EPISODE 241: When should you be concerned about your baby's poop?
I think every first-time parent for probably the last 20 years has searched on the internet at some point, “Is it normal for my baby's poop to look like ‘blank’?” And you can find a ton of information. There are pictures, but the problem is, most of those pictures are in a diaper. So how do you figure out if your baby's poop is normal when you're practicing EC? Let's talk about it. This is episode 241, When should you be concerned about your baby's poop? How poop changes during elimination communication.
Hello and welcome to the Go Diaper Free podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Cheever, a Go Diaper Free certified coach and mama to three kiddos who all went through EC and potty training at different ages and stages.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today. This is episode 241, When should you be concerned about a baby's poop? How poop changes during elimination communication.
Before we get started today, I want to shout out one of my favorite podcasts, Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy by Katie Ferraro. You might recognize that name. Katie was on the Go Diaper Free podcast here with Andrea a little over a year ago or so, episode 163. I don't know if you've ever had a couple of your favorite TV shows do a crossover episode, but that's what that was like for me because I've been following both Katie and Andrea since my oldest was probably about six months old.
When that episode came out here on Go Diaper Free, I had just had my third baby, and I had done baby-led weaning or a combo with my older two, and I was really, really determined this time to make it to that 100 first foods before the first birthday. So it was perfect timing for me, and with the help of Katie, I would love to report that we did it. With my youngest, we started solid foods at about six and a half, almost seven months, is when she finally showed all of those signs that she was ready, and we made it with about a month to spare to 100 first foods before her first birthday. So totally doable. The podcast was a huge help, and Katie is so great and so supportive. You can follow her on Instagram and also make sure you check out Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy, search it in whatever podcast player you listen to, subscribe, and also make sure you check out episode 287 of their podcast. It's called Constipation: How to Safely Use Prunes for Babies, and we're going to touch on constipation a little bit today. So if that's something you're dealing with, definitely head over there and check it out.
In today's episode, we are going to touch on how baby poop can change over the course of your elimination communication practice. And talk about a crossover, it will slightly crossover with episode 45, where Andrea talks about how adding solid food into the mix can affect elimination communication, but that episode is a little bit more about how it can affect your practice. Today I want to talk more about how the actual poop will change, and when you might need to be a little bit concerned or reach out to a medical provider.
As I said in the beginning, there's a big difference between poop in a potty and poop in a diaper, especially with newborns. Both breast milk poop and formula poop can be a lot softer. Especially those disposable diapers are so absorbent and wicked all away. So all you're really left with is solid matter, but that's not necessarily what it's going to look like in a potty. Think about a brand new baby and how loud those poops are, typically, in a diaper. There's a lot of gas involved sometimes, and they're very liquidy, and it just sounds hilarious and a little bit alarming sometimes if you're a first time parent, that baby poops are just so darn loud and that diaper. When you have baby on the potty, it's similar, so you can usually hear when they're done pooping, or if you're holding over a sink you can use the vanity mirror or even a little locker room mirror propped up right on the faucet there, and you can see when baby is done pooping. You have to have somewhat good aim sometimes because those newborn poops, especially breast milk poops can just come squirting out.
In a top hat potty, especially if baby has already peed, it's going to look very, very watery and that may be alarming to some first time parents. They may be concerned that the baby has some diarrhea. I think we all pretty much know that a baby starts out with a meconium poop, which is all of that that's in their intestines when they're in the womb, and that's usually really sticky and tar-like. Then it starts to change to a mustard color and be a little bit seedy. I have never used formula with my children, but I understand that it's more like a very soft peanut butter consistency if you're on formula, but that formula poop also can look really watery once it's mixed with urine in the potty.
Let's touch on, for a second, some of the differences between normal, exclusively-breastfed or formula-fed baby poops and diarrhea. Things to look out for in diarrhea is it's usually very frequent. Of course, if you're dealing with a brand new baby and you haven't really caught onto their poop schedule yet, you might not be able to tell if it's really frequent or not, but diarrhea tends to be very, very frequent. It can have some mucus in it, may have some blood in it, and so what you want to do is mostly look at your baby for signs of dehydration rather than necessarily what the poop consistency looks like. If you're searching on the internet, you're looking for signs of whether or not your baby's poop is normal, and you're just not really able to tell, if you've reached out to your medical provider and they don't seem too concerned but you're still a little bit worried, they're probably going to ask you to look for signs in your baby of dehydration. The NHS gives some typical signs of dehydration, and they are things like a sunken soft spot, the fontanel. There's one on top of their head, and that's apparently the one that can look most sunken. There's another one in the back, but they say to look for the top fontanel and make sure it's not sunken. If their eyes are sunken, if there are few or no tears when they're crying, this may apply more to older babies. Sometimes it takes a few weeks or months for those tears to actually start to happen when a baby cries. But if you're used to your baby crying with tears and they're not, that's a big sign, a big red flag. Not having very many wet diapers, or in our case, not having a lot of pee in the potty. If you're used to your baby peeing, let's say after every nap, and it's just not happening, or if your baby is drowsy or irritable, those are going to be your major warning signs for dehydration. So if baby is not showing any of those signs whatsoever and the poop is just soft or maybe a little bit watery and there's no mucus in it, there's no blood in it, and your medical provider doesn't seem to be worried about it, then you're most likely just experiencing for the first time what EC poops look like in a potty rather than the diaper.
