How many bowel movements are normal for babies?

The baby's eating, drinking, defecating and urinating every day are the issues that parents are most concerned about. How many times a day is normal for a baby to defecate? Today, let's talk about the problem of baby's defecation.

Normal bowel movement frequency for infants

1. Stool under breastfeeding

In color and shape, it is yellow or golden ointment, uniform and consistent, occasionally slightly green and relatively thin; it has a sour taste but not smelly and no foam, and sometimes contains milk lumps.

Have 2 to 5 bowel movements a day. If the stool is slightly watery and slightly green, it is still normal.

Some babies have frequent bowel movements, 4-5 times a day, or even 7-8 times a day, but they are in good spirits, eat well, and gain weight, which is also normal. As the child grows older, the number of bowel movements will gradually decrease, and after 2-3 months, the number of bowel movements will decrease to 1-2 times a day. Therefore, if a breastfed baby has loose stools and frequent bowel movements, parents do not need to worry as long as the baby is in good spirits, eats well, and grows normally in height and weight.

2. Stool under artificial feeding

The stool of infants fed with cow's or goat's milk or milk powder is light yellow or earthy gray, relatively dry, rough, uniform and hard paste-like, often mixed with grayish white milk curds and protein clots, and often with an unpleasant fecal odor. The stool of infants fed with breast milk is drier and thicker, with a slight odor, and occurs 1 to 2 times a day.

3. Stool under mixed feeding method

When breast milk is insufficient and milk and starchy foods are added, the stool will be yellow or light brown, soft, and have a foul odor, and will occur 1 to 3 times a day.

What are the rules of baby's bowel movements?

1. Relationship with age

Newborns: The meconium is dark green, 4-8 times a day, or even more than 10 times. The subsequent transitional stool is green, thin, or accompanied by milk curds, 4-8 times a day;

One month to 6 months: yellow soft stools, mushy or rotten stools. Breastfed babies have golden yellow stools. 1-6 times a day, but some babies may only defecate once every 2-6 days, and a few may even defecate once every 10 days.

After 6 months: With the addition of complementary foods and changes in dietary structure, different types of stools may appear, mainly soft stools in strips and mushy stools, occurring once every 1-3 days or 1-3 times a day.

2. Relationship with feeding method

Observations of babies aged 0-3 months found that the number of bowel movements per day for breastfed babies decreased with age, while there was no significant change for formula-fed or mixed-fed babies.

The number of bowel movements of breastfed babies is higher than that of formula-fed babies of the same age. In addition, the stool of breastfed babies is softer and more golden than that of formula-fed babies. For formula-fed babies, 50% of their stool is green. The total amount of stool is the same for breastfed, formula-fed, and mixed-fed babies, but those who have more bowel movements have less stool.

Tips: If a breastfed baby has loose stools or more frequent stools, there is no need to worry as long as the baby's father is in good spirits, is feeding well, and is growing in height and weight normally.

But be careful. If you normally only have 1 to 2 bowel movements a day, and this suddenly increases to 5 to 6 times a day, you should consider whether you are sick.

Baby's bowel movement is regular, what should I pay attention to when breastfeeding?

We who are careful can observe the newborn's stool and understand the quality of breast milk, so as to adjust the baby's diet and make the baby's bowel movements more regular.

>> If the feces of newborns are yellow, and the feces and water are separated, and the frequency of defecation increases, it means that the newborns have indigestion, which indicates that the breast milk contains too much sugar. Because excessive fermentation of sugar causes newborns to have intestinal bloating, foamy stools, and a strong sour taste, mothers should limit their sugar intake and appropriately control their starch intake.

>>When there is too much fat in breast milk, the newborn will have more frequent bowel movements and undigested food in the stool. At this time, you can shorten the feeding time each time and let the baby eat the first half of the breast milk. Because the first half of breast milk has more protein, it is easy to digest and rich in nutrition, while the second half has more fat and is difficult to digest. If necessary, the mother can drink a large glass of light salt water half an hour to an hour before feeding to dilute the breast milk, and then breastfeed the child.

>>When there is too much protein in breast milk or the protein is not digested well, the newborn's stool will have hard lumps and a foul odor like rotten eggs. At this time, the mother should pay attention to limiting the intake of foods with high protein content such as eggs, lean meat, soy products, and milk.

>>When breastfeeding is insufficient, the stool is green, the amount is small, the frequency is high, and it is green and mucous. Newborns often cry a lot because of hunger. In this case, as long as the baby is fed enough, the stool can return to normal.

How to tell your baby's diet from his stool

1. Foamy stool: This type of stool is often dark brown and is probably caused by the baby eating too much starch or sugar.

2. Foul-smelling stools: Excessive intake of protein-containing foods will dilute the gastric juice, and the protein will not be fully broken down and absorbed, but will be metabolized by the bacteria in the intestines, resulting in foul-smelling stools.

3. Shiny stools: Eating too much fat will be broken down in the intestines to produce excess fatty acids, which will stimulate the intestinal mucosa, increase the number of intestinal peristalsis, and produce light yellow, large amounts of shiny stools.

4. Green stool: If the stool is small in volume and contains a lot of mucus, it is hunger diarrhea. In addition, the iron in the formula milk reacts and the stool is dark green.

5. Grayish white stool: This is one of the reasons for bile duct obstruction. In addition, it may be caused by drinking too much milk. The calcium ions in the milk combine with fatty acids to produce fatty soaps. The stool may be grayish white.

6. Tarry stool: After the red blood cells are destroyed, hemoglobin combines with sulfide in the intestine to form ferrous sulfide, which makes the stool black. Because ferrous sulfide stimulates the intestinal mucosa to secrete more mucus, the stool becomes black and shiny, and tarry in form, which is called tarry stool.