>Mom had tried introducing some foods at about 6 months which seemed to induce constipation, and some blood in the stools. Doctor prescribed laxatives which mom was not comfortable about giving, but did. She went back to exclusive breastfeeding somewhere over the next 2 months and the baby's digestion returned to normal without the laxatives. Now her 2 1/2 yr old is still laxative dependent, taking lactolose syrup and Mirulax (sp?). The doctor had told her that the child probably be laxative dependent all her life. Even with these laxatives the child has difficulty in passing stools (soft formed), and sometimes will have a "plum" coloring to them. The mother is thinking this is blood from high up in the GI tract. The child was on a variety of foods at this point. The mom was worried about all of the laxatives, switched doctors, and the new doctor stopped the laxatives, is worried about hirschprung's, allergies, or possibly a digestive enzyme difficiency. The new doctor is having mom exclusively breastfeed, which she has done over the last 2 weeks. Stools are back to what mom calls "normal" yellow breastfed stools. No plum coloring. The child was accidentally given a corn dog and broke in a rash around the rectal area and on the face. Laurie, this sounds an awful lot like my daughter, although we didn't end up using laxatives. She was very resistant to starting solid foods and ate only small amounts. Larger amounts caused her stomach pain. She was almost exclusively breastfed until she was close to 4 years old, although she ate small amounts of solid foods. As she grew older, she continued to have frequent digestive problems. Conventional allergy testing eventually found she had several food allergies, including eggs and citrus fruits, and that she was celiac (unable to digest gluten). Now that she is aware of the foods she can and cannot eat, she does much better. But breastmilk sustained her for a long time! (And I was also nursing her younger brother from the time she was 2 and 1/2). Teresa Pitman Guelph, Ontario *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html