Antipyretics for children are prescribed by a pediatrician. But there are emergency situations for fever when the child needs to be given medicine immediately. Then the parents take responsibility and use antipyretic drugs. What is allowed to give to infants? How can you bring down the temperature in older children? What medicines are the safest?
The contents of a baby's diaper can be very diverse. Sometimes it is difficult for parents to understand whether the baby's bowel movements are normal. In order to be less worried about the stool of a child of the first year of life, you should know how the baby's feces look normal.
Newborn
In the first days of a newborn's life, his stool, called meconium, can scare parents with a black-green color and a tar-like consistency. This chair has no smell. However, this is a completely normal type of stool for a newly born baby. Such feces are substances swallowed by the baby in utero. The appearance of meconium means that the baby's intestines have begun to work.
This is what meconium looks like - the first stool of a newborn. Don't worry, it means everything is fine.
From the second day of life, the baby's feces begin to change color (becomes grayish or gray-green) and consistency (it becomes like an ointment or semi-liquid). Such a “transitional” type of feces shows that the baby receives colostrum in sufficient quantities and the milk is well absorbed in the child’s body.
Depending on the type of feeding
From the second week of life, the appearance and frequency of the baby's stools change. These changes are influenced by the type of feeding of the baby.
breast
The color of the feces can be yellow, mustard or brownish. The smell of the stool of a baby who receives only breast milk is sour-milk, not sharp. The consistency of the bowel movements are similar to liquid semolina, pea soup or liquid cottage cheese. There are usually white blotches in the stool, there may be a small amount of mucus, as well as a greenish tint, but if the baby is not disturbed and the baby is gaining weight well, such signs of parents should not worry.
In the first 1.5 months of life, a baby can poop 4-12 times a day. Further, the frequency of emptying decreases. The norm for a child older than six weeks, receiving only mother's milk, is a stool from two to four times a day to one emptying in 2-5 days. The less often the baby poops, the larger will be the volume of his stool.
A breastfed baby's stool can change along with changes in the mother's diet. In addition, if parents look into a soiled diaper lying in the air, they will see that its contents have turned green. This is also the norm.
artificial
The color of the stool of a baby receiving formula milk is darker - yellow or brown. At the same time, the artificial baby should not have orange or green, as well as very dark (almost black) stools.
The smell of the stool of formula-fed babies is sharper. The consistency of the feces of infants who are fed with a mixture is thicker, but mushy. They may contain inclusions resembling cottage cheese if the child was given too thick a mixture and it was not completely digested. Excessively thick stools are evidence of improper preparation of the mixture or overfeeding the baby.
The frequency of emptying crumbs on artificial feeding in the first weeks of life does not differ from this indicator in a baby receiving breast milk (4-12 times a day). Further, the baby, who is fed with mixtures, poops 3-4 times a day, and over time, only 1-2 times a day.
This is what a formula-fed baby's stool most often looks like.
mixed
The stool of the baby, which is fed with both human milk and milk formula, has a rather thick consistency, but can also be mushy. Its color is usually brown, it can be light or dark. There are small patches of greenery in the feces. The smell of feces is quite strong.
After the introduction of complementary foods
When a child begins to try complementary foods, his stool changes. It acquires a thicker consistency and a more unpleasant pungent odor. The color of the stool of the baby who is being fed is usually brown. In the feces, blotches of different colors may appear due to undigested food, such as beets or carrots. This is acceptable, because boiled vegetables are still difficult for the baby's intestines to digest.
Constipation after the introduction of complementary foods is quite common, we advise you to read another article about this.
