Fear of the Poo~ March 22, 2008

I hate training my toddler to go to the potty. I don’t think I have the patience for it. But we have been trying since last August and it’s starting to NOT work… It really sucks.
I even made my own training pants, thinking that some cute pair of polka dot pants would actually get her enthusiastic to wear them. SO Wrong.

On top of that my daughter has developed a mild case of chronic constipation, because she doesn’t want to poop in the toilet. She holds her poo in so that she doesn’t have to go. But when she does go, the poo is so hard that it is ginormous and hurts to come out. She even bleeds…
I’ve been told to change her diet, stop potty training, eat prunes and drink prune juice, & all the above. There seems to be no short cuts for this one.

Here are a few ways that I started tackling this poo.

Changing her diet:

• More fruits that have more water in them. (clementines, grapes, berries, water melon, cantaloupe, pears)
• Lots of dried fruits. (raisins, prunes, dried blueberries, cranberries, cherries, Fig Newmans) Don’t give too many prunes, or it gets messy. Not fun… Try half a prune a day. Other dried fruit, can be consumed in 1/4 cup portions, I think.
• Orange juice, pear juice, prune juice. We always dilute 1 part OJ, 1 part Vruit, 1 part water. Always dilute your Toddlers juice to about 30~40% water.
• No white rice. Sad news for a Japanese person, but we changed my favorite white rice to all brown rice. This was a gradual process. 1 part white rice/1 part brown, to 2 part brown/1 part white.
  Brown rice is tricky. If you cook it the same way you cook as white rice, it turns out a bit hard, and kids don’t like that. If you have a rice cooker that has the brown rice setting, you are in luck. For those with who don’t, just leave the brown rice in water over night, like you do with beans and then cook the following day.
• More high fiber. (beans, whole wheat, multi-grain, broccoli, kale, spinach, brussele sprouts, etc.)
• Eat less dairy. We changed our butter to vegan butter, and my daughter doesn’t like cheese that much, so that’s easy. Biggest obstacle is that she needs her milk, morning, noon and night. Three 8oz. bottles a day. I guess it’s supposed to be about 16oz. of low fat milk a day, so I am starting at 90% of 2% milk mixed with 10% soy milk or water. It will be a gradual process for us.
• Avoid bananas, most dairy, chocolate, red meat, cooked carrots, and french fries.
  Red meat is hard for anyone to digest. Quit red meat for a couple of months and it will do a number on your stomach when you try it again.
• Raw vegetables. Thank you Wonder Pets for helping my daughter like celery!

So following some of this diet, how about a menu.

Breakfast (All Served with a 50% OJ)

• Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal
• Whole Wheat Toast with Mixed Berry Jam and Prune Puree
• Brown Rice Okayu (Rice Porridge)
• Whole Grain Cereal (Raisin Bran, Shredded Wheat, Clifford, etc. )

Lunch (Served with sliced Tomato’s & Cucumbers)

• Tuna on Toasted Whole Wheat with Celery, Raisins and Green Apples
• Lentil Soup with Whole Wheat Toast or Whole Wheat Pasta Shells
• Vietnamese Pho made with Harusame (Bean Noodles)
• Soba Noodles with Kamaboko (Fish Cake) and Wakame (Sea Weed) or my daughters favorite with Natto (Japanese fermented beans). If your Japanese, you will understand.

Snack Time (serve with 50% juice of your choice)

• 杏仁豆腐(Annindoufu: Skim Milk Gelatine with Seasonal Fruit)
• Sliced Apples with Peanut Butter and Whole Wheat Crackers
• Whole Wheat Fruit Danish
• きな粉クッキー(Kinako Cookies: soybean flour cookies)

Dinner (serve with diluted kids tea with no sugar)

• Baked Fish Taco’s with Whole Beans
• Whole Wheat Shells with Meat Sauce & Tomato Salad
• Miso-Mayo Salmon with Vegetable Miso Soup
• ニラ餃子 (Nira Gyouza: Chinese Chive Pot Stickers) with Daikon Soup

Dessert (I don’t really recommend giving sugar after 3:00)

• Just Plain Fruits could work if you need any.

So now, all I have to do is give her a routine of sitting on the toilet and having her try to poop at the same time every day, which is right after lunch. Zu (my daughter) is still scared of pooping, tries to poop in the toilet once a day. Not yet successful, but we have hope! They say it takes about 6 to 12 months to correct this whole thing. Agh!!

We started to change our diet drastically 2 weeks ago, and we are already seeing results. She is not in pain when she is having a bowl movement any more, and she’s been going 3~4 times a week now instead of 2~3.

The only bad thing out of this whole thing, is that potty training is still a pain in the A, for me. I’ll keep you posted on other dishes I come up with. I will be uploading these recipe’s when I get the chance and link them to this page, so keep checking.