Posted by: drmolly in diarrhea, bowel movement on
Sep 01, 2010
Poop, poop, poop. What's normal and what's not? Often, bowel moments can be telling of other things. Here's a question from a reader:
Q: My almost 4 year old has had loose and pale stools for the past 8 months. For about 5 months they were consistently pale and loose, now they are about 50 percent normal colored and 50 percent pale, always loose. One day they just changed. He became severely anemic at one point, so bad that he had trouble
Your 4-year-old tells you she saw some red stuff on the toilet paper when she wiped her bum. Your 4-week-old has blackish-red specks and mucus in her poop. Your 8-year-old wants to know why the water in the toilet looks pink after he pooped. Your 14-year-old says he's having blood in his poop but he feels fine. Your 6-year-old has had a stomach bug and now has some red stuff mixed in with his poop.
No matter how old your child is and even if you
Posted by: drmolly in diarrhea, bowel movement on
Aug 31, 2010
Loose bowel movements are common. Some people always have them while others only do when they are sick or on medication. Parents get to know their child's bowel pattern from infancy and when there is a significant change they are often the first to know.
Loose bowel movements are different than diarrhea. Diarrhea is loose, but when you have diarrhea you have much more frequent and often larger volume stools. Loose bowel movements for the sake of
After your baby is about 3 weeks old and you know she is gaining weight well, her poop frequency may start to change. This is often alarming for parents because their infant goes from having a bowel movement every time he eats to skipping a day or two between them.
Most babies this age are fussy intermittently anyway and parents associate this change in bowel habits to the fussiness so they e-mail or call me for advice.
I've got some good
Posted by: drmolly in diarrhea, bowel movement on
Jan 17, 2010
Let's face it, poop is gross. No doubt about that. Yet parents are subjected to changing diapers for years and as a result scrutinize their child's bowel movements and ask a truckload of questions about variations. Some parents understand that seeing corn kernels come out whole in their 2-year-old's poop isn't surprising and that blueberries will seriously change the color of the stool, but all parents worry about loose bowel movements and
Every fall I have several children between the ages of 5 and 8 years old who come in because they are peeing all the time. The parents report the child will feel like he has to go every 10 or 15 minutes all day long and often will only have a little bit of urine each time. The typical child will still be sleeping all night but will start going very frequently as soon as he wakens and not stop until bedtime. It can be very disruptive to the
I cannot think of anything more fun than showering a vomit covered, sobbing 7-year-old at 2 a.m. while his bedding is being stripped and changed. Of course it would be way more fun if while you were stripping the bed, you start vomiting, too. Bonus!
Ahh, the stomach flu. We all have had it and frankly we'll all have it again and again. Lots of different viruses cause vomiting and diarrhea and most of them are self limited and last only a few
Once your child has moved beyond the earliest time of food introduction, the next hurdle in the world of poop is potty training. Potty training is a time when children learn to hold in their poop at times and release it at others, so it's no small wonder that sometimes this process goes awry.
A variety of things can go wrong when a child is learning to poop on the potty. Some children may like the power of withholding stool because it so
Once your child has moved beyond the earliest time of food introduction, the next hurdle in the world of poop is potty training. Potty training is a time when children learn to hold in their poop at times and release it at others, so it's no small wonder that sometimes this process goes awry.
A variety of things can go wrong when a child is learning to poop on the potty. Some children may like the power of withholding stool because it so
