Back to Homepage
Babies, especially if they’re breastfed, have wild changes in frequency, volume, consistency, and color of the stool. In fact, it’s generally easier to describe the list of what is not okay than to tell you the list of what is okay, because the list of what is not okay is much, much shorter. Babies can poop 10 times a day or up to every five days. And all of that’s normal. What would make it abnormal is if the color or consistency is off. For example, if the consistency is hard or formed, even if it just looks like a normal adult stool and it’s not even that hard, that’s a little abnormal. Or if it’s so watery that if you put it in a glass, you could read a paper through it. That’s also abnormal. And either of those situations should make you go see your doctor. Other things that are abnormal are the colors. A wide variety of colors are normal. But if it’s black, gray, tan, or red, that is abnormal and you should see a doctor. Everything else is essentially fair game. And so you will see blue, yellow, green, anything you can imagine, the whole rainbow. And it’s only those colors that are more concerning. As your child gets older, their stools will normalize and the pattern will normalize and you’ll start to see more similar stools, more similar times and little things like that. But even then, variation shouldn’t get you worried unless you’re seeing one of those things we talked about.
