Transcript:
This is Maureen Farrell and Heather O’Neal. And this is The Milk Minute. We’re midwives and lactation professionals bringing you the most up-to-date evidence for all things lactation. So you can feel more confident about feeding your baby, body positivity, relationships and mental health. Plus, we laugh a little or a lot along the way.
So join us for another episode.
Can I tell you what I’m really loving right now? What? Alanis Morrissette’s new album. Oh my gosh. I am so excited. So obsessed with her my whole life. But did you know? So when jagged little pill came out, yeah, you know, I didn’t realize my world is about to be completely changed by her.
Nobody knew that. But I was looking forward to it and I was really like, starting to feel my feminist roots taking hold. And my mom, when you’re seven, seven or eight, I’ve requested the album for Christmas as you do. And my, my mom, God love her. She said to me one day, cause I didn’t get it for Christmas and I was like, what the hell? What the fuck? Santa?
Yeah, what the hell? And she was like, Heather, I’ll be honest with you. I did buy jagged little pill for you for Christmas, but then God told me to listen to it before I gave it to you. And thank God I did, because it was just so inappropriate and she broke it in half. She didn’t just throw it away. She like snapped it and threw it in the garbage. And I was like why?!
And that just like cemented your feelings about, you know, righteous indignation and fucking revolution. Thank you. Alanis. Because from that moment on, I was just biding my time to be a surly teenager. I mean, that’s what, I mean, you really, the seeds were sown Heather. So Alanis had a home birth in case you didn’t know. Cause she’s a bad-ass and she was on that documentary, The Business of Being Born with Ricky Lake.
So good. And she had no qualms about saying yeah, homebirth was fucking hard. She’s like, no, it wasn’t all unicorns and sunshine. Do you know if her second baby was born at home? I actually don’t know. Well, we’ll have to Google. Look it up. But I actually just posted, I just posted a picture of Alanis breastfeeding while getting some kind of a facial in our free breastfeeding group that we run called Breastfeeding For Busy Moms.
And it’s getting all kinds of love. As it should. As it should, if you don’t love Alanis Morrissette, I don’t love you. Did you see her on Jimmy Fallon singing her new song Ablaze and her daughter is with her and you know yeah, you did see it because you texted me and you were like motherfucking Alanis can’t even get a babysitter anymore.
Oh my God. Huh? Well, let’s see. I actually didn’t realize she had three kids. Oh, me either. She had her third child, her son at 35 or 45, sorry. Wow. I’m impressed by you. Alanis Morrissette. Okay. I’m trying to figure out if those babies are born at home, but instead I got this great quote where Alanis says, “I have discovered the virtues of coffee truly. Coffee has become very helpful and then I’m sleeping a lot less, but motherhood is also all about integration for me.”
Oh, Alanis is speak the truth. I want to integrate Alanis into my life, again. First album in eight years. Yeah. And frankly I’ve felt off for the past eight years. So I’m looking forward to this new center.
Yeah, it totally is. She, she calls home birth gnarly and compares it to the Texas chainsaw massacre, which is honestly like, I’m pretty sure she said that with love, because I feel like I’ve said the same things. Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just what it is. Birth is kind of always like that guys.
So anyways, we’re going to talk about poop and pee today. Hit us with it, Maureen. Oh man. Okay. So the reason actually that we want to even talk about poops and pees today is because this is probably the easiest way for a parent who only breastfeeds, like straight from the breast, to track how much their baby is eating.
Because intake directly relates to outtake. Right? So if you, you know, are one of those people who you breastfeed and you just keep wondering, is my baby getting enough? Is my baby getting enough? I don’t know. I can’t measure, you know, you can’t like shake a boob and be like, Oh, feels like five ounces. So this is the, the easiest way to do that.
And it also gives you a good metric just to track your baby’s health on in general. Yeah. I mean, that’s consistent with adults. I mean, I totally look at my poop. We are our poop. Yeah. And I mean, there are days that I turn around and look in the toilet and I’m like, Heather, pull your shit together.
