Why does the newborn's stool smell sour?

After the birth of a baby brings joy to the family, it becomes even more hectic for the family to take care of the baby, especially for inexperienced mothers. Taking care of the baby is not an easy task. However, the baby's stool can best judge the baby's gastrointestinal tract and food absorption. Among them, sour stool in newborns is a relatively common phenomenon, which often makes parents particularly worried, because normal baby's stool has no smell, so when such symptoms occur, adjustments must be made. Let's understand why the newborn's stool has sour smell.

Why does the newborn's stool smell sour?

If the baby's stool is just sour but not smelly, there should be no problem. If the baby also has a lot of smelly farts, it means that there is food accumulation, and you can feed the baby some beneficial bacteria to regulate the intestines.

Normal bowel movements for babies

Breastfed baby's stool: yellow or golden ointment-like, sour but not smelly, and sometimes contains milk lumps. 2 to 4 bowel movements per day. If your stool is slightly loose and slightly green, it is still normal. Some babies have frequent bowel movements, 4-5 times, or even 7-8 times a day, but they are in good spirits, can eat, and continue to gain weight, which is also normal. After adding complementary foods, the frequency of bowel movements will decrease.

Stool of artificially fed babies: The stool of babies fed with cow's milk or goat's milk is light yellow or earthy gray, uniformly hard and paste-like, often mixed with milk curds and protein clots. It is drier and thicker than the stool of breastfed babies, with a slight odor, and occurs 1-2 times a day.

Newborn meconium (dark green)

1. Even if a newborn baby has not eaten anything, he or she will pass dark green meconium 6-12 hours after birth.

2. I don’t know whether it’s because the babies cherish their mothers, or they don’t want to dirty the amniotic fluid they swallow every day, but the babies must come out of their mother’s belly before they are willing to have their first bowel movement in their lives. Meconium that has accumulated for 9 months must be cleared out through frequent bowel movements, which usually takes 2-3 days, 3-5 times a day, for the dark green color to disappear.

3. Meconium usually has no odor, is viscous, and is nearly dark green in color. It is mainly composed of amniotic fluid swallowed by the baby in the womb, epithelial cells shed by the fetus, vellus hair, sebum, bile, intestinal secretions, etc. These innate things are difficult to wash off, and experienced elders will tell the children's parents that they must use diapers instead of cloth diapers in the first few days.

4. Experts remind that this is not a bad "smell": the time for premature babies to excrete meconium is sometimes delayed, which is mainly related to the poor intestinal motility of premature babies or delayed feeding of children.

Once you are familiar with the normal "smell" of your baby as mentioned above, it will be easy to identify abnormal stools. In general, changes in the frequency and color of bowel movements do not indicate any problems, but the odor and water content of the stool may indicate many problems, such as the following bad "stinks" that hide hidden dangers and indicate disease.

In addition to correcting constipation through diet therapy (healthy fruit puree), you can also combine it with massage: with the baby's belly button as the center, use your palm to gently rub the baby's abdomen from left to right, rest for 5 minutes after 10 circles, then massage 10 circles, and repeat 3 times.

You can also help your baby do defecation exercises: let the baby lie on his back, hold the baby's legs and do flexion and extension exercises, that is, stretch and flex once, for a total of 10 times, and then flex and extend one leg 10 times. Increase outdoor activities. More exercise can promote intestinal peristalsis and make bowel movements smooth.

The above is an introduction to why the newborn's stool has a sour smell. After understanding it, we know that such symptoms are generally caused by the baby's poor absorption of food or indigestion. Parents must pay attention to it. In addition, special attention should be paid to the feeding method and feeding amount.