From One Mother to Another

 

The Many Facets of Poop

So the new little one made her grand entrance. Of course, we’re thrilled to have her, but along with that cuddly newborn came a fully-equipped, very functional rear end.

Whether admitted or not, newborn poopy is forever etched in anyone’s mind who has ever cared for a “new” newborn. That thick, sticky, black/green oozing tar (termed meconium) is absolutely disgusting. If I pooped like that I’d cry too!

Then, with the breastfed babes comes the mustard/seedy stool. Yummmmy! But at least it generally doesn’t smell (and where do those seeds come from anyway???). One day, Haven even gifted me some lovely green and uber-frothy poop.

So what in the world makes a baby’s poop so completely weird and strange? Researchers out of StanfordUniversity wondered the same thing. They studied the poop of 14 healthy, full-term infants over the first year of life — including one set of fraternal twins — to see what kinds of microorganisms are present in their bowel and how they compare to the adult human gut.

I found it fascinating that as seemingly nasty as that meconium is, it’s actually amazingly clean. In fact, it is the “cleanest” poop in a human’s life. The researchers go on to explain in great detail how intestinal flora grows and develops over the first year of life. They note that by the end of the first year, the flora has established itself and grown to resemble that of an adult’s gut.

It is also interesting to note that the twins’ guts remained “cleaner” for a longer period of time than the rest of the babies in the study. The researchers suggest this is due to the twins being the only babies in the study delivered by cesarean section. They hypothesize that being born in a completely sterile manner — the amniotic sac never rupturing and the babies never coming in contact with the mother’s vaginal track — is what kept these little tikes’ colons so clean. (For the full-text research article, click here: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050177.)

Myself, I am proud to say that I have become a pro at poopy. Not exactly the thing I am most proud of in life, but I will stand tall as I tell my tales of having changed the messiest of poopy diapers in the most cramped of spaces … and still came out smelling like roses.

Still, it remains anyone’s guess what can be found in a baby’s diaper. Smelly, or not smelly … green, yellow, black or brown ... it’s simply a part of everyday life (especially for us parents).