Hi, all!  A new twist on a subject that has been discussed here in the
past.  We all know that breastfed babies can normally go from frequent
stools in the first few weeks to one in every few days, possibly even 7-10
days being normal (I recall some even longer being mentioned).  I always
thought that this was due to the maturation of the baby's bowel and the
terrific digestibility of human milk, leaving little waste and not
irritating to the rectum until it reached a "critical mass".
Now I've been presented with an interesting observation from a friend who
has been pumping and exclusively bottle-feeding her fresh ebm to her now
7-month-old baby who was born at 32 weeks (due to various problems, a long
story, baby only comfort nurses).  At about 2 months of age, the baby went
from frequent mustardy stools to one in every 5-6 days of the "get out the
knee boots" variety.  Eventually she settled in to every 2-3 days, and in
the past month has had solids added.  Due to a bad case of mastitis
(mother had two within a month - another long story), she had to go on a
new antibiotic which was a last ditch effort short of admitting her for IV
antibiotics.  Mother was not comfortable giving her milk with this drug to
baby (another long story), so she delved into her batch of frozen milk for
the first time.  She used the earliest milk (from the first month), and
soon the baby was having golden mustardy stools about five times a day.
Is it possible that the change to less frequent stools that we often
observe is actually due to a change in the composition of the milk?  Has
anyone else seen such a thing happen?  TIA, Alicia.