I know, I had diarrhea this morning and I was like, it’s probably cause I didn’t sleep. Yeah, sleeping. Could be something else. It’s hormone regulated as well. And you know, if you’re not drinking enough water. If your poop is floating, that’s not normal, either. Too much fat in your diet. Oh, I get that one a lot.
Anyway, it’s also okay. No, I’m, I’m not going to go into it. There’s some fascinating stuff about that. Okay. Anyway, tracking your baby’s poops and pees, we will talk about yours in another episode, and why it relates to breastfeeding, particularly. Okay, so this can give you peace of mind during cluster feeds, when your baby’s sick when they’re transitioning, maybe from supplemental feeding back to breastfeeding only.
You know, so this is, this is just a really good thing to have in mind. We’re going to start from birth. Yeah, let’s talk about, okay. The first poop is called meconium, right? It’s that poop that looks like your baby is shitting tar.
Yep. And you know what it is, it’s actually in their gut pretty much for at least half the amount of time that they’re inside you as a fetus. And it’s actually broken down skin cells, broken down hair. It’s like all the stuff that your baby has been drinking in the amniotic fluid, and it’s filtering out there, but it’s not pooping inside you.
Ideally. It’s really cool. Actually, it is really cool. Also disgusting. It’s like a butt plug. Yeah. Like when bears go to hibernate for the winter and they start eating their own hair and rocks and stuff to kind of like. I don’t think they actually eat rocks out there. I don’t know that much about bears, Jesus. Hopefully your baby is not eating rocks! But anyways bears, at least I know for a fact, eat their own hair and create their own butt plug so they don’t have to shit while they’re hibernating all winter.
Yeah. All those rocks you swallow, they go right to your uterus. Okay. Anyway. Yes. So meconium, and there’s usually a significant amount of meconium. So some babies who just shit it all out at once, you actually might not see them poop again for about 24 hours.
And that’s okay. So it’s something to pay attention to, especially in a hospital birth where they might not say like, wow, your baby just shit meconium everywhere. Or you might not notice it. Cause the nurse cleans it up really quick. It’s a good thing to ask. Has my baby pooped yet? How much poop? Mine pooped on the way out.
Yeah. “Trailing mec” as we call that. Sometimes they poop while they’re still in you. Well, mine was a forward projectile mec because he was a cesarean breach delivery and he came out ass first and the pictures are hilarious. Cause you see a little white butt then you see a little white butt with poop shooting out of it and he’s still half in me, I was like, and that highlights our whole relationship.
Yeah. Well, I mean I’ve seen, I mean, that’s what you see with breech births though, is just like the butt comes out first and then the intestines all get squeezed and it just comes out like toothpaste. Yeah. Toothpaste or like chocolate soft serve ice cream. Right. Anyway. Right. So it’s a good thing to know if your baby poops a significant amount of meconium in the first, you know, hour after birth, you’re not going to see a lot, you might not see any more in the first 24 hours. However, we typically see one or more poops in the first 24 hours. And it is usually still meconium.
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Again, how much your baby poops day one might affect what you see day two. Day two we usually see another one or two poops that are still meconium. And should I be doing pees at the same time?
Yeah, let’s do pees too, before I go too much further. So a lot of times people will be like my baby hasn’t peed in the first 24 hours. And you might’ve missed it because a lot of times the pee isn’t a lot because they haven’t drank a lot of volume. It’s really just that third space fluid from swelling that their kidneys are trying to pull out of the tissues and filter.
And that process can take a little bit of time. Usually they do pee in the first 24 hours. We wouldn’t see one ish, but it doesn’t have to be a lot. No. We just like to make sure that they have patent buttholes and urethras. That’s our big thing in the first 24 hours. And again, with eating too, it’s like, we just want to see the ability for these functions, but the amount doesn’t matter as much.
