No bowel movement in infant

Your Baby's Not Pooping but Passing Gas? What You Should Know

Congratulations! You have a new little person in the house!

If you’re a newbie parent you might be feeling like you’re changing your baby’s diaper every hour. If you have other little ones, you already know that a diaper can tell a lot about a baby’s well-being, but that babies — like adults — can sometimes have common plumbing issues.

If your baby is not pooping but passing gas, don’t worry. Your baby is still getting the hang of this thing called digestion. This is a normal part of being a baby.

There are several reasons why your baby might not be pooping. This can be uncomfortable for them (and you) but in most cases it’s not a reason to worry. Here’s what to know and what to do about your baby’s gassiness and lack of poop.

In contrast to the early newborn days when it seems every diaper change is a poop, your baby will naturally poop less as they get to be a few weeks to several months old.

There is a range of healthy when it comes to how often a baby should poop. As long as your baby is feeding normally and gaining weight (1 to 2 pounds a month), don’t worry about the number of poops.

Some babies 2 months or older poop once a day or more often. Other babies poop once every few days or even once a week. Even if your baby is pooping less frequently, their poop should be soft and easy to pass when they do go.

Breastfeeding, formula, and solids

Pooping frequency depends in part on what your baby is eating.

If your baby is only being breastfed or chestfed they may not poop every day. This is because their body can use up almost all the components of breast milk for nutrition and there is very little left that needs to be eliminated. After the first 3 to 6 weeks or so, they can go even a whole week without a poop.

If your baby is formula-fed they should poop at least once every couple of days. But some babies poop every day, while some poop more often, up to several times a day. This is all within the typical range.

Because the look of your baby’s poop can vary, it can sometimes be hard to tell when a baby has diarrhea. Signs that there could be a problem include pooping more than once per feeding, or poop that is getting more watery over time. If you notice any of these signs, talk with your baby’s pediatrician or doctor.

Once your baby starts eating solid food, it’s a whole new game! You’ll soon learn which foods might give your baby gassiness without pooping and which their digestive system seems to poop out almost too quickly.

Color and texture

Pooping the rainbow is pretty normal for a baby. Different textures and smells are also completely normal.

In fact, your baby’s poop may move between several shades of brown, yellow, and green, depending in part on what they’re eating.

Chalky, red, or black poop might mean that there is a health issue. If you notice these changes, talk with your baby’s pediatrician immediately. You should tell your doctor or pediatrician if you notice blood in the poop, or if your baby looks sick.

Straining to poop

Don’t worry if your baby appears to be straining to poop. Straining while pooping is typical for young babies. This is because they are still learning how coordinate the muscles needed to poop.

Babies also spend a lot of time lying down, so gravity isn’t on their side to help pass poops!

But if your baby’s poops become hard or dry, talk with your pediatrician.

If your baby is formula-fed, poops less than once a day, and appears to be straining, this is another reason to talk with a doctor. It could be a sign of constipation.

A baby can sometimes get a little stopped up or constipated. In fact, up to 30% of children get constipated pretty regularly. This can make your baby pass gas (fart), even though they are not pooping. When they do go, the stool is hard.

On the other hand, your baby might get gassy in between poops, without constipation. There are several common reasons why this might occasionally happen. Babies sometimes swallow air, which can lead to gas.

Some babies are just naturally gassy, just like they’re naturally cute. Sometimes a baby with stinky gas is just a baby with stinky gas. But if your baby seems to be having gas pains, bring it up with your pediatrician.

Breastfed babies

The good news is that babies who breastfeed or chestfeed are less likely to get constipated, because breast milk is generally easier to digest than formula.

If you’re nursing your baby, changes in your milk might have something to do with your baby’s poop frequency. Around 6 weeks after birth, your breast milk has little or no trace left of a yellowish substance called colostrum. Colostrum contains extra protein, antibodies, and other nutrients.

This liquid is one part of your breast milk that helps to give your newborn baby’s immune system a boost against germs. Colostrum may also work like a laxative, helping your baby poop in the first few weeks of life.

This may be one reason newborns poop several times a day. When there’s less colostrum — or none — your baby may have fewer poops.

Formula-fed babies

If your baby is feeding on formula, they might get gassy if they swallow air with feeding or if you change the kind of formula you use. A baby’s new digestive system can be finicky like that.

Some amount of gas is normal for all babies, and some babies just naturally pass more gas. If your baby is gassy, it doesn’t necessarily mean there is an issue or that you need to change anything to “fix” it.

If your baby is happily gassy and not showing symptoms of constipation or other issues, it’s fine to just let them be. But if your baby seems to be in pain due to gas, discuss it with your pediatrician.

Solids

When your baby starts trying solid foods, they might get gassy without pooping all over again. Introducing solid foods and new foods to your baby can cause little digestive hiccups.

