My youngest son was the happiest baby on earth, but he was having a bm 
only once a week or so by the time he was a few weeks old. I knew this 
was wrong and did three things. I eliminated soy from my diet, took him 
to a homeopath and took him to the chiropractor. He pooped within 20 
minutes of getting the homeopthic remedy and had a normal pattern from 
then on. At 7, he is still sensitive to soy and can only tolerate it 
once per week or more often when we are in China (can't figure that one 
out). He also still has a healing response to the same homeopathic 
remedy, no matter what his ailment might be. Maybe the food allergy 
would have ultimately caused obvious symptoms and I would have 
eliminated it anyway, but I am glad I responded to the first sign of 
imbalance, rather than waiting for more severe symptoms.

So, in case anyone was waiting with baited breathe for my standard 
reply to this topic--not one thing I have ever read on Lactnet has 
convinced me that pasty, infrequent bm's are normal for any baby. 
Common, yep, normal, no. Nutirtionists and all manner of holistic 
practitioners I have worked with and talked to (acupuncturists, doctors 
of TCM, PT's, chiropractors, naturopaths, etc) agree that human beings 
are meant to have one bm per meal. Hence, breastfed (otherwise known as 
normal) babies poop many times per day--they eat many times per day! 
Adults who have healthy guts have 2-3 bm's per day. I believe we see a 
bell-shaped curve here because we have so few people with healthy guts 
to assess what is the physiologic norm. You simply cannot use people 
who consume the SAD as a compass for what is physiologically normal. I 
think so many adults make this argument, b/c they themselves have poor 
gut function and don't know it. To me, it is like saying "I was formula 
fed and I turned out fine".  Compared to what?

You could argue that human milk is far from the SAD and I would agree, 
but gut health defines the health of all other body systems (which is 
one reason why breastfeeding is a human mandate). So, a baby isn't 
fussing? How many adults who have one bm every several days fuss about 
it? It is still a sign to any holistic practitioner of imbalance. So 
many moms intuitively know that this is not okay and seek answers and 
are dismissed with the bell-shaped curve argument. As you can guess, I 
validate my clients' concern and we look into the underlying cause. In 
every single baby, I have found that gut function (ant thus stooling 
patterns) normalize when structural problems are addressed (often these 
kids have a restricted diaphragm), allergies are removed from the diet 
or the mother's diet is addressed. Sometimes, it also reflects an 
imbalance in milk composition.

In the past I heard the argument that a change in pattern due to such 
treatment is no argument that the treatment was needed. I have heard 
the argument that breastmilk is so well utilized that there is no 
waste. I have heard that it doesn't matter so long as the baby is 
content. Of course there is waste--it is just sitting in there for days 
on end. That's why it is pasty when it comes out. Common sense alone 
should tell us how unhealthy that is! Healthy gut motility is essential 
to a healthy organism--it is not incidental. Even adults who detoxify 
their bodies and shift to healthy diets find that after years of 
constipation, they suddenly have daily to twice daily bowel movements. 
IMO, this baby should be assessed for allergies and possible structural 
concerns.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA

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