no poop in 4 day old? help

[snoopy5386]

DD2 was born on Sunday and has been making the minimums on her wet and poopy diapers (1 per day of life) until now. She hasn't pooped since yesterday at around 3 pm and has had 2 or 3 wet diapers so far today. She is 4 days old today - turns 5 days old at 6:30 pm. My milk is in the process of coming in - I can hear her suck and swallow and she is definitely getting something, but I'm not engorged yet. If I try to hand express I get white fluid coming out. With DD1 I never leaked and never had much engorgement so I am expecting the same this time around. She is at the breast every 90 mins-2.5 hours during the day, closer to 3-3.5 hours at night. Would you call the pediatrician or just wait it out at this point? I'm starting to freak a bit.

[Nicole730]

I'm sure you already decided what to do...but I would probably call. That would freak me out a bit. I'm sure it's just because your milk hasn't come in yet though.

I hope she pooped!

[zensven42]

Breastfed children can often go for many days at a time, sometimes over a week between poops and it is quite normal. More important is how many wet diapers and weight gain after the initial loss after birth. You should be looking at 8 or so wet diapers a day, although this can be difficult to judge depending on how absorbent the diapers are and what YOU consider a wet diaper. If your milk appears to be coming in, the baby is nursing and wetting diapers regularly, does not appear to be losing too much weight, does not appear to be in pain or constipated, and has lively, alert periods (doesn't seem unusually lethargic or unresponsive) then the babe is probably doing great. If something seems amiss, by all means trust your intuition and call the doc, and remember that I am not a doctor. Congrats on the new little one!

[ewe+lamb]

Breastfed babies can go for days or even a week without a BM however in a newborn baby this isn't necessarily the case and to make sure things are moving along nicely it is recommended 6-8 wet nappies a day - you're getting 2-3 if it's any less than that then we need to worry - and you mustn't wait and see, and 2-3 dirty ones, depending on what your ped is like - breastfeeding friendly or not you could call, however I think I would also try LLL USA there are leaders at the other end of the phone ready for these sort of questions, there is also a national helpline which you can call - I'd probably go down that line especially if you want to breastfeed for a while and avoid bottles - presume you do? Keep nursing as much as you can - it's the weekend tonight so I would highly recommend that you go to bed with the baby for the weekend - stay top free and have as much skin to skin time as is possible and nurse nurse nurse, is your baby sleepy as well? Baby carrying would be a great thing for you as well have you a sling? Can you nurse in it? Things to look out for weak and floppy baby, skin when pinched stays pinched, dry mouth dry eyes, weak cry, minimal urine output, fever. You may have to use a SNS to get the intake up you can use this with either expressed breastmilk or with artificial - depends what you are getting when expressing, keep posting and give as much information as you can so that we can help you best we can.

[PatioGardener]

I agree with Ewe+Lamb. While no poops for days is normal in older babies, it is not normal/typical in newborns and can be a warning sign. See http://www.llli.org/llleaderweb/LV/L...Jan98p123.html

OP, I hope that things have improved this morning, and you are getting the 'real life' support you need!

[snoopy5386]

thanks everyone, while she has pooped twice since then, it is still meconium poop and her pee counts seem to be low too - she has only peed once since about 3 am. I'm going to call the pediatrician just to be sure. She is alert, seems, healthy, has no other signs of dehydration, but I just want to be sure she is ok.