Analyze a Baby's Health by Poop or Stool Colors

Checking a baby’s poop can help you determine the baby’s health. While it may seem gross, examining the many shades of baby poop can clue you in to whether your baby is ill. Black stool, red stool, white or grey stool, or stool flecked with slimy green may indicate illness. Besides the color, you should also check the texture of your baby’s poo.

Steps

Using Color and Texture to Analyze Your Baby’s Health

  1. Keep a record of how your baby’s poop looks. Maintain a running log of notes on your baby’s daily diet and the texture, color, and frequency of his or her bowel movements. Armed with this log, you'll be better able to detect abnormal defecation in your baby. Look for correlations between what the baby eats and how it defecates. Reduce the intake of problematic foods.
    • For instance, if your baby’s poo is normally brownish-green with a peanut butter-like texture, but then it suddenly turns dark yellow and becomes hard and small, think about dietary changes (including drinks) you might have introduced that could be the cause.
    • Pay attention to the consistency as well as color of bowel movements.
    • If your baby’s poo changes dramatically, you should talk to your baby's doctor. Share the information you’ve kept on your baby's stool with the pediatrician. The more details you provide, the better the doctor will be able to help you determine what's normal for your baby and when treatment may be necessary.
  2. Look out for hard, small poops. If your baby’s poo is like hard pebbles, s/he is likely constipated. Constipation -- the inability to pass stool as normal -- could occur when your baby is first introduced to solid foods. It might also mean that your baby has a soy or milk intolerance and could need a different kind of milk or formula.[1]
    • Introduce solid foods and more fluids to the diet slowly and monitor your baby’s ability to process them. If he or she shows signs of constipation, reduce solid food intake and add softer food(s) and more fluids to the diet.
  3. Don’t worry if you occasionally see bits and pieces of undigested food in the poop.[1] Sometimes food travels so quickly through the gut that it is not fully broken down. However, this does not indicate that the baby is unwell. Additionally, some foods such as corn are more difficult for the gut to break down. If you see small or occasional chunks of food in your baby’s poop, don’t fret.
  4. Contact your doctor when you see diarrhea of any color. If your baby is passing soft or relatively firm stools that are green, yellow, or brown, you have nothing to worry about that. However, if the stool is one of those three normal colors but is excessively runny, it could mean your baby has an infection or allergy.[1] Diarrhea in another color, such as red or black, could indicates blood is present in the stool.
    • Keep your baby hydrated. Give them plenty of fluids while they are experiencing diarrhea.
    • A large amount of yellow diarrhea could indicate the presence of giardia, a parasite.

Analyzing Poop Colors According to Diet

  1. Recognize breastfed baby poop. Poop of breastfed children can come in many shades. Your baby’s poop might be green, brown, or yellow. The texture might be seedy or pasty, and might be as runny as diarrhea.[1] It will also, compared to normal poop, smell a bit sweet.
    • Yellowish to yellow-green, grainy poop is also normal starting at about five days after birth for breastfed babies. Your baby’s stool will be loose.
    • Green-brown, yellow-brown, yellow-green hues are all also normal for breastfed infants.
  2. Identify poop produced by formula-fed babies. Babies who are not breastfed will have healthy poop of either a mustard yellow or a brown color. Their stools are likely to be larger and less frequent than those of babies who are breastfed. The texture should resemble peanut butter.[1]
    • Medium brown poop is completely normal. Formula-fed infants may produce light brown and pasty stool.
    • Light-tan or yellow-tan poop is also normal. This tends to happen more in formula-fed babies.
  3. Consider what can cause some other colors. If your baby’s poop is of a normal consistency -- which, depending on the baby, could range from the firmness of hummus to peanut-butter -- other colors alone need not cause concern about your baby’s health. However, there are a wide variety of other colors linked to various foods.
    • If the baby has eaten berries that have become undigested, the poop may be of a streaked dark-blue color.[2]
    • Pumpkin or carrot might cause your baby’s poop to be orange due to the beta carotene (an antioxidant) within the vegetables. Orange poop might also result from a random mix of other foods.
    • Spinach, broccoli, and other green foods might dye your baby’s stool green.
    • Foods or drinks with food color or dyes can also change the color of the poop.
    • In addition, certain medicines can occasionally change the color of the poop, as well as lead to some diarrhea or constipation. For example, an antibiotic called cefdinir can cause orange poop, and iron supplements can lead to dark green poop.

Knowing When to Worry

  1. Be wary of black poop. Tarry black or blackish-green poop is normal during the first few days after a child is born, and is referred to as meconium.[2] However, if black stool persists several days beyond the day of birth or appears after the neonatal period, you should contact a pediatrician. It may be due to blood in the stool from intussusception (intestinal blockage) or internal bleeding. Specks of black might also be present in the stool due to the ingestion of blood during breastfeeding.[1]
  2. Get medical attention when you see white or light gray poop. Chalky white or light gray stool can indicate a bile duct, gallbladder, pancreas, or liver problem. Those colors likely indicate that your baby is not producing enough bile, has a blockage of the bile duct, or has some other digestive issue probably involving insufficient bile.[3]
  3. Look out for lime green poo. Lime green poo could indicate that your baby has a milk allergy. It might also mean your baby is not getting enough hindmilk. Hindmilk is the richer, more nutritious breast milk that can only be accessed through extended suckling.[3] Finally, lime green poo could mean your baby has a virus.
    • Slimy green streaks or flecks in the poop can indicate the presence of mucus.[1] This could be due to a viral infection, especially if the baby is sick or has a fever, or it might also simply be due to your baby swallowing excessive saliva/drool. If your baby is experiencing other signs of illness -- vomiting, lethargy, fever, poor appetite, or coughing -- contact a doctor when you see green-flecked poop. Otherwise, don’t worry if you observe a bit of mucus in your baby’s poop.
    • Contact your pediatrician for more information if you see lime green poo.
  4. Look out for red poop. A temporary change to red or rosy pink poop is often a result of having eaten something red, and is not a cause for alarm. Beets, tomatoes, red cereals, red popsicles, or red gelatin could each cause your baby to produce red or pink stool.[2] However, it might indicate blood in the bowels. Contact your doctor if you cannot link your baby’s red poop to something it ate, or if you see obvious blood in the poop or the diaper.
    • Red poop could suggest that your baby has a milk allergy, internal bleeding, or a bacterial infection.[1]
  5. Take precautions when you notice abnormal poop. Contact your baby's doctor if his or her poop is one of the warning colors (white, black, or red that cannot be linked to a food). Similarly, contact the doctor when your baby’s poop is thin, watery, or small and hard. Finally, if your child is not pooping as regularly as they usually do, they may be constipated.
    • If your infants attends day care or is cared for by someone else during the day, inquire with them about the frequency, quality, and color of your baby’s poo.

Tips

  • Breast-fed babies more often have loose, watery stools, yet it can be diarrhea, if too watery, too often.
  • Darker medium brown poo may begin when your baby begins eating solid food. This is another normal color.
  • Don't panic if your baby has one or two unusual poops, unless there is blood or another symptom. Call your baby's doctor if the unusual poops continue or get worse, or are associated with other symptoms.

Warnings

  • Watch for health difficulties related to Know when Your Toddler Is Too Sick for Daycare: colds, flu, diarrhea, bloody diarrhea.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 https://www.unitypoint.org/blankchildrens/article.aspx?id=40567710-74c7-4ef2-a040-847be9fbd35a
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/infant-and-toddler-health/expert-answers/baby-poop/faq-20057971
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 http://incredibleinfant.com/health/baby-poop-color-chart/
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