Of course, poop consistency does change, not just in those first couple days when the meconium poop subsides, but also in the first year. Typically, most of us these days have started babies on solid foods around six months old. Again, refer back to Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy for all the advice on when to start baby on solid foods, but it's usually about around six months old. When they're learning to crawl and they're starting solids, their poop is going to probably start to consolidate, so it's not going to be quite as frequent and it's going to get more solid. Around about the first year, when they're eating even more solid foods, it's going to look more like a toddler or adult poop, right around the time they're learning to walk. So those types of poops are a little bit easier to tell versus a poop and a diaper because there's not as much fluid in it. It's not as wet or soft, so not as much of it is going to soak into the diaper. Even if you're using cloth diapers, a really good cloth diaper can just suck up so much liquid that it's sometimes hard to tell if a baby's poop is runny or not.
With these changes in poop, if you have been practicing EC with your baby since they were younger, they will probably notice a big difference in how it feels to poop. When we practice elimination communication with our children, we maintain that brain-body connection that they've had since birth. So they are very aware of their bowel movements, very aware of their urination, and therefore they will be pretty aware when things start to change in the poop department. This can sometimes be a pretty easy transition, and other times, because the baby is so in tune with that and notices the stark difference, you can experience some withholding. Your baby may go a day or two without pooping. When they do poop, they may fuss, call out, or even cry because it feels uncomfortable. It's a new weird sensation. Just like when they were first peeing in the potty when they were newborns, they might protest that a little bit.
If you're experiencing withholding with your child, it is important to look out for signs of constipation. If the poop is thicker than toothpaste, if it's dry, if it looks like pebbles, those are signs that they could be constipated. Also, frequent urination is a sign, and that's one I think a lot of people miss. If your baby is suddenly peeing a lot and not pooping as often as they were before, even if that poop seems relatively soft, they may be withholding it a little bit, and so they don't have quite as much room as normal for their bladder, and they're going to be peeing more often. They can also be irritable, restless, gassy, or fussy.
Some of the resolutions for that, of course, prunes. Like I mentioned, you can head back to that Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast and check out the episode on how to feed prunes. You also want to give a lot of fluids and make sure you're avoiding any constipation-inducing foods. Bananas that aren't quite all the way ripe yet are one of them that I know is a culprit. When my baby started solids, I don't like really, really overripe bananas, and so I was feeding my baby the same kind of bananas that I like, just barely yellow, and that was causing a little bit of constipation in her. So we cut that out, and it was a big help. Other foods that can help to loosen things up are juices, purees, prune purees, and if you check out our episode 89, Andrea talks about how to help a constipated baby become regular again. She had an experience with Twyla where the constipation went a while. It was when she was one and, I think, even to two years old, and she did have to seek medical help with that. So that's a great episode to listen to as well.
Of course, it's important to know when you want to seek medical help. If your baby has not pooped for a week or more, definitely seek out medical help. I would say once you're going through a transition like starting solids or more solids around when they're walking, if they're holding it for a couple of days here and there, that's usually okay. During a transition, that can be very normal, and for a short period of time, it's okay. But if you're starting to get into a place where baby is only pooping every two to three days for a long period of time, I would seriously consider switching things up.
You'll look on the internet, and you'll hear a lot of people say that it's normal for a baby to not poop for a couple of days, or it's normal for them to hold it. While it may be very common, pooping is important for your body. It's eliminating waste, and holding that waste in is just allowing your body to reabsorb it when it shouldn't be. So my best advice, and again, I'm not a medical professional, but if it's a short-lived time period, you're going through that transition to solids or you're going through a big physical transition like learning to walk or changing their diet, adding a lot more solids to their diet, if you're only going a couple of weeks where baby's not pooping every day, I wouldn't necessarily worry. Obviously, if you are worried, check with your doctor. But if it's going on longer than that, like a month or more where these poops are not consistent and you're not able to get your baby pooping every single day, I would seriously consider diet changes, nutritional help, medical help, whatever you think is going to be best for your family to try and get baby regular. Every human should be pooping every single day. That's just how our bodies are made. We eliminate waste for a reason, and it is very important to get it out.
That's everything I have for you today. Thanks so much for listening. You can go to the show notes at godiaperfree.com/241 and find anything I talked about today linked there, including the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. We'd love for you to head over there to the blog and let us know about your experience with letting baby poop in the potty. How has practicing elimination communication and being able to see that poop in a potty affected your ability to monitor your baby's health through their poops? Make sure you join us next week. We will be answering the question, "Does having another baby impact an older child's potty success?" It's going to be all about elimination communication and siblings. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you then.
Want to catch your first pee today? Grab Andrea's free Easy Start Guide and do just that. It's only one page, and it will change your world. Get it at godiaperfree.com/start. We'll see you next time.
