Womb to Bloom - Maternity & Beyond

We all swore we would never do it. We won’t be those parents who discuss baby poop. And we all end up doing it anyway. What we didn’t realize before we had children was that the contents of a dirty diaper (or lack thereof) often have a direct correlation to the health and happiness of our babies. So, poop is important. We chart it. We discuss it. We call our partners in from another room to look at it.

Seriously, you can learn a lot about what is going on with your baby based upon his diaper. Before you leave the hospital and then again at your baby’s first visit to the pediatrician, your health care providers will talk to you about your newborn’s bowel movements. Frequency, color, consistency – these are all things to note.

I can recall actually writing these things down for a while, on the same notepad where I kept track of how much breast milk or formula the baby was taking at each sitting (another question you’ll get asked by the hospital nurses and at the pediatrician’s office). So, what’s normal?

The first few bowel movements will produce a rather nasty, black/green tar-like poop called meconium. It is very sticky and hard to clean off of your newborn’s skin. Meconium is made up of amniotic fluid, bile and shed skin cells collected in your baby’s intestines while still in utero. The doctors and nurses will look for this first bowel movement within about 12 hours of birth.

Be sure to let them know if it happens while they are away from your room. And try to get your partner to change it – you’ve just given birth for crying out loud! (Occasionally, a baby will pass meconium in utero – before birth. This can sometimes indicate fetal distress. It can also be a problem if the baby aspirates it – or breathes it into her lungs. Your labor and delivery team will be on the lookout for this.)

It will take a day or two for the meconium diapers to transition into more normal waste. If you are breastfeeding, your baby’s poop will be loose, mustard-y in color and grainy. It does not have a very strong odor to it at all. A breastfed baby will often poop after every feeding. This is all completely normal. It’s also normal for a newborn to grunt and turn red while pooping. It takes them a while to get used to their bodily functions and it’s terribly entertaining too. If you have a 12-year-old’s sense of humor, like me.

A formula-fed baby’s bowel movements will be slightly thicker in consistency than the breastfed baby’s (but not firm by any means). It will probably be somewhat darker than that of a breastfed baby. Formula-fed babies may poop less often than breastfed babies. They will still usually have at least one bowel movement a day.

It is important to become familiar with your baby’s regular bowel movements so that you are able to notice any distinct changes. Often, changes in the poop are your first signal that a baby is ill. Diarrhea can signal an illness but is often hard to differentiate from a normal breastfed baby poop. Just remember that the diarrhea will appear much more liquid-y, often being almost completely absorbed into the diaper. There may also be a change in color or odor.

Constipation, occurring more often in formula-fed babies, can cause great discomfort for a baby. Keeping an eye on your baby’s pooping schedule may help you figure out why he is especially fussy. Massage and warm baths often help a baby relax and become “un-constipated.”

The color spectrum of newborn poop is wide. As we discussed above, the “normal” color is in the yellow range. However, a green or black poop (even post-meconium) is not completely unusual. Often, after a baby has been home for a few days or a few weeks, and you really think you’re starting to get the hang of things, she throws you for a loop. You open up her diaper and there is a bright green pile of poo. Don’t panic. There are several possible explanations.

If your baby is formula-fed, the iron in the formula may cause the poop to turn green. A breastfed baby may have a green poop if he is sensitive to the dairy products consumed by mom. Try to cut dairy out of your diet for a while and see if anything changes. Breastfed babies can also have green poop if they are not latching on to one breast for very long and are only getting the thinner milk that comes out first. This “foremilk” is lower in fat and can cause stomach discomfort for your baby.

Black stools (occurring after the initial few diapers of meconium) can be a reaction to an iron supplement if your baby is taking one. It can also possibly indicate intestinal bleeding. Call your pediatrician on this one or for any bloody stool.

Between four and six months, when you begin to introduce solids to your baby’s diet, the poop will change again. Obviously, as his diet becomes more solid, his poop becomes thicker. It also generally becomes less frequent and much smellier. Sorry, it’s the truth. Once you start pureed foods, it can also become Technicolor – peas mean green poop, carrots and sweet potatoes mean orange poop, tomato sauce gets you reddish poop. It’s all very lovely.

The key to all of this is get to know your baby’s “normal” poop – frequency, consistency, color. As strange as it seems, it’s pretty key to making sure that your baby is receiving and processing all of the appropriate nutrients and that she is otherwise healthy and growing. And if it takes analyzing poop to keep our babies healthy, then that’s just what we’ll do.