From a medical dictionary constipation is defined as:
"<gastroenterology> Infrequent or difficult evacuation of the faeces."

I do not know how we came to accept the myth that constipation requires that the stools be hard and dry. This ia absolutely not true. This topic is one of enormous concern to me, as so many parents are told that infrequent stooling is normal. Says who?

Pat Lindsay describes a baby who didn't stool for 23 days:
"When this baby finally stooled, it
was soft and normal bfed stool, just lots of it."

Joylyn writes:
"yep, we called them blowouts."

Fio writes:
"my daughter (excl. bf until 8.5 mos) had
one stool every 8 days on average after 6 weeks of age.  Yes, they were big ones..."

Cheryl wrote:
(babies older than 4 weeks) only stool once a week or longer, but that
is not constipation. That is that breast milk has little "waste" (sorry
about the pun). My grandson only pooped once every 10 days and yes, he was a little gassy a day or so before, but he was fine. The stools were large and pasty. "

How in the world can anyone believe that "large pasty stools" or "blowouts" means that there is little waste? The waste is clearly there, sitting in the intestines, waiting to be expelled. The world-reknowned herbalist Dr. Richard Schulze travelled the world in his study of gut health, looking at bowel habits of people of various cultures. He came to the conclusion that when normal gut health is maintained, then every
single person will have one bowel movement for each meal of the day (3 for adults, many more for infants). I have read a great deal of his info as well as that of other holistic practitioners whose area of research is gut health. There is absolute consensus that regular bowel movements are essential for good health. I think this is true and I tell parents it's true.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html