The Poo Diaries Part 4: Fibre!

As our beloved Poo Diaries is coming to a close (one more entry following this), I am finally at the place that I think many people might have started on a similar journey. But, as I have mentioned previously, we found that fibre won’t heal a gut in crisis. If the issue is gut motility, then gut motility will remain the issue until it’s addressed specifically and in the appropriate way. Once we had healed Evies gut, we have been able to maintain that health and regularity with fibre awareness. 

So what is fibre? The definition of fibre is actually “Intrinsic plant cell wall polysaccharides” which, in people speak, means the skin of fruit and vegetables. So no, there is no fibre in breast milk, meat, dairy or eggs and if you’re living souly of off these elements (which, let’s face it, a lot of “fussy” toddlers are) then there in could very well lie your problem. Why? Because fibre is that which isn’t digested by the body. Thus, it moves through our gut, from one end to the other, bulking and softening stools and pushing everything else in there along with it on its way out the door, if you know what I mean. You can find more info on fibre here – I don’t really want to weigh you down with the details. All I’m trying to say is: you need fibre to poo, too much or too little can be an issue, and here are some recipes and tips on how to get more fibre into your little one (or yourself, or your nana). 

Number 1: Prunes 

Not prune juice that often has added sugar and preservatives. Just plain old prunes. The only additive free brand of prunes we found was brand called ‘Verity. But, if you can find organic, preservative free prunes somewhere then snap them up!
Because prunes are dehydrated, they do need to be soaked overnight in water to be effective. They can then be de-seeded, blended, and added to all kinds of sneaky foods. When Evie was severely constipated (before we realised we needed to heal her gut first) we were adding prunes to everything with some brief success. Foods such as porridge, baked beans and yoghurt are all good prune smugglers. Even if you’re adding miniscule amounts to each meal, it will add up and make a world of difference. Furthermore, prunes are a good source of iron – they’re not just an ugly face, you know!

Number 2: Apples 
Back in the day, before I knew what I know, I would read forums about constipation in babies and people would say “avoid constipating foods such as apples”, but then another would say “stewed apples work amazingly well for constipation”. And the confusion is here: stewed apples without skin = bad, stewed apples with skin = good. If you peel an apple, you are removing 75% of its fibre and leaving behind what is mainly sugar, thus constipation ensues. So another ‘add me to everything’ fibre solution is, in fact apples that are stewed whole, with the skin on. You just need to place your apple sin a sauce pan, fill up half way with water, place a lid on, and cook for about 15 minutes. Then turn the heat off and leave to sit for another 20. 

All you need to do once they are cooked, is remove the stalks and seeds, then blend them. Apples are more palatable than prunes, but we found that putting prunes and apple puree together in Evies porridge every morning was a recipe for success. You can also make apple yoghurt with this puree by just adding plain yoghurt and honey.

Number 3: Fibre rich meals
These are much easier to do than some might think. It just means leaving the skin on all your veggies, eating more beans, lentils, having porridge for breakfast and sprinkling LSA on everything! I have put a few of these toddler & baby friendly fibre rich recipes up on my Facebook page of late, but I’m re-posting them here so that they are all in one easily accessible place, and will add to them over time.

Potato Veggienaise!

What you need:

1 tablespoon oil
1 small carrot (skin on!) finely diced
1/3 of a medium brown onion, finely diced
1/4 cup red lentils, cooked via packet instructions
3/4 cup diced tomatoes
1 cup water
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon flax meal
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

How to:
1. Heat oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add onion & carrot and cook until tender (about 5 minutes).
2. Add bay leaf, water, lentils, oregano, flax & tomatoes and bring to the boil.
3. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered for about 20 minutes, or until the majority of the liquid is absorbed and carrots are soft. Stir often.
4. Stir through Parmesan. Remove bay leaf.
5. Blend all, half or none, depending on your little ones chewing abilities & Serve with mashed potato.

*You can cook your potato with the skin on and then blend it instead of mashing, for extra fibre!         

Brown Rice Pudding! 

You will need:
1 cup long grain brown rice, cooked to absorption method
3 cups almond milk
2 teaspoons cinnamon
A pinch of salt
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 green apple, finely chopped
1/4 cup currants
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

How to:
1. Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat and stir frequently until mixture reaches desired thickness (about 30 minutes). That's it! Blend all, half or none depending on your little ones chewing abilities!
Evie’s all-time favourite: Vegetable soup! 

You will need:
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 small carrot, diced
½ a celery stalk, diced
1 potato, diced
½ a swede, peeled and diced
½ a large zucchini, diced
¼ cup raw buckwheat, rinsed
¼ cup red lentils, rinsed
375mL Water
375mL vegetable or chicken stock

How to:
1. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a medium pot. Add garlic, carrot and celery and cook for about 5 minutes, or until just tender.
2. Add all other ingredients and bring to the boil.
3. Cover and simmer on low for 20 minutes.
4. Allow to cool before serving.

