Dear Folks: I did an informal study on stooling during the first week of life in the exclusively breastfed infant. The literature search revealed that there was no information, except stooling frequencies for bottle fed babies, or babies breastfed in the style of the 40s and 50s, where babies were routinely given water, orange juice, and oleum percomorphum (a fish oil derivative). I followed 20 exclusively breastfeeding women from the day of the baby's birth up to day 8 with a daily telephone call to ask about breastfeeding and about infant stooling. I also looked to see if there was any relationship between stooling frequency and weight gain. There wasn't. There was no pattern that emerged except that all babies had stooled by the 2nd day postpartum. All babies thrived. I personally don't like to take the average of all the bowel movements and give that to the mother because "average" isn't really helpful. If her baby stools less, she worries. And if her baby stools more, she worries. It is more helpful to teach a mom about what a healthy baby acts like: that it starts smiling in the first week of life, and wakes up to feed and also wakes up to look around. Baby also pees and either stools or passes gas. Baby feeds at least 6 times per day (which number I have seen in NMAA literature as the bottom line) and probably more, and needs to be with her all the time, almost like she is still pregnant. There is presently another, more formal study going on in Philadelphia about stooling, that is finding the same things as I have reported here. The baby is more than the sum of its feeding frequency and number of diapers. Warmly, Nikki Lee