Moving the movement

June 7, 2010 3:33 AM

[infant poo details follow] My one year old son wakes up when he dirties his diaper. Regrettably this tends to be at 5.30 / 6am - an hour before he's supposed to get up. If he doesn't then he sleeps through. He only goes once per day. Ideally I'd like this to be later in the morning. Any ideas how to move his body clock?
posted by TrashyRambo to Health & Fitness (8 answers total)

Have him stay up later? Or eat later?

You're lucky that your son doesn't like the feeling of La Poo...should make toilet training him easier than my son, Pigpen.
posted by Dagobert at 4:37 AM on June 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

It might just be the luck of his diet. Perhaps you should his fiber intake to later in the day. If you're feeding him a vegetable-heavy dinner, increase his protein for dinner and serve him fiber-rich foods like Earth's Best Prunes and Oatmeal for breakfast instead. If you're already doing that, move the fibers to later in the day and so forth until he's pooping around 8am.
posted by zoomorphic at 4:41 AM on June 7, 2010

Maybe he needs more time running around after his dinner.
BabyTaff and ToddlerTaff both needed lots of running around time after meals and before bed to do their poos. And running around being left alone (littlies often like to poo alone, i've noticed).... although BabyRambo may not be running yet... crawling is the same. Best of luck. The early morning poo is a killer.
posted by taff at 4:46 AM on June 7, 2010

When is baby-dinner time? If it's close to bedtime, can you make it a bit earlier and add (yum) apricots or prunes as dessert? Then a warm bath, some winding down time with potty ready to go if he needs it?
posted by dabitch at 5:21 AM on June 7, 2010

What's he eating? We had this problem when we first started solids. Since we've introduced whole milk and meat at dinner, it hasn't been a problem. But when I was working on changing habits, we used pears/prunes at breakfast or lunch, which seemed to help some.
posted by dpx.mfx at 5:30 AM on June 7, 2010

Yes, I was going to add - we swapped out the daily banana for a daily pear at snacktime (after lunch) for a while there. Toddlers love soft pears and it does help. If you're in fresh apricot territory get some of that too.
posted by dabitch at 8:28 AM on June 7, 2010

My kid's poos depend on when he eats yogart. YMMV.
posted by k8t at 9:22 PM on June 8, 2010

FWIW, I agree with hal_c_on that putting babies to be earlier tends to help them sleep through the night. So does longer naps (as my mom told me, sleep begets sleep, too bad this seems to remain true in adults)! But, the nighttime pooping throws a wrinkle into the sleeping if, like my kid and yours, the kid hates dirty diapers.

I also think the pears/juice/more water/whatever helps because it makes pooping easier to do -- if the kid has to really work to poop, it might be the effort that's waking him up instead of the actual poop. And switching to solids seemed to cause a lot of effort where formula/breastmilk = no effort.

Kids poos are weird. Ours has always been a one a day pooper but she poops multiple times at day care for no apparent reason. Who knows!
posted by dpx.mfx at 7:02 AM on June 9, 2010