Problems With Infant Poop

     Few things cause more concern for parents than their infant’s stool habits.

      Infants’ stool patterns vary from week to week with no real reason. Normal infants can poop from 6 times a day to once every 6 days. Stools can be pure water or rock hard. They can be any color from bright yellow to dark black with all shades of green in between, even without changes in diet. If your infant is eating, smiling and acting normally, the poop is probably normal, too. 

     Parents need to know that different pooping patterns are normal and can change at any time without any reason. However, the parent can help the infant get through whatever pooping phase that the infant happens to be in.

     When stools are liquid and frequent, the skin can get irritated and the infant can develop a red, flat butt rash around the rectum that can bleed from small, open areas when you wipe it. If this happens, protect the skin with a butt paste that has zinc oxide in it. Use lots of it and use it as thick as possible with every diaper change. When you open the diaper, you should see the stool sitting on the butt paste. If you can see the skin when you open the diaper, the stool can touch the skin and irritate it. If the skin has bleeding spots, use even more butt paste. The baby will cry when you put on the cream, but continue to apply it until the raw spots heal. (This rash is different from a yeast infection, which is a slightly raised, bright red rash in the skin folds around the genital area.)

     When the stool is hard, the infant may strain and cry for an hour before pushing out a rock-hard lump of poop. Then he’ll stop crying and smile at you. You can help him by using a glycerin suppository (available in the pharmacy) when he is trying to poop. The glycerin suppository will help stretch the rectum and make it greasy. This just makes it easier for the baby to poop out those hard balls. The parent can also feed an older infant fruit – real fruit – not fruit juice or fruit snacks. The fiber in the fruit helps to pull water into the colon and soften the stool.

     Remember that the child who has hard stools this week will probably have runny stools next week no matter what you do, so relax and just try to make him comfortable.