It’s best to introduce new foods one at a time. This can help you pinpoint sensitivities or foods that cause gassiness or pooping issues for your little one.

If your baby is gassy but not pooping, check for other signs and symptoms of constipation:

• excessive crying or irritability
• decreased appetite
• severe straining or turning red without pooping
• small hard poops (when they do poop)
• dry poop (when they do poop)

In most cases, your baby’s gassiness and constipation will resolve on its own as their digestive system figures things out. Sometimes, you might need to give it a little nudge.

Call the doctor

If your newborn baby (under the age of 6 weeks) is not pooping at all or very rarely pooping, see your doctor immediately. In rare cases, not pooping can be a sign of an underlying health issue. Check for other symptoms like:

• vomiting
• refusing feeds
• excess crying
• stomach bloating
• arching their back like they are in pain
• fever
• blood in the stool

Any time you notice blood in your baby’s stool, it’s important to talk with your doctor right away.

Babies who are older than 6 weeks will occasionally be constipated. Call your doctor if your baby has not had a poop for longer than a week or if they get constipated with hard stools more than once or twice.

Home treatments

Ask your doctor if you should try home remedies for your little one, like:

• liquids: If your baby is over 6 months old (age is important here!), you can give them a few ounces of water. For babies at least 1 month old, you can talk with your doctor about giving them a small amount apple or pear juice — 1 ounce for each month of age, up to 4 months. These juices have a natural sugar called sorbitol that is also a laxative. Drinking this might help soften your baby’s poop. Babies who are eating solid food can have prune juice.
• food: If your baby is eating solids, give them fiber-rich foods to help pass the poop. Try puréed prunes, sweet potatoes, or fruits. Fiber-rich foods might make your baby gassy, but they often help with the poop!
• exercise: Your baby might just need to get moving to help them poop! Moving your baby’s legs as in a bicycle motion may help rev their digestion engine. You can also try holding your baby up so they are “walking” in your lap.
• massage and a warm bath: Try massaging your baby’s stomach and body. This can help relax them and get their digestion moving. You can also try a warm bath to help them relax.
• medications: If none of the changes in feeding, diet, or exercise help with the constipation, your doctor might recommend trying an infant glycerin suppository. These have to be put into your baby’s rectum, but they may be relieved and sleep peacefully when they can have a good poop! But be sure to talk with your baby’s doctor first if you are considering this option.

If your baby is gassy but not pooping, don’t worry. These common symptoms are normal in babies as they learn how to feed and digest food. Your baby might be constipated.

Call your baby’s pediatrician immediately if your newborn baby (under 6 weeks old) is not pooping at all. Also call if your baby (of any age) has constipation for longer than 5 to 7 days or if they also have other symptoms.

Symptoms, Treatment and When to Call a Doctor

Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Constipation (con-sta-PA-shun) in infants can worry parents. Most of the time, your baby is not really constipated. They may not have developed a routine for pooping yet. Some babies do not develop a bowel movement (BM) pattern for a while.

An infant’s BM pattern can change if their diet changes, like switching from breastmilk to formula, starting solid foods, or drinking less formula than usual. If your baby’s stool (poop) is not soft or easily passed, then they may be constipated.

In rare cases, constipation may be caused by a lack of nerves going to the intestines or by a problem with the way the intestine formed at birth. Your baby can be tested for these conditions if your health care provider feels it is needed.

Signs of Constipation

• less stools than their usual pattern
• straining more than normal to have a bowel movement
• a change in how the stool looks from soft and mushy to:
  
  • small, hard pebbles, or like a large, round golf ball
  • loose and watery
• abdomen (belly) bloated or swollen with gas
• painful cramps

Treatment

• If your baby is not eating baby food yet, you may give 1 to 2 ounces of 100% fruit juice (pear, prune, cherry, or apple) once a day. Stop the juice if their stools become too loose.
• If they are old enough to eat baby foods, feed them pureed pears, peaches, or prunes instead of giving them juice.
• If your baby eats cereal, it may help to give oatmeal, wheat, or barley cereal. Rice cereal can cause constipation in some children.
• Sometimes giving your baby a warm bath to relax them or exercising their legs, like riding a bicycle, will help stimulate the bowels to move (Picture 1).
• If it has been a few days since your baby has pooped and the juice or pureed food has not worked, then you can try a glycerin suppository. Place your baby on their back. Gently push the suppository into their anus (bottom). Suppositories are meant for occasional use.
• Contact your baby’s health care provider before giving them laxatives, baby mineral oil, or enemas to treat constipation.

Medical Therapy

Your child’s health care provider may order the following treatments:

• Give your child medication.
• Check your child’s temperature using a digital, rectal thermometer. Put a small amount of petroleum jelly (Vaseline®) on its tip before inserting into the rectum. Taking a rectal temperature may stimulate the baby to pass stool.

