subject: Elimination Soft Stools In Breast-fed Baby (breast-milk Stools) [print this page] A healthy, breast-feeding baby can have bowel movements that give the distinct impression that something is wrong. The color and consistency of the feces can suggest diarrhea and the pattern of elimination can suggest constipation. Very often, mothers cease breast feeding on the basis of these mistaken impressions. This is doubly unfortunate, because the baby's stools look the way they do because the breast feeding was going so well, not because it was going badly.
The color of the breast-milk stool varies from a mustard-yellow^ spinach-green. It usually contains little seedlike particles and has a slightly sour but not terribly unpleasant odor. It's surprisingly loose. In the earliest days of breast feeding, a small spot of stool may appear each time the baby feeds, but as he matures the stools become less frequent and larger. After a few months of faithful service, many babies decide to give their rectums a day off. Some babies extend the period a week or more. But when the long-awaited stool finally arrives, it's usually worth waiting for. If the daily stool weighs 30 to 45 grams, the stool after ten days will be 300 to 450 grams. Just like the rain in California; when it rains, it pours. The stool of the formula-fed infant is much different, and using it as a standard against which to compare breast-milk stool is a too common error. Formula-fed stool is larger, harder, lighter in color, and stronger in odor. There's also more of it. These differences are entirely due to the differences in the chemical compositions of the two milks, ' especially the proteins. Parents often think that their breast-feeding baby, whose stools are runny and wet, has diarrhea. Many happily nursing babies have been weaned for this reason. One way to avoid this mistake is to simply step back and look at the overall picture.
Infants who are breast feeding successfully are happy. They feed well, act well, and gain weight. Infants with diarrhea are sick. They feed poorly, act listless, and don't gain weight. Furthermore, if you take a good look ar the stool of certain babies with diarrhea, you may see pus or mucus, or even blood. Even more striking is the difference in the stool's smell. With the incomplete digestion that results from the diarrhea, the baby's stool smells powerfully unpleasant and "sick." The infrequent bowel movements of many normal, breast-feeding infants is commonly mistaken for constipation. But constipation refers to the passage of the stool, not the lapse of time between movements. If the stool is rock hard, bone dry, and difficult to expel, you will be correct if you say that the baby is constipated, regardless of how much time has passed since the last stool. Babies can deliver one of these pellets every hour and still be constipated. On the other hand, if the nursing baby's "overdue" stool is like pea soup in consistency, voluminous, and easy to expel, you should say, "Hallelujah!"
by: Rashid Javed
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