I can certainly see some merit to your baby having your kind of digestive system. Mine's slow and sluggish and Sam's tends to be as well. Poor bugger is going to have a lot of heartburn issues when he's older, I guess!
I try not to use coloxyl or prune juice too often. I guess I look at it as a case of there are some things that you use to get things moving... and you don't necessarily want to be doing those things all the time to keep things moving.
I guess my gut feeling on the sugar water is that it's the sugar making it more palatable to the baby so that they increase their water intake and it's the water that does the job... I just can't see how sugar can have a laxative effect on babies when it doesn't do that to adults.
Is it possible to offer water between feeds? If he's only taking a few sips of water at a time I can't see how it's filling him up and stopping him drinking enough milk... I can also understand not wanting to drink water after a big drink of milk. Do you go feed play sleep? How about water after play time and before going back to sleep? I think that's how we did it - but I mainly remember the first 8 weeks where the heat was such an issue for us (we moved to a cooler house when Sam was 8 weeks old), if Sam was awake and not due for a feed, he got water - and he'd never take a huge amount, but it seemed to do the trick. We offer water if he wakes during the night now, too. Didn't start doing that until he was about 6 months old - before then it was milk, but after that point it was water and it seems to have kept him happy.
Anyway, I must dash. I do hope that I haven't come across as lecturing and I certainly don't want to make anyone feel guilty - I guess with an older bub, it's a bit easier to think about the long-term consequences and not just be so focussed on getting my poor baby's bowels moving again!
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