When to Call the Health Care Provider

Call the health care provider if any of the following occurs:

• Your baby is irritable and seems to be having stomach pain. Infants will pull their legs up to their stomach and cry when they are in pain.
• Your baby has constipation and develops vomiting, and their belly looks like it is bloated or filled with gas.
• You see blood in their stool.
• Their constipation does not get better with treatment.

If you have any questions or concerns, call your baby’s health care provider.

Constipation: Infant (PDF), Spanish (PDF), Somali (PDF), Arabic (PDF), Nepali (PDF)

HH-I-14 ©Copyright 1984, Revised 2022, Nationwide Children’s Hospital

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Constipation in children under one year old

Usually, parents of babies are worried about the exact opposite problem - too frequent stools. Therefore, not everyone immediately understands what to do if a baby under one year old has constipation.

Gastroenterologist, hepatologist at GMS Clinic Sergey Vyalov gave an interview to the Internet portal parents.ru and spoke about constipation in children under one year old.

Introduction

Constipation, also known as diarrhea, stool retention, discolia, caprostasis, difficulty in emptying the bowel is not a universal condition with unambiguous characteristics. Each person, including a child, has his own indicators of the norm and deviations from it, associated with age, intestinal microflora, diet, state of mind and hormonal background, concomitant diseases. Yet there are a few common points of reference.

What is constipation?

Specialists diagnose constipation if the baby does "big" things:

• regularly and without problems, but passing dry and hard stools;
• with difficulty - the child has to push, the feces do not come out on the first try;
• less than 5 times per day.

In the first six months of life, constipation is a rather rare occurrence, rather, on the contrary, in the period from 0 to 6 months, 6-10 bowel movements per day are considered the norm. Breastfed babies have more frequent bowel movements, while artificial babies have less.

Up to 6 months constipation is rare

Usually, parents of babies in the first months of life are alarmed by the condition opposite to constipation - too frequent bowel movements. But in a baby, regardless of whether he eats breast milk or formula, the intestines should work exactly like this - in a mode that is considered diarrhea for older children and adults.

There should be no other option, at least until the introduction of complementary foods at 4-6 months. After all, the baby receives mostly liquid food, the waste products of which have the same consistency and leave the intestines without encountering any obstacles on the way - the baby has not yet learned to control the sphincter that restrains the release of feces.

The baby's intestines have just begun to "get acquainted" with microorganisms that come from mother's milk, from her skin (the baby licks the nipple), from the environment. Far from all new "partners" are accepted: there are rejected ones, those who have not taken root, and so on. Checking and rejection are accompanied by loose, unstable stools.

Too frequent bowel cleansing does not need correction and treatment if the child is gaining weight and developing properly. Normal appetite and sleep, gas, absence of fever and other signs of illness indicate that parents have nothing to worry about. If the mother of a baby, tired of changing diapers 10 times in one day, wants to change the situation and asks the doctor to prescribe fixing medicines for the baby, then, unwittingly, she will doom her baby to chronic constipation.

Not according to the rules

And yet, in the first 6 months, constipation in infants is not excluded. It can be called:

• microflora transmitted from the mother;
• insufficient fluid volume;
• stress.

Let's say a woman has too many methane-producing bacteria in her stomach and intestines that cause constipation. They grow rather slowly, ferment, releasing carbon dioxide, which contributes to flatulence and bloating. With this deviation, the woman lives, adapted and learned to solve the problem with the intestines in one way or another. Noticing the same thing in a child, she decides that the baby has inherited her features and "saves" him with the same means, making a mistake. Babies should not be given laxatives, especially those containing senna. The baby's body gets used to such drugs too quickly and without them it can no longer cleanse the intestines.

Constipation in a baby up to 6 months is also provoked by a lack of fluid and hormonal fluctuations. At 6 months, the baby should receive a lot of moisture - about 140 ml per kilogram of weight per day. A breastfed child gains this rate from mother's milk and does not need additional sources of liquid (but only if there is no predisposition to constipation). Little artificers are soldered from the moment they switch to a mixture.

If a woman is tense or nervous, then her level of the stress hormone cortisol rises. Through breast milk, saliva or sweat, the substance enters the baby's body and also provokes constipation.

Even if the mother does not breastfeed the baby, the constipating microorganisms sooner or later get to the gastrointestinal system of the crumbs and make negative changes in it.

Constipation after introduction of complementary foods

The kid is growing, improving his skills, and it's time to introduce him to new foods. These circumstances, on the one hand, help to establish peristalsis, and on the other hand, increase the risk of constipation.