I know that some kids won’t eat a vegetable soup, or a vegetable, even. Luckily, Evie is not one of those kids. Of course that kind of thing can be worked on over time. But if all Evie would eat was nutella on toast, then you best believe that nutella would have been laced with prunes! Or, if she would only eat chocolate custard, then that custard would have been smuggling apple puree! (I do not condone this kind of food for growing bodies and brains - but sometimes our circumstances are what they are and we just have to work with what we have!). Luckily, Ive never had that issue – but that’s just an example of how things can be worked with!

And so ends part 4 of our journey. I will be back with the final instalment just as soon as I get a chance!

Angela

[Recipe] Chocolate & apricot muesli bars

I have been meaning to conjure up a muesli bar recipe for a while now. My Dad recently went to see my naturopath and was thoroughly told off for his after work snack-attacks. And so, my Mum and I concluded that the answer to this would be to produce a healthier, but still tasty alternative that might stave off his hunger until dinner time. So, I was on the case. I usually research a load of recipes and then pick and choose different elements from each in order to create my own, as was the case here. A lot of the recipes I found required an array of expensive and exotic ingredients which arent really my style. So instead, I have (hopefully) stream lined a recipe that can be easily made, with a mixture of easily accessible and everyday ingredients. The mixture of oats (grain), nuts and seeds makes a complete protein (all 16 essential fatty acids), and thus should hopefully be 'filling' enough to stop one from reaching for a packet of scotch fingers in the hungry haze. 

*NOW I will start by saying that the muesli bars shown in the picture are raw, except for the chocolate on top. This is because I used my Mum's Thermomix to melt to coconut oil and honey together at 37 degrees, for 50 seconds on speed 3. But I don't personally own a Thermomix, and if you don't either, then all is not lost. Just boil some water, place it in a bowl, then put your honey and coconut oil in another, heat-proof bowl, on top and stir until melted and combined.

Anyway, on with the recipe! 

You will need:

1 cup raw almonds 

3/4 cup oats 

1/4 cup chia seeds 

3/4 cup pepitas 

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/3 cup raw honey 

3/4 cup coconut oil 

60g Lindt 70% dark chocolate, chopped (or raw chocolate of your choosing)

3/4 cup organic/additive free dried apricots, chopped 

How to: 

1. Place your oats, nuts, seeds and salt in the bowl of a blender and blitz until the mix becomes a rough meal. Place this mix in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

                

2. Next, melt together your honey and coconut oil by placing them both in a heat proof bowl, above another bowl of some just boiled water and stirring until melted and combined. 

3. Pour your honey & oil mixture over your oat mix and combine well (you might need to use your fingers a little!) 

4. Line a medium, rectangle pyrex dish (or any rectangle container, roughly 15cm x 20cm) with baking paper. Pour your combined mixture over the baking paper and press down with your fingers and/or the back of a spoon to pack firmly into the dish,  flatten and smooth out. 

5. Sprinkle over your chocolate and apricots, then use the back of a spoon to press them into the mixture (so that they will stick in place when the mixture sets). 

6. Place in the freezer for 20 minutes, until set. Cut into bars of your preferred size and store in the fridge. 

There is, of course, no reason why you couldn't mix your chocolate and apricots into the mixture instead of setting it on top - but i like the intensity of the flavours that having a whole layer of this deliciousness brings! 

I hope you enjoy these as much as we have! 

Angela 

[Colic & Constipation] The Poo Diaries Part 3: Fix

                I told myself, I told everybody, in fact “WE’VE TRIED PROBIOTICS” Shut up, about the probiotics. “They don’t help” I would say, through a sigh, to whichever practitioner happened to be in my grasp at the time. When you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in over a year, often being wrenched from your sleep every 45 minutes to feed, sooth or massage a thrashing, kicking, screeching, arching, grunting and irritable infant, you have little patience for, or faith in, things that don’t work immediately. You want the cure now, yesterday, 9 months ago even.
You see, I knew good and well antibiotics kill off the good bacteria in the gut, and Evie was given IV antibiotics immediately following her birth, so probiotics were the first place I had looked for answers. What I didn’t know at the time, however, was the crucial role that probiotics play specifically in gut motility and that the gut takes time to heal. It’s not a one dose miracle, and if you can find the patience, the faith and the memory power to remember several daily doses through the sleepless fog, they might just be the oil strike you have been waiting for.
So what makes me so sure that probiotics can be effective in healing the gut and restore motility, that when sluggish, causes colic, constipation, reflux & excessive vomiting? Research my friends, research. Meticulous, obsessive, relentless, desperate, prop your eyelids open with toothpicks and pray for answers, research. And I can’t take all of the credit of course, a few of the people we saw about Evie’s gut issues did suggest probiotics, but they never bothered to explain to me (maybe because they didn’t know, exactly) WHY they were so important and how long they might take to have the desired effect, the fact that she needed more than the recommended dose on the bottle, which is prescribed for maintenance, and not repair. And I needed more than that. For example, you can tell me oxygen is good and I might believe you and think “That’s good, I must look into that”. But if you tell me HEY OXYGEN IS GOOD BECAUSE YOU CAN NOT, AND WILL NOT, SURVIVE WITHOUT IT – I might start to take oxygen a little more seriously. People try to sell you things all the time in this world that we live in, anyone can make anyone believe that they need any product if they are good enough at persuasion. But as a nurse, I’m a hard sell, I want to see evidenced based, peer reviewed research, so that’s what I went to find.

