What should I do if my newborn baby has loose stools?

As babies grow up, most of them are fed with breast milk. Breastfed babies are prone to loose stools, which may occur about 7 to 8 times a day. They always cry and have trouble sleeping at night. Then they go to the hospital for a stool check and the results show that everything is normal. What is the reason? Do we have any better way to treat loose stools in newborn babies?

Newborn babies have oral and anal reflexes, so they defecate a little bit every time they feed, so they need to defecate several times a day. Newborns, especially premature babies, have less voluntary muscle strength when defecating, so it is difficult for them to defecate completely in one go like adults. It is common for them to defecate one or two or a little bit at a time, several times a day, which makes parents think they have diarrhea. In fact, it is not, but they just do not defecate completely. This is especially common for breastfed babies.

The frequency of bowel movements is different for every newborn. This is directly related to feeding. Generally speaking, children who are well fed can have more frequent bowel movements, some even more than ten times. The stool is mostly mushy. There is no noticeable odor. The difference from diarrhea is that the child has no appetite or mental changes, and no signs of dehydration. Babies who are not well fed after birth will rarely have bowel movements after passing meconium several times. Also watch what you feed. Breastfed babies may have more bowel movements. The stool is slightly relieved, while bottle-fed babies have less stool. Slightly thick.

The most serious is neonatal epidemic diarrhea. Extraintestinal infections are mainly caused by the influence of pathogen toxins or the underdeveloped nervous system, which leads to digestive system dysfunction and increased intestinal motility, causing diarrhea. When newborns suffer from pneumonia and sepsis, bacteria can sometimes penetrate the intestinal wall from outside the intestine or in the blood and penetrate into the intestine, causing enteritis.

The stools of breastfed babies may be a little loose, because breast milk itself has some laxative effects, so breastfed babies generally do not suffer from constipation. Breastfed babies may have 7 to 8 bowel movements a day, which is also very large. As long as the stools are normal, no special treatment is required.