In Need of Pruning

For those who have loyally followed this blog from the beginning (thanks all ten of you!), it comes as no surprise that I want to talk about poop. 

It's been awhile since I've discussed my daughter's BMs and there's good reason for that. I can't remember the last time we had a projectile poop shoot several feet across the room.  I don't even recall the last time I had to scrub poo out of a onesie.  

This, my friends, is progress. 

However, I've now stumbled upon a new poop problem.  And it's quite the opposite of a poop explosion. 

Since Mackenzie's daily menu now includes solid foods three times a day, along with some nutritious and mouth-watering snacks (hello Gerber sweet potato puffs, why do I find myself shoveling you into my mouth around 5 p.m. each day?), the train to poopy town has added some extra stops.  

And my poor, sweet Mackenzie is just stopped up.

As if things couldn't get weird enough after the first few months of my child's life, where I was wiping down walls and furniture after massive eruptions, I now find myself inspecting excrement as if I were a detective examining crime scene evidence on CSI.

In the weeks following Mackenzie's birth I would make frantic phone calls to the pediatrician's office asking if my daughter's poop should resemble Grey Poupon (or Grey POOPon, whichever you prefer). 

Now I'm calling the nurse line to see if I should be worried that Mackenzie looks like she's trying to pass the Empire State Building out of her little tushy. 

The solution - as I feared - is prunes. 

As someone who was scarred for life for being force-fed prune juice, I can tell you that I wasn't looking forward to this endeavor.  

Can't I just wait it out and hope the constipation passes? 

Since she's going she's not "technically" constipated. 

No, no, no. 

The nurse told me I needed to "help Mackenzie along" by adding prunes to her diet to soften things up, making it easier for her to "push one out" as Doug so eloquently put it. 

So today, I reluctantly tried to give Mackenzie two ounces of prunes, which I tasted first for good measure.  Yeah, as you'd suspect, prunes - especially the pureed kind - are horrific. 

But don't take my word for it... 

A picture is worth a thousand words.