By six months, the baby is already trying to control defecation, because he realized that after it there are unpleasant sensations - itching, burning and other discomfort in the areas where the feces get. In order not to experience discomfort, the child tries to restrain the urge. At first, he does not succeed, because the rectum has already learned how to work - reflexively contract and push out waste. And after a couple of months, everything works out, the baby wins and enters the path leading to chronic constipation. To get the baby out of this vicious circle, the mother must minimize the duration of the baby's skin contact with feces and expand the baby's diet by mastering complementary foods.

Proteins, fats and carbohydrates that are part of the products are absorbed in the small intestine, and do not reach the large intestine, where feces are formed. What can not be said about fiber. While the baby is drinking breast milk or formula, this component of the dishes is not familiar to him. Even if a nursing woman herself consumes a lot of plant foods, the baby does not get anything. Fiber, as already noted, is not absorbed in the intestines, does not enter the bloodstream, which means that it is not in breast milk. For the first time, a baby gets fiber with complementary foods by trying its first 25 grams of mashed potatoes from zucchini, carrots and other vegetables. Plant fibers literally attract all waste to themselves, as a result, fecal masses are formed, which help the intestines to master the correct peristalsis. There are a lot of muscles in this section of the gastrointestinal tract, in the intestines, they must learn to consistently contract - tighten and relax in order to squeeze waste out.

The next new product should be introduced one month after the previous one. The novelty is likely to cause more frequent and loose stools at first. If it does not have a green color and does not foam, there is no need to run to the doctor and ask to prescribe fixatives. Be patient, after a while the innovation will be mastered and will bear fruit. Instead of liquid and shapeless yellow-white feces, you will see brown feces that have formed.

Special constipation

There are other causes of constipation in babies. Unfortunately, they are much more difficult to deal with, since these are developmental pathologies, diseases, and injuries.

Acute constipation. It develops for anatomical reasons, for example, due to obstruction of the large intestine, or during intussusception - the introduction of one part of the intestine into another, which causes blockage of the lumen. Against the background of complete well-being, the baby suddenly becomes restless, cries, refuses to eat. The attack ends as unexpectedly as it began, but after 3-5 minutes it repeats and intensifies: one or two times vomiting appears with an admixture of green bile. If the stool passes, then blood impurities are visible in it. After 5–6 hours, the stool stops, and bloody discharge comes out of the rectum. At the same time, the baby's stomach is soft. The temperature is usually normal. The child may even lose consciousness. With such symptoms, you need to call an ambulance.

Hirschsprung disease. It is based on a violation of the innervation of the large intestine - the central nervous system cannot control this section of the gastrointestinal tract. As a result, processed food accumulates in the intestines. The picture of the disease is quite diverse. If only the short part of the intestine is affected, then constipation forms gradually, and it is possible to do without surgical intervention for quite a long time. When a longer segment is affected, the absence of stool is fraught with a serious condition and immediate surgical intervention is required.

infectious attack. If in the first months of life the baby suffered an intestinal infection, the nerve cells in the large intestine may die, which will lead to a delay in the act of defecation, accumulation of feces and the development of constipation. With dysentery, the so-called toxic megacolon is possible (a sharp expansion of the colon). The child develops impaired consciousness and repeated vomiting. The abdomen increases sharply due to a greatly enlarged intestine. The complication requires emergency surgical care.

Problems with the CNS. Injuries during childbirth and the syndrome of infantile cerebral palsy also affect the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract, as they are associated with various complications, such as impaired swallowing, regurgitation, and vomiting.

Vasculitis. Vascular inflammation extends to the nerve plexuses and sensitive cells located in the intestinal wall.

Disorders in the work of the endocrine system. With hypothyroidism (lack of thyroid function), the movement of contents through the intestines slows down. With dysfunction of the parathyroid glands, constipation occurs due to a violation of mineral metabolism, with diabetes mellitus it becomes the result of damage to the nerve plexuses of the intestine or dehydration of the child's body.

Medical constipation. Before giving your child any drug prescribed by a doctor, carefully read the instructions. For example, anemia remedies containing iron can cause constipation. Observance of the rules of intake will help to avoid it - directly during meals, reducing doses of iron when introducing foods with a high iron content into the diet - buckwheat, apples, greens. Particular attention should be paid to constipation resulting from treatment with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, neuroleptics, sorbents and antibiotics, which cause intestinal dysbacteriosis.

Diseases and conditions accompanied by constipation are not so common in infants. Many pediatricians do not immediately remember them. Before getting to the truth, they prescribe a lot of unnecessary drugs, forgetting about effective bowel examinations, such as x-rays.

Source: parents.ru

Newborn constipation: what to do | Causes of constipation in a newborn baby | Drinking regimen

Author, editor and medical expert - Klimovich Elina Valerievna.

Pediatrician and medical expert - Arutyunyan Mariam Arutyunovna

Views: 571 335

The last update date: .11.2022.

Average reading time: 6 minutes 6 minutes