So if the baby has pooped at all, we’re like, cool. Your baby’s able to poop. If your baby pees at all, we’re like, fuck yeah, your baby’s able to pee. If your baby feeds at all, we’re like, cool. Your baby can feed. Right. And if your baby is pooping with every diaper change, which also can happen, the meconium just kind of slips out a little bit at a time, the pee might be buried in that meconium.
You just might not be able to see it. So actually you’ll see that pediatricians really don’t worry about pees too much in the first 24 to 48 hours. Yeah. So the next day, usually again, we see one or two poops, maybe more. Typically we see about two pees, maybe more. So usually our rule of thumb is kind of as many poops and pees as days they are old for about the first week, but that can definitely make people worry a little bit.
So it is a guideline. It’s not going to be exact; I’ve never been a baby who poops twice on day two and pees twice on day two and poops three times on day three, that never happens. But it’s a guideline. Yeah. I like it because as a nurse, if you’re taking care of these kids, you know, if you start to see that something’s off, you’re just paying more attention to other symptoms.
And if they don’t exist, then we don’t care. But if you start to see the other symptoms are happening, like, you know, rippling of the stomach where you can actually see the digestion happening, that’s a little odd, right. And as a parent, these give you good guidelines for when you might want to call your midwife or your pediatrician and just say, Hey, is this normal?
Right. And also we need to just let you know that you might see a little bit of a brick dust color. Oh, dude. The brick dust pee. Oh man. It is alarming and normal. It’s alarming, but normal, it literally looks like somebody like pinched a little piece of brick and just like ground it up, tossed it in the diaper. Yeah. Super weird.
Yeah. So that’s normal and I’m also pseudo menses. Yes, baby girls occasionally, essentially have a little tiny beanie baby period. Yeah. Except that one that you showed me a picture was not teeny tiny. It was so much. And we were like, what? It was like a half dollar of a blood clot.
Yeah, usually it’s literally just like a tiny stain in the diaper. It’s a little mucousy. And you look around and make sure it’s not coming out of the butt and that’s all you need to do. I did have one client who sent us pictures where I, I actually thought the first picture, she was sending me a picture of a blood clot of hers, because it was just like a little blood clot on something white that I thought was her pad.
No, it was her baby’s pseudo menses, and I about shit a brick. And that’s hormonal. Yeah, it was fine. It was, that was also still normal. If it’s slightly outside the range of normal, just like way on the edge of normal. That’s the one where you take him to the pediatrician and the pediatrician goes, Oh, Oh, interesting.
Right. I haven’t seen that since med school and then that’s it. Yeah. Like they’re happy that you showed them, but they don’t care. They don’t care. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. So I’m sorry. We’re at day three. So day three, you might start seeing transitional poop, which means it might be kind of instead of black or really, really dark green, it’s going to be a little bit later, maybe a little bit thinner, kind of greenish yellowish, light Brown because that’s about when people’s milk starts coming in.
And babies also have finally pooped all the mec out and are starting to actually digest and process colostrum and milk. Yeah. And because of that, you’ll start seeing more pees on day three because they should, at that point be getting at least a little bit of volume.
Yes. We usually see at least two or three poops and three or more pees on that day. If we’re not seeing transitional poop on day three, and we’re also not seeing an increase in volume for output, that’s when we’re going to start asking questions and be like, Hey, are you feeling breast changes? Does your milk look different when you express a little milk?
And it is normal, especially if you have a C-section for your milk to take longer to come in. But again, it’s something that we’re just going to want to keep a closer eye on to make sure that your baby can tolerate that. Because if you have a big, you know, 41 and a half week, baby, they’re probably going to be fine.
But if you have a 36 week old baby, we might be in a different situation. Yeah. And if you start to see also that they’re jaundice, so that’s another symptom that we’re looking for. So when we say that it’s a guideline and we’re looking for other things, that’s what we’re talking about. We’re looking to see if you have milk, right.
