The poop on newborn poop...

... is that no one--nurses, pediatricians, moms, grandmas--can give you much good info about your own newborn's poop, aside from the general case, that is, that baby's first poops will be black and tarry (meconium), and gradually change color from black to brown to green or yellow, with mustardy seeds (milk curds).


Mustardy? More like dastardly.

Dahlia started off her pooping life with a bang, delivering her first meconium blowout shortly after delivery, then another about 12-13 hours later, and another 12 hours after that. It was about like Robin Williams supposedly described it--a cross between black tar and velcro.

Then she didn't poop again ... for two and a half days. That might seem like a long time, especially when the hospital breastfeeding diary literature says to expect 2-3 stools everyday. However, Dr. Karp (The Happiest Baby) says that the longest period between bowel movements he's seen in a healthy baby was 21 days, so I wasn't freaking out too much. Until the first poo came at night on Day 4.

We'd seen a very small amount of yellow poop with the seedy bits earlier in the day, so we'd been expecting some normal poops any time. What we didn't expect was a black blowout. I say it was about a cupful, but Amy thinks I exaggerate. (I am not exaggerating.) Unlike the meconium, it was runny. I wasn't freaking out, but I was a little concerned, especially after I read that black bowel movements were usually caused by iron deficiency (not troubling) ... or internal bleeding. Yikes.

So we waited for the next poop. And waited. And waited. I also forgot to mention that she had been farting quite a bit the past 2 days. She let loose with a major explosion around 7:30 on Day 5. When I asked my mom, "That sounds like a poop, right?" she answered, "I've never heard anything like that in my life."

We waited a few seconds to see if she was done, and I carried her over to the changing table. We'd already learned that the cold air stimulates the pee, so we thankfully were using the diaper as a shield when she let loose with explosion #2. It was black and slimy again. Aw. And just when I was throwing away the disposable diaper and wipes we used to clean her, she let loose with #3. Whoa.

Little D let loose with another large explosion that was a little browner the next night around the same time, and we worried less about the color and figured we might be in for a one-blowout-a-day baby (not a bad thing, imo). Nevertheless, she started pooping more frequently the next day (brown and yellow), and hasn't let up since.


Green is good.

She must have needed a little extra time to learn how to poo (i.e. tighten the stomach and relax the bottom), or else she was such a big baby that she had a boatload of meconium that needed to clear. I'm sure that's what was making the black color, even up to a week after birth.

The moral of the story? I suppose that every newborn's poop experiences are different and nobody can tell how it's gonna go. I couldn't find much of anything on Google or elsewhere online about meconium or black poop on Day 6 or after, which is one of the reasons I wanted to write our experience down.

If your newborn is still pooping black after 6-7 days, I can't say don't worry, but I can say that our little girl took a long time to clean out her intestines, and everything is absolutely poopy now.