Toddler bowel movements - normal or not?!

[DaddyandDadda]

Hi all, I’m really hoping for some advice because I’m at my wits’ end.

My daughter is 2 years and 3 months, and she rarely does a solid poo. It’s not full-on diarrhoea, but her stools are consistently soft and mushy. She goes around 3 times a day but sometimes even up to 5.

I used to think it was teething-related, then suspected a dairy allergy — so we cut out dairy for the past couple of months. It might have helped a bit, but honestly, I’m still not convinced it’s the root cause.

We recently did a York Test for intolerances and everything came back clear. Nursery suggested cutting back on fruit and veg, as she does eat a lot of fruit. I’m hesitant to keep eliminating things from her diet without knowing what’s really going on — especially if this could just be normal toddler digestion.

I’ve read that some kids take longer for their digestive systems to mature, and that mushy nappies can look worse than they are. But we’re trying to potty train, and I’m worried this will make it harder for her.

I don’t want to waste a GP appointment, so I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been through something similar — what helped, what to ask for from a GP, and whether this sounds like something to be concerned about or just part of toddlerhood. Some people say it's normal, family members comment it's not!

Thanks so much in advance.

Might be worth trying out a high fibre diet for a bit. A lot of fruit can definitely cause loose bowels. Aiming for more fibre should help "bulk" her poos out a bit.

FWIW, 2y3m seems very young for potty training to me. Especially if she's doing sloppy poos up to 5x a day. I'd concentrate on getting her bowels looking more "normal" and then try the potty training.

It’s a few years ago now but my eldest was a 5 a day sloppy-poo-er all through nursery. The daycare staff used to joke(complain!) about spending half the day in the changing room with her. We potty trained at 2 and a half and it seemed to sort itself out in both frequency and sloppiness strangely. I did used to wonder if the nappy just encouraged her to do it whenever she felt like it but having to find a loo gave her a reason to hold on (not in a bad withholding kind of way) …total theory on my part though!

It’s also worth mentioning that she frequently suffers from bad nappy rash.

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

What should I be asking the doctor for? I really want to avoid a “try this, try that” approach — I’d prefer we run some proper tests to get to the bottom of it.

Maybe this is completely normal, but I don’t personally know any other children who consistently have such loose stools, so I’m starting to wonder if something more is going on.

We had a similar issue. We too tried cutting out dairy but I don’t think it made much difference. Something we did notice is that when we went on holiday things firmed right up - and the main difference was we were away from our usual routine of fruit (particularly berries) as snacks, and generally had a worse diet those weeks, so maybe it is the amount of fruit and veg. We still don’t know, but it didn’t cause any problems with potty training. Almost no poo accidents at all. And it doesn’t seem to be accompanied by any pain or discomfort so we don’t worry about it too much. Child is now 4.

Oh, and I don’t think there are any tests they can really run on this kind of thing. Those intolerance tests you see advertised are very unreliable. To properly determine intolerances it really has to be trial eliminations with a food and poo diary tracking results over 8-12 weeks, so it’s a bit of a long winded thing.

Thank you very much for sharing this.

How many loose poos were you having a day?

When did you find they solidified?

Did potty training mean the frequency and consistency improve?

I am becoming a bit obsessed with it and can’t help think something is wrong!