We’re looking to see if baby is able to transfer that milk and we’re looking to see if baby’s jaundice or really sleepy. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s a myth that a sleepy baby is a good baby. A sleepy baby is a scary baby for us. Yeah. When I have parents tell me they can’t wake up their baby to feed, I tell them to go to the ER sometimes.
I mean, it’s just like, you literally can’t wake up your baby. You need to go to the hospital. Yeah. And, and that’s also because Maureen lives like hours away from her client. Yeah. I mean, I do home birth and, you know, the thing is babies decline really fast. And if I get a call where they say, I literally cannot wake up this baby, I would a hundred percent rather them go to the ER and have nothing wrong, then it take me an hour to get there and see that their baby has declined more since the phone call and then another half an hour for them to get to the hospital.
Right. Right. So we have to be a little bit more conservative when we’re working with home birth. Right. But for you guys, if you’re in this first week and your baby is turning yellow or they’re so sleepy that they cannot wake, you need to call someone right away.
I know that the neonatal nurse practitioners tend to get more concerned if the jaundice level is on the lower abdomen and even the legs. Yeah. Actually, here’s the interesting thing guys that you totally can do. When we assess jaundice, we don’t assess the skin color that you can just see normally we assess the color of the blanched skin.
So, you know, when you like press a finger into your skin and it turns a lighter color for a second, because you’ve squeezed all the blood out of it? That’s the color we’re looking at. So what you actually want to do, if you have concerns, is you bring your baby over to a window. You want natural light because a lot of indoor lighting is yellow, and then you want to press your thumb into their forehead till it blanches.
And look at that color. If it’s yellow, press your thumb into their chest, until it blanches, and look at that color. If that’s yellow, do it on their tummy, do it on their thighs. So you, because jaundice progresses down from the head. Right. So if your baby has jaundice feet, you need to be going in. Yeah. That’s freaking weird, but low levels of jaundice are normal with breastfeeding.
Yep. So a lot of our clients, their baby’s a little bit yellow, their heads a little yellow, maybe their chest is a little bit yellow, nothing more. They’re still alert. They can still feed and we’re like, cool. We’re just going to watch it. And they’re in the first couple of days. Yeah. Like not the first 24 hours, the first 24 hours, that’s kind of odd.
And that really could be something else. After the first 24 hours, but in the first two weeks is kind of what we’re looking at there. Yep. Anyway, day four guys. Tangents today, I don’t know why people get so confused. Okay. So day four, again, we’re going with these numbers that match the days. Three or four poops, four plus pees.
And at this point, most people’s milk is in and your baby’s poop is going to be more yellow and liquidity. And they might poop 40 times a day. And they might poop every time they fart, every time they feed. And it might smell like sulfur, right. Or they, they might only poop about once a day. That does happen sometimes.
But actually what we’re looking at is the volume. So if you tell me your baby poops once a day, I’m going to say, is it more than a quarter? And most people say yes. And then I’ll say, is it more than a half dollar? Can you compare it to some size? Usually if someone’s baby’s only pooping once a day, they’re like it is all over them.
It’s an explosion. And I’m like, Oh, your baby’s very healthy. It’s a poo- apocalypse, right? Oh yeah. We had all kinds of names for that. The Crappening was my favorite. Anyway, but if you tell me your baby poops once a day at this point on day four or five, and it’s a very small amount, like a dime size, then I’m going to be a little bit concerned and we’re going to look deeper into how much milk they’re getting.
My gosh, can I just tell you my husband’s from Southern West Virginia and he has all kinds of hilarious little sayings and he’s got an accent. And so my daughter literally had one of those poop apocalypses, and he went over to her and he goes, Oh, did you chit up your back?
