We got some regular prune juice from the supermarket and mixed 1 oz juice with 3 oz water and gave it to Evan early yesterday evening. He was surprised at the taste of the cocktail but did not reject it and finished the 4 oz drink in about 7 minutes. We put him to sleep a little earlier last night (9'ish) hoping that he would wake up just once and get more sleep overall. He struggled a bit to fall asleep and then woke up crying just before 1am, having slept for less than 4 hrs. In the past, if he slept at 10, he would not wake until at least 3, sometimes 4 or 5 am, for a total of 5 to 7 hrs straight, so asking him to sleep earlier had an opposite effect (at least this one time) - he slept less and fussed more.
He could not/would not go back to sleep last night at 1 am, he cried loudly and arched his back. Finally we used the backdoor method to get him to sleep - by feeding him. Technically, he did not need to eat, despite it being 4 hrs - he usually goes 5 to 9 hrs without a feeding at night. But this time, it was the only way to soothe (more like trick) him back to sleep. So he finally fell asleep a quarter before 2. But by the way he behaved, I was afraid he would not sleep long, and he didn't. He woke up again at 5 am, batting the mattress with his arms at first, and then crying in discomfort and displeasure. I tried to pat him on the chest/tummy and massaging his thighs to get him to fall asleep again. He almost did fall asleep several times but kept waking up and crying with displeasure. After a half hour, even I gave in and gave him milk to eat. After about 3.5 oz (he usually consumes 4.5 to 6 oz), he stopped. I held him still in a sitting position and waited. He started to poo and I urged him on by imitating the uuugh sound you might hear when someone tries hard to discharge stool. I'm not sure but I think he appreciates that and feels less shy about making the sounds himself. Each time he stopped, I urged him on in case he was not finished. And he would go again after a half minute pause. After some 10 minutes, he had pretty much finished and started to struggle a bit as he started to feel uncomfortable with the poo in his diaper.
When i undressed him to change the diaper, the poo had leaked out and stained a small patch of his outfit. Reason: the poo's consistency was like that of rather thin gravy. So, the prune had done its job, it had softened (maybe too much so) the stool. After cleaning him up and dressing him in a clean outfit, I put him back in the crib and he was as content as can be and fell asleep rightaway, it was 6am now. I hoped he would be able to sleep until 8:30 am now that he had a nice release, but he did not. He woke up around 7:15 am and was again showing signs of discomfort. Clearly he didn't need to eat again so I tried to be hands off and let him find his fingers and fall back asleep himself. But he didn't do that very well, and continued to cry on and off for 45 minutes. We finally decided to put him in the swing where he would usually be able to fall asleep. He was quiet for a bit but then started to fuss again. By the time I left at about 8:30, he still hadn't fall back asleep. I'm ready for another adventure tonight!
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