8 days old and still no yellow poo

[happysmellyfeet]

DS born by c-section 8 days ago. Small weight loss in hospital, they were happy with the rate he was putting weight back on, discharged on day 4. He has slight jaundice and is ebf but is still the weight he was on day 3. More worryingly his poo is still green, although often and lots of wee. If this is still the case tomorrow he will have to be formula supplemented. Bit of a shame as I have struggled like hell with bf and thinking I had just turned a corner but clearly he is not getting enough to eat :( he is a bit sleepy but not excessively. Other than that his behavior is that of a normal healthy baby. Can anyone offer any advice?

HSF, sorry you are worried about this. The green poo at this age can indicate the baby needs to feed more/more effectively, but it does not have to mean that. The fact he is sleeping normally and appears to be healthy is a good sign.

Your next step has to be to have him weighed again - and accurately. If the scales are different, if they are old-fashioned (spring balance; analogue) they may give a false result, if the baby was not weighed naked, or if the translation from metric to imperial was wrong, then you may not have got the right picture. If the weight is accurate then the fact he has remained the same weight is encouraging too - babies in trouble continue to lose weight.

He needs to feed a lot and this might mean keeping him close to you so you can respond to every little feeding cue. Make sure you use at least both breasts each time, if you can. If he needs to be supplemented, he can be supplemented with your own expressed breastmilk.

I dont understand why they weighed him and told you he was putting weight back on - babies tend not to start regaining weight they have lost until day 4, but you indicate he was weighed on day 3 and was already putting weight back on, so he must have been weighed day 2????

Hope things go well for you today.

Thanks for your reply. In the hospital they weighed every baby every night and plotted the weight on a graph. My mw weighed him yesterday and as a result sent us to the childrens hospital who weighed him again. Re: feeding - mw suggested a dummy a few days ago as she said he was a very sucky baby. I have stopped using that now, he was obviously sucky because he was hungry!

You might find help. I would also recommend getting someone in RL to have a look at the positioning and attachment to see if there are tweaks that can be made to make the milk transfer more effective.

Is this the UK, HSF? Most hospitals here don't weigh all the babies daily. Graphs are not usually used as early as this. Unusual care - but of course perfectly possible!

So he was weighed at home on day 7 by the midwife, midwife was concerned, sent you to hospital where he was weighed again....and found to be the same weight as on day 3, is that right? was the midwife's weight the same weight as the hospital? Why did she send you to the children's hospital and not the maternity unit? Were they happy to weigh your baby just with you turning up like that? Did they check your baby over? Did they discuss feeding with you?

Will it be possible for you to feed more often?

Are you in the UK Happy? That all seems like rather strange advice from the mws - daily weighing and a dummy?

How was the weight at the Children's Hospital- did they give you any advice?

Oh no! JUst typed a mega reply and it has disappeared!

OK, here goes again then:

Tiktok and CB: I do not live in the UK and the country I live in has a very interventionist approach to health. That is why I find mn so useful as it helps me get a more balanced, less hysterical viewpoint. For example, ds1 (same country, different hospital) had to be weighed before and after every feed! Standard practice for that hospital.

I have a gyno who is in charge of my care for my pregnancy and after but for the actual birth/due date I choose a hospital. I, and the baby are under their care from birth/due date until signed out. Then I go back under the care of my gyno and the baby is under the care of a childrens doctor. In addition, I choose an independent mw to visit me at home every day or when I need.

So, yesterday the mw decided that ds2 needed an immediate check of his bilrubin levels due to the resons detailed in 1st post. But the childrens doctors practice does not have its own lab so she sent us to the childrens hospital so they could get the results back in an hour. And the result was, yes jaundice; no, not bad enough for treatment.

Twinklegreen: great link - so simple and easy to use. Wish I had known that before! Thanks :)

Tiktok: You are an absolute saint. Thank you for all your advice. I have read many posts you help out on and you are so kind and knowledgable. You have helped so many of us. I am in awe :)

I am feeding more often now and waking up to feed every 3 hours max.

Also...........

3 YELLOW POOS since writing last post!!

Just need to sort out the weight gain now.

Glad I helped and hooray for the yellow poo :)

The care you describe sounds very interventionist, as you say :(

Sounds as if all is well now, though. There is no weight issue to sort out from what you say here - he's only 8 days old and plenty of babies are not back to birthweight yet at that age.

Good news about the yellow poo, hope all goes well from now HSF.