WFMW: Fiber-iffic Fun!

You all know I LOVE talking about poop so I’m happy to have a poop-related post to share with you for Works for Me Wednesday. Even though Joshua is fully potty-trained and has been for about six months, he still has pooping issues from time-to-time. He has a history of being, uh, “plugged up”, if you will and recently that tendency has reared its ugly head, or more appropriately, tail. So, it’s been taking the kid 10-15 minutes to push out a poop. I don’t know why, but he always has to have an audience for the great event to occur (I am really, really, really hoping he outgrows this soon. This could have serious repercussions later in life!!) and so until recently, I’ve had to cage Sophie via Pack-n-Play or exersaucer every time her brother has to lay a deuce. So it goes like this: I run back and forth between the boy on the john and the screaming baby (did I mention she hates to be restrained in any way?) for ten minutes or so until Joshua is finally able to move his poor little bowels with me cheering him on and singing him songs. By the time his ginormous rock-hard turd hits the crapper, we are all exhausted.

Last week, I decided this had to change. Joshua is a very picky eater, and he obvisously wasn’t gettng enough fiber in his diet. So I took a cue from my friend Jill at the Diaper Diaries, who loves her some fiber, and I put a couple fiber-tricks in motion to get Joshua on his way to happy, healthier pooping. The first thing I did was head to Trader Joe’s to get some ground flaxseed. This stuff is great! It’s ground very fine, packed full of fiber, and easy to conceal in food. I put it in Joshua’s oatmeal, cinnamon-and-splenda toast, grilled cheese, and peanut butter sandwiches. He never even knows it’s there! I put it in dinners I make too – soups, casseroles, anything he won’t SEE it in. (I tried putting it in his ketchup once – no dice – he could see it.) The second trick I implemented is prune juice. We don’t drink much juice in our house, mostly milk & water, so juice is a treat for Joshua. Still, it’s a little much to ask for a three-year-old to down straight prune juice, so I mix it with reduced-sugar grape juice, about 50-50, and he gulps it down. Finally, I’ve found two snack crackers he really likes that are fiber-full. One, on Jill’s recommendation, is the Kashi TLC cracker. Yum yum! He loves them! The other are the All-Bran Snack Bites. I used to get these at Kroger’s, , but I’ve recently found them at Big Lots for a bargain price – just in time to get us through this Poop Crisis! They have a yummy cinnamon & brown sugar taste and 5 grams of fiber per serving! Yea!

Happily, we saw results in Joshua’s bathroom time within about four days. He now poops about every-other-day instead of twice a week, and he can dispatch a giant turd in about 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes! Yea for Fiber! Adding it surreptitiously to your child’s diet takes the drama out of bathroom time and it works for me (and Joshua!)

For more great Works for Me Wednseday ideas, head on over to Rocks In My Dryer.