One in five infants will be constipated at any one time, which speaks to just how common this condition is, says paediatric gastroenterologist Dr Rupert Hinds.

Speaking on a recent Healthed podcast, Dr Hinds who is a consultant at Monash Children’s Hospital in Melbourne said that while constipation is very common in infancy, reassuringly it is very uncommon to be caused by an underlying medical condition

Key to management is a thorough assessment.

Naturally a history from the patient is a bit tricky. Definitions of constipation in infants rely on more objective observations and tend to include both a reduction in frequency of motions and pain with defaecation. Breast-fed babies may only have a bowel motion every couple of days but they are not necessarily constipated.