How Often Should Your Child's / Baby's Pass Feces?

There's no preset rule saying that the frequency for how often your child should pass feces. After the meconium (the sticky, thick and greenish-black colored substance but they don't stain and is formed in the baby's bowel prior to birth) is passed, babies tend to pass many small feces each day. Since meconium is sticky, parents may find it difficult to wipe off the baby's bottom. On the first and second days of life, breast-fed baby will typically have one to two bowel movements of meconium a day. On the third day of life, you'll observe greenish-yellow or greenish-brown colored feces, which are the transitional bowel movements of the meconium feces. Unlike meconium, these feces are not sticky but they've a softer texture. Your breast-fed baby will have at least two of these transitional feces a day. On the fourth day of life, you'll notice that your baby's feces turn to a mustard yellow color. These feces are runny and have a seedy texture. Around the fourth and six days of life, you can expect at least three bowel movements a day. These types of feces are those you'll see in a breast-fed baby for up to six weeks of life.

In the very beginning week, your baby may pass feces during or after each feed and this routine will always work out on their own routine, meaning that they'll poop at almost a similar time in a day. Nevertheless, this routine can change at intervals, particularly when they're not feeling well, when you introduce solid foods, or during the time they're being fed fewer times.

In the early months, the frequency for your baby to pass feces depends very much on whether they're formula-fed or breast-fed. It should be noted that babies those are breastfeeding (not yet on solids) generally vary greatly. Some may pass feces few times a day but others may only pass feces once every three days. Others may poop once a day and even taper off to once a week or more after a few weeks of age. It's completely normal for a breast-fed 2-week-old baby to pass feces three to ten times in a day.

By the age of one month, your baby generally poops fewer, regardless of whether they're breast-fed or formula-fed. Breast-fed babies will poop 2- 4 times a day, while formula-fed baby may poop 2 times a day or as infrequently from once every 3-4 days.  Sometimes, breast-fed babies can have bowel movements more than 4 times in a day and they may even poop once every three days. But, what's important for you to concern for in this case, is that whether their feces pass easily and that they're soft. Formula-fed babies should pass feces once a day so that they don't get constipated. Nevertheless, formula-fed newborn baby will pass little larger and smellier feces. In a case that your formula-fed baby doesn't poop every 5 days or more or your breast-fed baby doesn't poop every 3 or more days, please do not hesitate to seek for an immediate medical assistance.

Among the breast-fed babies, a decrease in the number of times in bowel movement is always noticeable when they're around 4 weeks of age. This is because your baby's digestive system is mature enough to cope with certain textured foods and thus lesser feces are being eliminated. Even though formula-fed baby does have their digestive system matured at the similar rate as breast-fed baby, there may not be any noticeable change in the number of their bowel movement.

Don't worry if your baby has explosive bowel movements or "projectile poopy" (which mean they poop every 5 minutes), or no poop for days (should less than 4 days) .The golden rule here is that your baby's acting normally and doesn't feel sick, and they poop at the right number of times. Well, some of them may poop while they're being nursing or when they're in their sleep.

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