She chit up her back. Oh dear. He’s great. I know. Okay. So then that brings us to day five. We’re still going to see about four more poops and about five pees. And we should really have yellow poop by now. Your milk should be in by day five. If it’s not, you need to contact your health provider. It might still be within the range of normal, but we’re starting to move outside of that.
So you might be looking at some other stuff going on with your body, you know, some issues with retained membranes or placenta, some issues with your thyroid, anemia, stuff like that. Agreed. Yeah. And then day six, seven and beyond for a while. You’re going to be looking at four or more poops daily. You know, we’re really looking overall each day for at least four quarters worth of poop.
That’s like my minimum. I feel good about that. If we’re seeing like one quarter size of poop a day, I’m still worried. Two or three, I might be like, let’s see what tomorrow says, but if you’re consistently seeing less poops than four and less volume then that’s, what’s concerning. Again, some babies still only poop once a day and it’s a fucking disaster and that’s great.
And around that time, you should be going to your first pediatric appointment anyways. So don’t worry. Your midwife should still be seeing you and baby. Right. So don’t be afraid to bring that up. Right. And usually we’re seeing babies have six or more pees a day at that time. A lot of babies by the end of week one are moving to eight or 10 pees a day.
That’s really normal. Again, if you’re seeing less, it is about volume. So if you say, well, my baby only has five wet diapers a day, but they are fucking soaked and heavy, that’s okay. And also if you’re using disposable diapers, they’re really good at observing pee and you might just not be catching a lot of them.
So that’s what I asked clients too. I’m like, are you using cloth diapers or disposable diapers? Because cloth diaper clients tend to find every single pee and change it right away because it’s just more noticeable. And then a lot of the people who have these really super, absorbent, great, you know, that was me, whatever, I’m the disposable diaper gal.
Right. Which is fine. But you might be looking at a different diaper count. Also good for practitioners to know, when you ask about how many diapers you should know, what kind of diapers your client’s using. Right. And if you’re using the disposable ones, they are all exactly the same. So if you need to, because you have crazy anxiety and you want to weigh the diapers, you can actually weigh the volume because you can just subtract the exact weight of the diaper that you’re using.
Make sure it’s the same size. The size has to be consistent. Most scales are pretty easy. You can throw something on and turn it on and it will automatically zero. Or you can turn it on, put your empty diaper on, press the zero, or gosh, there’s another word for it. That scales. Anyway, there’s a button that makes it ignore whatever weight is already on there.
And then you put your wet diaper on, you don’t even have to do math. Yeah. So, and this is like, you know, this is good for people who maybe are moving out of a space where their baby had trouble transferring milk, and they’ve had to weigh every feed. And they’re just, you know, they’re really having trouble with say the recommendation when their pediatrician is like, Oh, baby’s fine. You don’t have to do that anymore.
And they’re like, Whoa, it’s like pulling the e-brake on anxiety. No, I’m having some trouble with that. So that’s a good way to transition out of there. Just know that it’s an option. Yeah. And sometimes just knowing you have options makes you feel better.
So then we move on past week one. Where kind of weeks, two to six have a similar normal range where we’re seeing four-ish poops a day, at least a quarter size each or more. Again, if you have less poops a day, you still want the same amount of volume and then six or more pees every day. And this poop at this point, if you have a breastfed baby, it’s going to be liquid and yellow, it might be seedy, might be kind of like mustard.
And there might be some temporary changes in there. Might be a little bit foamy one day, a little bit greenish one day, a little bit darker one day, seedy one day, not the next. The big thing with color and texture changes, if they’re temporary, I really tell people not to worry about them.
However, there are a couple colors that we like to make sure parents are aware of that are more concerning. Do you want to hit me with some Heather? Like white poop? What the fuck? White poop. Like the pale clay, bird shit. Yeah. Bird shit. That’s scary. Yeah. That’s rare. That’s a really bad one and rare. Yes, but also if you see that you need to do, that’s not a normal variation.