                So, babies are born with a sterile gut ^{[1], [2]}. They then acquire their gut’s microflora – throughout the birth process and then from breast milk (if breast fed) and the environment (formula, environmental germs etc) ^{[1], [3]}. However, when babies are either born via caesarean section, or receive antibiotics following birth, their gut flora is altered for at least 6 months (the longest period of study), and possibly permanently, if left untreated ^[1]. The reason that babies whom receive antibiotics following their birth suffer from gut-flora-annihilation is obvious; antibiotics don’t discriminate, they kill both good and bad bacteria, leaving the host depleted. But babies born via caesarean section also receive antibiotics, albeit prior to their birth. Mothers undergoing a caesarean section are routinely given a preventative dose of intravenous antibiotics prior to their birth. This is typically the antibiotic ampicillin. Ampicillin easily crosses the placenta and both Mum and baby will have equal amounts in their systems after one hour of administration ^[1]. 
So how did my search for answers about colic & constipation bring me to probiotic treatment? Because
                “Bacteria inhabiting the human intestine participate in the maintenance or gut
                sensory and motor functions , including the promotion of intestinal propulsive activity…
                Intestinal motility represents one of the major control systems of gut microflora…” ^[4]

So, when my daughter was given IV antibiotics immediately following her birth, her sterile gut was bombarded with bacteria killers that would make achieving a healthy balance all the more difficult in her tiny still-developing little system, from the get go. That balance is crucial to keeping the gut moving, pushing gas and solids in the right direction. Cue 15 months of sleeplessness thanks to our good friend’s colic and constipation.

*I will note here that this study of infants whom were normal vaginal births, without antibiotic administration. One third was formula fed, one third was breast fed, and one third was a formula fed control group whom received no probiotics. This study showed that whilst adding probiotics to the one formula fed group gave them a similar gut health to those whom were breast fed, it actually made no difference to reported gastrointestinal symptoms within the 6 months. This is possibly due to the fact that pretty much all babies struggle with gas, their muscles aren’t as co-ordinated as an adults, their tummy is getting used to being used and they generally all struggle to some degree (albeit much more mildly if not given antibiotics, the problem still exists). Suggestions to deal with normal infant gas can be found here.

You see, you can give as much fibre, laxatives and water as you like – if gut motility is sluggish, your fighting a losing battle. Furthermore, laxatives are not, and nor should they be, a long term option. Why wouldn’t you want to fix the underlying problem? Why would you just want to cover it up and hope it goes away? So, we started Evie on probiotics 3 x a day for 2 days, until her poo turned to green diarrhoea and the gas from this was so intense that the colic came back… Too much. So we pulled it back to just twice a day, and within 7 days she was doing big, soft poos everyday**, napping again during the day, waking less frequently at night and I was so happy I could cry.

Hallelujah!

As for how long she will be on them, I will wait for the current bottle to run out and then see how she goes. I will know immediately if her gut isn't done healing and will quickly get her back on them at the first sign of any kind of upset in the future (including sickness or eczema etc).

                By now you might be thinking, that’s great for you lady, but my child has never had antibiotics and was not a caesarean birth! To which I would say: it doesn’t matter. The real point here is the crucial role that probiotics can play in enhancing gut motility. Furthermore, there are numerous factors that can throw out a child’s gut balance including, but certainly not limited to; the diet of the pregnant and breastfeeding mother ^[5] , the diet of the child^[1]  and being formula fed^[1].

For us, I feel as though probiotics played the key role in getting back on track. But they were, in fact one of many steps! So stay tuned for parts 4 & 5 of The Poo Diaries, coming up in the following weeks!
For those that are interested, I also found a great study (one of many, no doubt) that suggests the use of probiotics in infants can prevent the development of allergies, click here to view.

**When I say doing big soft poos everyday, this was aside from when she was withholding due to the fact that, after 15 months of constipation, she was now too afraid to go and doing her darndest to hold it all in, which I will address in a later blog (parts 4 & 5)!