How many days will it take for the baby to have meconium?

When the baby is just born, although he has not eaten anything, there are already lesions in his stomach. This is the feces formed by the fetus in the mother's belly, so it is called meconium. Under normal circumstances, the baby's meconium is dark green. As the due date approaches, the meconium will become more and more. So how many days will it take for the baby to finish excreting the meconium after birth?

How many days will it take for the baby to have meconium?

When your baby is just born, you will see dark green, sticky, gasoline-like stools in his diaper. Since a newborn's meconium is composed of amniotic fluid, mucus, dander, and other things absorbed in the uterus, it has no odor, so you may not realize that it's time to change your baby's diaper. 2 to 4 days after a newborn is born, his stool will become lighter in color, a bit army green, and less sticky. This is called a "transitional stool," and it's a sign that your baby is starting to digest his first dose of breast milk or formula and that his bowels are functioning normally.

Observing the characteristics of the stool is an important way to understand the baby's digestive status and an important basis for adjusting the child's diet. You should know the number of bowel movements of your child every day. Each bowel movement should be carefully observed in the light, to see the characteristics and smell the odor.

Infants begin to excrete meconium within ten hours after birth. The meconium is black-green or dark green, sticky, odorless, and a bit like asphalt used for paving roads. Meconium is composed of bile, intestinal secretions, desquamated epithelial cells, amniotic fluid and fetal hair swallowed by the baby in the womb. It usually takes two to three days to complete, about 3 to 5 times a day. If no meconium is seen within 24 hours after birth, one should suspect congenital malformation of the digestive tract causing fecal obstruction, which requires prompt diagnosis and treatment.

Three to four days after birth, meconium gradually transitions to regular baby stool. For infants under four months old whose main food is milk, their normal stool is mostly paste-like with uniform consistency, quite similar to the paste made of fine sand and water, and may contain a small amount of granular matter as big as pepper seeds. The stools of breastfed babies are mostly golden yellow, occasionally thin like water or thick soup, slightly green, sour and odorless, and they defecate two to four times a day.

The baby may defecate more frequently when he is newborn, four to five times a day, or even after every feeding. This is because breast milk is easy to digest, easy to excrete, and because of the reflex peristalsis of the intestines after food is input. In addition, within one to two months after birth, the child seems to be exerting a lot of effort every time he or she defecates. All the muscles in the body contract and the little face turns red. This is because the child's nervous system is not yet fully developed and the nerve impulses cannot differentiate. An urge to defecate causes muscle contraction throughout the body, which will gradually become localized as the child grows.

If the child has 4-5 bowel movements or more per day, or conversely only once every two to three days, but the stool is normal, the child is gaining weight and is in good spirits, then filtering is not necessary.