Fiber

I spend too much time thinking about bowels lately: whose are moving; whose are not; how much they're moving; what's gone into them; what has not gone in (but should have); etc. Managing Trystan's diet has made meal planning much more of a challenge than ever. The kiddo wants to eat the same food that the rest of us are, but his system is so much more sensitive to what's in everything. Basically, while it's normal for some babies to go a day or two without pooping, its NOT good for Trystan--his system is still healing, and was not normal to start with. Also, he does not seem as able to push out anything that's too thick or pasty, so the consistency has to be pretty soft for him (hey, if you don't want to hear about poop consistency, don't read my blog...this isn't the first time the subject's come up!). He's taking a daily dose of Miralax to help ensure that he's going, and I have another kind of laxative and glycerin suppositories in the cupboard just in case. Also, we have a ready supply of baby prunes and prune juice in the cupboard.

Besides prunes, we have to make sure he's getting plenty of fiber, and enough liquid to balance it all out. This would be much easier if the kid liked juice (or even water), but at least he's finally acquiring a taste for fruit. He's a big fan of anything bread-like, so just about everything we eat has to be whole wheat or whole grain. I did discover that he will eat pureed veggies smeared on cut-up whole grain tortillas (doesn't a broccoli enchilada sound yummy?). There are a limited number of foods that he will suffer through being spoon-fed: sweet potatoes (though he will eat them mashed with his bare hands even faster), oatmeal (I make his with prune juice...sounds yucky, but smells like raisins so it's not that bad), yogurt. Just about everything else must be of a size and consistency that he can feed to himself. He had 3 helpings of green beans last night.

All this food craziness has made me a lot more conscious of how much fiber is in all the food we eat every day. I think it's a good change for me and the rest of the family, as we're actually eating healthier. I've also found that many of the foods that are good for breastfeeding and milk production happen to be high in fiber (whole grains, barley, nuts). I think the recommended amount for adults was like 25 or 35 grams per day (I tried looking online, and found several numbers, so we'll go with this range). I was curious how close I come to that, so I decided to read a few labels as I was packing for work this morning. Here's what I packed for my breakfast & lunch today (and the fiber content) :

oatmeal/barley hot cereal (with brown sugar and cinnamon): 7g fiber (I eat a rather large serving of this...yummy)
vanilla yogurt with cut-strawberries: about 1g fiber (estimate by how much fruit I cut up)

Can of healthy choice soup: 8g
1/2 peanut butter sandwich on whole weat: 2g for the bread, 3 g for the peanut butter
small blood orange: 1g
homemade trail mix (peanuts, cashews, dried fruit mix, m&m's): estimated 3g

So far, I'm at a total of 25g, not including dinner. Not bad. I'm not always this good--that soup & sandwich combo really helps today. My list doesn't count my chocolate intake for the day, but I don't feel like admitting how much I really eat of the stuff, and it has no fiber anyway.

Do you eat enough fiber? Do you care?