I was a child. When Charlie was a toddler, we tried all the typical constipation remedies like prunes, exercise, removing dairy, increasing water intake, etc. But his constipation had gone on for so long, we weren’t able to treat it with diet alone because the problem was more psychological rather than physical. Miralax has been a miracle worker for him.

When Olive started getting severely constipated after transitioning to 3 solid meals a day, I was determined to try to address the issue through diet and without the use of Miralax. She had painful Type 1 poops and was only going 2-3 times a week (while that’s fine for breastfed babies, she should ideally have been going every day). I worked closely with Caroll Lee, and each of her suggestions improved Olive’s constipation little by little. It’s taken months of hard work, but I’m happy to report that Olive is no longer constipated!

Please note that you should always consult your doctor before making any big changes to your child’s diet. This post is not intended as medical advice and what worked for us may not work for you. That said, I really wanted to share our experience in the hopes that it might help some of you out there going through this same issue.

Caroll’s plan consisted of the 4 R’s: remove, replace, reinnoculate, and repair.

REMOVE

The first step was to remove foods that irritated the intestine and were difficult to digest one by one. This included gluten, casein (protein in dairy), sugar, and starchy veggies/grains.

REPLACE

Historically many people used to take bitters before meals to increase stomach acid and improve digestion. This can be as simple as giving some lemon water, or apple cider vinegar with water and honey before meals. I didn’t try this with Olive because it can be tough getting her to drink things, but you can actually purchase digestive enzymes and digestive bitters too.

REINNOCULATE

Probiotic supplementation would reinnoculate Olive’s gut by restoring beneficial bacteria.

REPAIR

We needed to improve Olive’s digestion by providing nutrients to repair her gut. Healthy fats (coconut oil, avocado, animal fats), gelatin, and vegetables are all great sources of healthy nutrients.

.  .  .  .  .

With that in mind, this is what we did.

First we removed gluten, which was surprisingly not as difficult as expected. This seemed to help Olive a little bit, but she was still getting small amounts of gluten daily through the snacks they provided at daycare. So I started sending our own snacks and asked the daycare not to give Charlie and Olive any snacks. The next step was to remove casein, the protein in milk, which is commonly known to cause constipation. Historically the Asian diet does not include dairy, so many Asians are lactose-intolerant (Charlie had a cow’s milk intolerance that he seems to have outgrown), and it made sense to try omitting dairy. This was much more difficult than removing gluten because we used butter to cook everything, and the kids love cheese. But going completely gluten-free and casein-free (we use ghee to cook now), had a noticeable impact on Olive’s constipation. She was no longer experiencing any pain like she used to with practically every bowel movement.

Both kids have been taking daily probiotics for a long time (we use the Metagenics brand), but we needed to add more probiotic-rich foods like pickles, sauerkraut, miso, kimchi, and kefir into their daily diets. Luckily the kids love pickles so I give them practically daily. You just have to make sure that they are brined in salt to have probiotics, as ones that are brined in vinegar do not have probiotics. The kids also love miso soup, and I try to wash kimchi and sauerkraut and sneak it into soups when I can.

We’d gotten lax with her daily vitamin D, but added that back into her diet. We also added daily fish oil. Green Pastures is considered the best brand, but your kids may not like the fishy taste so we use Carlson’s and both Charlie and Olive love it. Adding fish oil was huge. Olive started having more frequent bowel movements.

Finally we added Barlean’s organic flax oil and then Olive started having a daily bowel movement. Olive went through a phase of 6 months or so where she was extremely picky and barely eating any solids other than fruit. But I think everything we did helped to heal her gut because she now eats better than Charlie. Her lunchbox comes home almost empty every day (and I pack a lot of food). It was always a challenge to get her to drink enough water, but now she loves drinking water.

Will we be gluten-free and casein-free forever? Now that Olive’s digestive system is working properly, I think it’s ok if she consumes small amounts of gluten and dairy when we’re at birthday parties since they always serve pizza and cake. And we do let the kids have dairy here and there, but try to stick to cheese that’s made with raw sheep or goat’s milk. But we try to be gluten and casein-free in our day to day lives as much as possible.

It’s been a months-long journey, but it’s been worth it. She’s eating much better, eating much more, drinking much more water, and she’s no longer constipated! I really have to thank Caroll for all her help because I really wouldn’t have known which changes to make to Olive’s diet, and I’m so glad that we were able to treat her without the use of Miralax.

How were you able to conquer childhood constipation?

ed note: The information on this site is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and is for education purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.