How many wet and dirty diapers should my baby have; what is a normal bowel movement?
• When insurance regulations mandated early discharge after delivery it became obvious that new parents would have to do some of the monitoring that was traditionally done in the nursery. So we have you counting and charting soiled and wet diapers, (and maybe raise your anxiety level in the process.) Dirty diapers are only proxies for your baby’s intake and state of hydration, not measurements of your success or failure as parents. If your baby has one or two dirty diapers and half a dozen wet diapers in 24 hours you are probably doing fine. We are going to see you two days after you go home to check her weight and nutrition. (We rarely look at the sometimes elegantly graphed data or hermetically sealed stools parents bring along.) Some babies poop after every feeding, some every day, some (even breast fed) only once in several days. Normal stool can be yellow, brown or green and vary from soft and mushy to more formed. Formula fed babies will have a firmer stool. Straining is normal.