And then blood, but here’s my disclaimer about that because I have sent many clients to see their pediatrician for bloody stools in the diapers. And consistently the pediatricians always say, yes, Was it just this one time or is it consistent? And that’s what I say to people too, because seriously, if you have a little bit of blood in the stool, one time, there’s really nothing you can assess from that. And it does not mean that you need to start eliminating all kinds of shit from your diet.
It means you’re in a wait and see pattern and you’re just paying more attention. Yeah. So sometimes you might even just want to call your pediatrician, say, Hey, I found blood in baby’s stool today because they’ll probably say, okay, I’ll make a note of it. Yup. Keep me posted. And something interesting is that if you have a nipple injury and you are bleeding a little bit into your breast milk, which is fine, it doesn’t hurt baby. Baby’s poop might end up looking black, more iron.
Yeah. Cause that digested blood really darkens the poop color. So again, if you see like black poop after the first week, after the first few days, look at your nipples first. Yeah. Assuming your baby doesn’t look like it’s dying, right? Your baby looks fine. Just had a black poop, scared the shit out of you.
Look at your nipples. Look, if you pump, especially look underneath your nipple, cause that’s usually where the injury is. Cause you haven’t noticed and your nipples are sore all the time, whatever. And if you have a little nipple injury, again, and baby seems fine, make a note of it, write it down. If it doesn’t happen again, that’s okay.
And some people actually have benign cysts in their ducks. Yeah. That can be bloody, but so that’s, if you have dark, dark areas in the baby’s stool where everything else is yellow, and it’s kind of like a dark, dark red. But if you have, what’s called Frank blood, which is bright red poop you’re looking at the baby’s bottom and you’re just going to make sure you don’t see any fissures there or anything, which you shouldn’t.
Right. But it does happen if, if you’re kind of aggressively wiping or if they have yeast, right. Or if they have a yeast infection, babies totally can get bloody butts. Yep. So look there to make sure that’s not the source. And then the other thing that it could be is people are like, is it something I ate?
And here’s the honest truth. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, but who cares? Right? Because as long as it’s just that one time, you have to understand that it’s your job to colonize your baby’s gut. Your baby’s gut is sterile when it’s born. Right. And, and yes, sometimes something you eat that ends up in your bloodstream and ends up in your milk will cause enough inflammation in baby’s digestive system to have some bleeding.
However, however, however, this is something that their body is going to learn how to behave in its environment. So it’s gut is maturing because of what you’re eating. Right? So you don’t want to eliminate all kinds of things because then the baby’s not getting a clear picture of what’s going on in its environment.
Right. And, you know, the, the reality is like, if it’s consistent, it happens a lot and baby is uncomfortable, gassy, unhappy. That’s really when you need to seek some help. Yeah. Consistently bloody stool, of course, go and check with your pediatrician and an IBC LC and see what’s going on. That baby needs a full assessment.
That’s like a pediatrician/ IBC combined visit. Yeah. Don’t just Willy nilly cut out dairy. Yeah. And I, the last one, I want to talk about Heather. I want to talk about green poops a little bit. Cause I feel like there’s a lot of misconception around what that means. So a lot of people see a green poop and they’re like, I have a foremilk and hindmilk imbalance!
And they just freak out because that’s what that cute little graphic on Facebook says. And it’s, I, we’re going to have a whole episode about that and why it isn’t. It is not an issue to worry about. But again, if this is something that happens once or twice, even for a couple of days, and then resolves, do not worry about it.
Yeah. Maybe. Those days, your baby got some more watery milk and less fatty milk because maybe that’s what it needed. Maybe that’s what it needed. Maybe your baby also was getting an infection. And again, we see a lot more of the elements of your milk that help baby heal from that in the watery part of the milk.
They’re not really in the fatty part. Maybe your baby has mucus, like in its nose that it’s swallowing. Right. And that happens to every baby, but if it’s something that’s happening really consistently and it’s frothy, right. And it’s frothy and your baby’s unhappy. You know, your baby has gas, your baby has colic, whatever, then yeah.
