Dorothy FarrarHard stools in the baby
Firm stool in babies describes hard to painful stools in babies in the first year of life. It indicates constipation.
Description
Babies are children from the neonatal stage to the first year of life. In this clearly delimited phase of life, so many small and large developmental steps take place that the child is almost unrecognizable by its first birthday. This includes, in particular, the maturation of the digestive tract, which keeps the baby busy throughout the first year and beyond. This can lead to changes in the stool, ranging from diarrhea to solid stool – a close observation of the consistency of the stool is all the more important in this eventful period of life.
Solid stools in a baby, like in an adult, indicate constipation . Because if it becomes solid, which is due to the food , it can no longer be excreted so easily and should be a reason to change your diet accordingly. Solid baby stools may smell different than usual, are often darker in color, and the baby may seem visibly straining and having difficulty passing stools. Some babies cry more than usual just because of this.
Causes
Solid stools in babies are almost always due to diet. In the first year of life, the digestive system develops and matures. At first it can only digest breast milk or industrially produced baby milk, but then it will get along better and better with solid food. Every new food is a challenge for a baby and it can be that the body is overwhelmed with it.
The consequences can be diarrhea or solid bowel movements in the baby. Even with the little ones, fatty components of food and unnatural, industrial foods more often lead to hard stools and thus to constipation. Too little fiber , which cleans the intestines and ensures the healthy consistency of the stool, is also a trigger for problematic bowel movements in a baby.
However, solid stools can also be temporary and go away just as quickly as they came. With so much going on in the baby’s digestive tract during the first year, it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what food caused the baby to have a short-term solid stool.
Diagnosis and course
When changing the baby, parents or caregivers should pay attention to the consistency of the stool. As a result, over time they will know what is normal for the baby and when the stool deviates from the usual consistency. Solid stool is often globular and small, resembling a rabbit’s droppings. It may be darker in color than usual and also smell different or more unpleasant. If the baby is visibly struggling, pressing noticeably or perhaps even crying, these signals also indicate constipation from the solid stool.
Often, solid stools feel sticky because they lack the fiber to take on a healthier consistency. Solid stool can occur once in the baby, then the stool returns to normal. However, if it occurs repeatedly or even regularly, this is a reason to visit the pediatrician, since a healthy and properly nourished baby should not have regular solid bowel movements. If the cause is not identified and remedied, the baby’s solid bowel movements would otherwise continue.
Complications
Changes in the baby’s bowel movements are common. While loose and mushy stools are considered normal, hard stools should be observed as complications can develop over time. A solid stool in the baby is always associated with reduced bowel emptying. More and more food pulp collects in the intestine, from which more and more liquid is withdrawn. This results in so-called “faecal stones”, which in the worst case can lead to an intestinal obstruction and have to be surgically removed.
These droppings are colloquially referred to as “rabbit droppings”. Excretion is only possible with severe pain. This can cause small tears in the anal mucosa. These are called anal fissures and cause stabbing and burning pain. Fecal stones can also injure the intestinal mucosa, causing inflammation that causes painful symptoms. An inflamed intestinal mucosa can only absorb small amounts of nutrients. As a result, malnutrition develops, which after a short time turns into underweight. If the intestinal mucosa cannot recover, the inflammation can become chronic.
Treatment and therapy
The treatment of recurrent solid stools in the baby should be done in consultation with the pediatrician. First of all, he will ask how the baby is currently being fed, when and with what symptoms the solid bowel movement occurred in the past. It is helpful for the parents to document their baby’s bowel movements and to write down on a daily basis when and with which other problems the baby occurred and what the baby ingested.
Based on this, the pediatrician can make recommendations for changing the baby’s diet and give the parents advice on which foods can normalize the baby’s solid bowel movements. This must also be done by the doctor, since methods for adult people are unsuitable for a baby. Such a small child, for example, cannot get plums in large quantities. Changing your diet is a tricky thing, especially if the baby is still only or mainly getting baby milk.
After the change, it is observed whether the bowel movements have normalized – if not, a new doctor’s appointment is due. If the pediatrician suspects another cause, ultrasound and palpation examinations as well as laboratory examinations of a stool sample can be carried out. This rules out the possibility of damage to the internal organs or diseases that trigger the baby’s solid stool.
Outlook and prognosis
Solid stools in babies are primarily characterized by abdominal pain . The cause is usually the slow absorption of intestinal activity and difficulties in adapting to certain foods. As a rule, the prognosis can be characterized as very good, since with appropriate symptomatic treatment options in consultation with the doctor and midwife, the symptoms subside on their own after a while and ultimately disappear completely. There are various support methods for intestinal health, on the one hand to increase intestinal activity and on the other hand to alleviate the symptoms.
The affected children suffer symptomatically from abdominal pain to nasty cramps and flatulence . Parents should be in close contact with the pediatrician and the midwife, who can often help with methods that are not only designed according to conventional medicine, in order to give the baby as carefree a start in life as possible. As a rule, there is a prospect that the symptoms will be cured.
Prevention
As soon as the baby can eat food other than breast or formula milk, it should do so. This allows his digestive tract to slowly but steadily get used to new food and reacts less and less sensitively to new food as he develops. The first food should consist of finely pureed vegetables of a single variety, because overburdening the digestive tract with too many new things at once can also lead to all kinds of problems. In the first few months, the baby only gets easily digestible vegetable purees such as carrots or parsnips.
However, with each new month of life, a new type of vegetable and later also fruit or meat may be added. If the baby does not have a solid bowel movement, the varieties can also be combined with each other from about six months.
Contrary to the eating habits of the parents, a baby does not need a variety of tastes, but rather consistency. A week, one type of vegetable – this can prevent loose stools and other digestive problems in babies who have just started to eat paps.
As soon as the first teeth break through, small raw pieces of carrot or other vegetables also help to supply the body with fiber for healthy stools.
Hello and welcome to my Health Guide & Encyclopedia! My name is Dorothy Farrar, and I'm the founder and main author of this platform.
My passion for health and wellness started at a young age when I became interested in the connection between the food we eat and the way we feel. This fascination led me to study nutrition and dietetics in college, where I learned about the importance of a balanced diet and the impact of various nutrients on the body.