<<This brings me to another wondering - has any connection been found between
 these babies who stool infrequently as normal breastfed babies and future
 constipation or problems with stooling as older babies or children?  i
 woudl be really curious and it would be helpful in assuaging moms whose
 babies have irregular stooling patterns. any thoughts?>>

I have said this before on Lactnet and found little agreement, but I still
think I am right and people are just stuck on seeing things this way for some
reason. It is, IMO, convenient to believe that infrequent stooling is normal.
I believe 100% that it is an indicator of some kind of problem, such as food
allergies, poor gut motility or the like. I know this means people will write
and say that they had a baby who did this who grew into a perfectly healthy
child, but you will also have people who artificially fed their babies who
will say the same thing. And we know that those kids will likely show the
results of artificial feeding later in life. I think the same may be true of
kids who stool infrequently. I also think that the way we assess illness or
disease in general is flawed in that we don't tend to read the indicators of
internal stresses, but instead wait for the big systems failures to notice a
problem.
    Just as an example, how many people out there in the world wake up every
morning with excess mucous, but b/c it doesn't really bother them, ignore it?
Natural medical practitioners would see this as an indicator of internal
problems, potentially allergies.They would not wait for a chronic condition
to manifest to tecognize this as a problem.Or how many people walk around
with excema and never look for a cause?
    I wonder what the results would be if everyone whose baby stooled
infrequently treated that child with bodywork, homeopathy or some other
natural modality? In my very small sample (all of the parents I have been
able to convince to treat these babies--probably a dozen or so), the result
of treatment has been a normal stooling pattern. I know some people have said
this is not proof that there was a problem. What would they say if a baby who
was getting artificial milk was stooling once per week and then the baby got
only breastmilk and had 5 bm's per day? Would they say there was no
corrective property in the breastmilk? Would they say the pattern had been
normal? Or would it only be "normal" if the baby were breastfed?
    I know some people also have babies that have normal stools once per week
or so, but in my experience most babies who stool infrequently have very
large, explosive, foul-smelling stools. These babies also tend to be gassy.
This is not indicative of the theory that the baby is utilizing all of the
breastmilk, leaving little waste, but rather indicates waste remaining in the
body for lengthy periods of time.
    I know there are those who are comfortable with the idea that these
infrequent patterns are normal and don't want to hear more about it, but it
really does concern me, and I think we will come to regret having ignored
this situation.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA

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