Talk to your doctor. Yeah. And if you feel like you might have an oversupply, like you’re leaking constantly and like nothing is helping. Actually talk to your IBC LC, not your doctor. They don’t know what to do. And your, and your baby’s only eating like five minutes at a time, every 35 minutes.
And then, yeah, like if we’re looking at a real oversupply, which often you know, that’s when we start to talk about foremilk/hindmilk stuff then yes, you need to seek some help. But really the one green mucusy poop they had, don’t sweat it. Write it down on your calendar, forget about it. So the last thing I want to talk about, six weeks to six months, big range of normal here, guys.
Usually before six weeks, babies poop many times a day. Right. That’s most, most commonly every, you know, that’s when parents are like, what diaper doesn’t have poop in it? And then sometimes, sometime in the span between six weeks and ,six months, that changes like that. In a day. Sometimes, sometimes. My babies were always chronic shitters all the time.
I was, I was so mine was not. If he ever listens to this when he’s a teenager, he’s going to be like, Mom! You talked about my poop on a podcast? Yes. They’re not even going to have podcasts, then it’s going to be something different. Anyway. So yeah, some babies move from having very frequent stools to having very infrequent stools as few as one a week, one every two weeks.
So. Here’s kind of my guideline for what is okay with that. And this is what my pediatrician told me. Your baby might be different. Your pediatrician might be different. I recommend if your baby suddenly hasn’t pooped in like three or four days and that is abnormal for them that you call your pediatrician just to make sure they’re aware.
Probably they’re going to say it’s fine. Just keep watching. Like they always do. But here’s the big warning signs. If your baby is visibly straining to poop, like their face is getting red and nothing’s happening. If they haven’t pooped or farted in a long time, like nothing has passed through their butt hole at all.
If their abdomen is getting hard and if they look like they’re in pain, those are all signs that something is actually wrong. Did I miss one? No, I was just wanting to add that this is for exclusively breastfed babies, not formula fed babies. If your baby gets any formula at all, they should be pooping more often because breast milk is so compatible with the body and the body uses every single piece of it.
So there’s very little waste product leftover for them to poop out. But formula has tons of waste product that they don’t use so they’re going to have more poops and they’re going to be more formed and they’re going to be more smelly, they stink. And, and the thing that I see personally in my practice, this is not a meta-analysis.
I don’t know if there’s evidence behind it, but my clients that I’ve seen where their babies have struggled to transfer milk from time to time, I tend to see this more often. I don’t know if that’s just because they’re only getting literally exactly how much they need? So there’s just that, not that much waste? But anyway, I do see it more often with that.
Again, it’s not a concern as long as your baby is acting normally, but what I recommend to clients, this is my favorite recommendation because my baby never fucking pooped. I bet I can guess. You can. Abdominal massage. That’s great. Okay.
So I’m going to try my best to verbally describe this. And I keep meaning to make a video when I have a compliant, like three month old baby, and I just haven’t. Because every video on YouTube that I’ve ever seen is awful and they’re, they’re just not doing it right. So. If your baby hasn’t pooped in a while and you’re like, Hey, I kinda just want to help my baby out. See if this works. You want to lay them on their back, get a little baby oil, something a little slippery that you might like a massage with, coconut oil, coconut oil.
And you’re going to take your index and middle finger, two fingers. Get them a little oily, take baby’s shirt off. Also put him on something that they could poop all over. Cause it might be a disaster. And then you’re gonna do you’re gonna move your fingers around their belly clockwise in a spiral that goes into their belly button and the pressure you’re putting on this, you want to actually kind of dent their belly and feel some of the aspects in there.
