Announcing My First Guest Post: "Pooptastic, Pooperiffic: The Adventures Of Solid Wastes"

Greetings loyal readers and blog followers . . . this is a week of firsts for m a m a :: m i l i e u. Not only have I received my first blogger award, but today I am announcing my first guest blog post!

My dear friend and fellow blogger, Domestic Dork, has gone on vacation. While she is gone, she will be posting several guest's postings in her absence and I am the first one--she has just posted it today! Please pay her blog a visit this week to check out her lineup of great guests!

The guest post that I wrote for her is called, "Pooptastic, Pooperiffic: The Adventures Of Solid Wastes". You can find it below and at her blog at www.DomesticDork.com. Enjoy and happy Monday!

Pooptastic, Pooperiffic! The Adventures Of Solid Wastes.

You know you're a mom when you begin to obsess about poop--that's right, the color, the texture, the frequency, the smell, the consistency.

Bringing your wee bundle home from the hospital means that you, as a freshly squeezed parent, must begin the many tasks of your baby's care--bathing, feeding, soothing and, of course, changing. And, interestingly enough, it's the changing part--the poop part--that often gets the most attention from pediatricians and therefore, moms too.

Why all of this poop quandary? Well, because changes in your baby's poop can be an important signal, not to be missed, that something has gone awry with your baby's well being.

So, the parental poop-i-scope focuses it's lens on every diaper removed from your baby's buns throughout infancy . . . and then the feeding of solid food begins and everything changes. Radically. Every sign of hazard you had been trained to spot becomes the new norm--green poop, speckled poop, stiff poop, dry poop, and the most worrisome . . . no poop.

My little Noah Finn was a regular pooper--he pooped three to four times a day when he was strictly breast feeding. But the recent introduction of solids has given his digestive system a run for it's a money, a kink in the cords, a cog in it's wheel. And the result? Poop has once again become a household fascination and dinnertime talk topic as my husband and I frequently ask one another, "Has Noah pooped today?", "What did it look like?", and so on.

Now, the poor little guy has harrowing three and sometimes four day lapses between those blessed movements of the bowels. And when those moments of relief finally come, it aint' pretty. It's a day full of grunting, straining and red-faced pushing that results in many, many dirty diapers. Needless to say, on those days we are scrubbing diapers until sunrise.

We have increased his water intake and have introduced plum and prune puree and flax seed oil into his diet--just until his plumbing acclimates. It seems to help so far, and so has feeding solids with regularity--the more solids he eats, the more "regular" he becomes.

So the lesson here is, beware new parents and parents who are slated to soon be experimenting with solids. They're lots of fun going in, it's just the coming out part that really stinks.