All about poop

It’s a given that life with a new baby is going to involve a lot of poop, but that hasn’t really been the case with Chloe. Or at least, that’s been our luck so far.

For those who don’t know, brand-new fresh-from-the-womb babies poop out what’s called meconium. If you want an official description, it’s a combination of bile, mucus, and epithelial cells that serves as the first few fecal excretions of any newborn baby.

If you want my description, it looks a lot like hot fudge sauce. Other people describe it as a tar-like substance, but if you ask me, the stuff is glossy and dark and liquid. Just like melted chocolate.

At any rate, it’s not bad stuff. It doesn’t really smell and only lasts a few days. It comes out slowly, too, which I got to watch a few times when I was wiping Chloe’s little bottom. Wiping a baby’s anus often stimulates more poop to come out, so you sometimes play an odd game of cat-and-mouse while waiting to get a good, clean bottom.

Once your baby starts drinking milk, his or her poop changes. In my experience, it turns a lighter brown (caramel sauce?) and smells like buttermilk. A lot of people also say it’s seedy, which I’ve seen once or twice. Just picture sprinkling a few tomato seeds onto that buttermilk-smelling caramel sauce.

The funny thing about Chloe is that she’s not much of a pooper. And having a non-pooping baby really seems to bother my husband Cam (he says it’s because he doesn’t like seeing them uncomfortable). In fact, with our first child, we went a full week without any poops—I think it was when Caden was just 2 or 3 weeks old. Our pediatrician gave us the go-ahead to use a little baby suppository, which my husband immediately bought and then administered. True to its promise, the poop started just twenty minutes later. Hubby was thrilled.

I, on the other hand, was not thrilled the second time hubby gave Caden a suppository. It had only been five days since he’d pooped, and the suppository was given just minutes before Cam left for work. The poop explosion hit twenty minutes later, and once I got Caden’s diaper off, he peed on the changing table. Before I could react, he spit-up enough milk for it all to trickle down the changing pad where it started mixing with the pee and poo.

I remember cleaning it up and thinking, “If I can handle this, I can handle anything!”

Chloe, so far, has thankfully been saved from the suppository-induced explosions. Somehow we got her on the most bizarrely-regular schedule and she poops every Wednesday and Sunday. It’s just often enough to keep Cam happy, but not so frequent that we’re always mired in messy, poopy diapers. I’ll take it!