So. This is a significant amount of pressure, not enough that you’re going to hurt or bruise them, but enough that you’re like, Oh, these are your intestines a little bit in there. Cool. That’s fun. So like, like as if your pediatrician was palpating their belly. Going clockwise, as you are from your perspective.
So you’re looking at your baby, your baby’s belly is clock. That’s what you’re doing. And then after you do that once or twice, how many times you want, I’d like to do downward stripes from the ribs down to the pelvis, from left to right. I don’t know. I just fucking do them. However, I’m sure there’s a way you’re supposed to. Probably left to right.
Your left to right, because of the way the intestines. Then, right. That’s how the, what the whole directional thing is. Then you’re gonna take baby’s legs and bicycle them, do some fucking aerobics. Squat, squat, bicycle legs. And usually when you start bicycle legging, you start hearing farts and you’re like, Oh God, It’s happening. Get the Tupperware.
So I often tell people, just like, have your baby naked on like a puppy pad while you do this, because like it’s not worth the diaper. And you can do it a couple of times. I can tell you folks, I have told this to so many clients and typically within five hours, they all send me a text back saying, you should have warned me about how much poop was going to come out.
And I’m like, but I did, but okay. I’m just happy your baby pooped. But for some babies, it takes a couple of times. You can do this twice a day, every day till they poop, you know, that’s fine. My son went through a phase only pooping once every two weeks. So for like three months, you know, he pooped like five times, which is just crazy to think about.
It was nice though, cause no poopy diapers. And it would be like day 13 and I’d be like, all right, son, time to poop. And we do this massage and I would literally have him in my lap during the massage, like his back was to my belly and I would sit him. I’d be cross-legged full of Tupperware in my crotch and I’d sit his little butt on it and I’d massage.
And then I’d hike his knees back to his chest and he would poop out like so much poop, heather. It was like several measuring cups of like, like three whole cups of baby poop. I bet he felt so much better after that. Oh my gosh. So did we all. So did we all. You will too, now that you know, what’s normal and what’s not because I definitely had that moment when my son hadn’t pooped for five to seven days and I, I was ready to go to CVS and get him an enema.
Yeah, don’t do that without medical attention. What was I thinking? But like, that’s what postpartum anxiety looks. Right. And that’s okay if you’re thinking about that. A lot of people like to stimulate the rectum also, but I really advise a lot of caution with that because the rectum is very sensitive. Anyway, it’s easy to perforate if you’re not careful.
Don’t put anything in there. Right. I would say just get a Q-tip with a little Vaseline on it and just go around the outside of the anus. Don’t go in there. Yeah. I don’t like shove a thermometer up there to stimulate it. It might work, but again, like you could really hurt your baby that way and don’t just go get an enema from the drugstore.
Call your pediatrician. Your pediatrician, if they are really concerned, will tell you how to properly acquire and use an enema and they might want to do it in office. Yeah. Cause they probably want to look and see what the hell is going on. Right. Because if you really have to do that, something else is happening.
Right. But that’s what postpartum anxiety looks like. And that’s why I was like. No shame for thinking that, I thought about it too. Yeah. And also like something about having that much anxiety at the time makes it almost impossible to find the information for yourself. I know you’re like, why doesn’t Google have it? I know.
So like, if you have a friend that has a little baby, please share this with them so they just know that it’s available. Because sometimes when you are just in that swirly twirly, headspace, and you latch onto this stupid idea, like giving your baby an enema and that’s all you can see. It’s really helpful to have somebody be like, Oh, Hey, here’s some other stuff.
Here’s some other stuff. And here’s a good, evidence-based reliable thing to look at. It’s called The Milk Minute Podcast and that’s what the freak we’re doing here. You know? So the real moral of this story is that every baby has their own normal, poop and pee schedule. And those change over time, with development, with food types, feeding habits, illnesses, whatever.
So this is all really individual and these are just guidelines. Oh my God, another 40 minute episode. Happy souping. This was supposed to be a pod snack. I love y’all!
Ok bye!
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