7 Causes of Green Stools in your baby- Looking for the reasons of green poop in your baby, this article is useful for you. Having a baby means new joys, cuddles, playtimes and cleaning poops, a lot of it. Also, infants and toddlers parents always check their babies stool diligently as it is also an indicator of health.
Poops come in different textures, quantity, and color and believe it or not green stool is actually quite normEdumovlive.comal for a child. They eat and swallow anything that is in their sight and thus it doesn’t indicate anything serious, just some dietary changes and nominal issue, which can be cured easily.
Now let’s check out 7 Causes of Green Stools in Baby.
1. Dietary causes of baby
Infants can have green stool due to breastfeeding while the mother has green vegetable too much. Similarly, when an infant grows into a toddler, their food requirements go up and you introduce many vegetables and food items to them.
If they eat spinach, beans or any other green leafy vegetable or consume food or beverages that have a green color in them, it is quite possible for them to have green stool. To know whether it’s because of green vegetables only, stop feeding them such items.
Check if the poop is normal colored for 3 days, if not then the cause must be something else than food.
2. Meconium
After the child is born, for a few days he/she will pass hard stool that is dark black with subtle green in it known as meconium.
This color is because, for the first few days, the poop has all the things the fetus consumed while it was still in the womb; it included bile, ammoniac acid, mucus, and water and epithelial cells.
This is odourless and after 4- days it starts turning into normal yellow or green color, as the bay starts to digest breast milk.
3. A mother’s diet
If you are eating green vegetables like spinach or coriander more, it will make the poop of the baby green. Also, if there is any consumption of green colored food item by you, it reaches the baby’s system through feeding and thus they pass green stool.
4. Bile secretion
The bile is responsible for changing the green color of stool to brown. If the bile doesn’t get enough time to work, the child will pass green faeces.
Sometimes the bile travels much faster to reach the intestine from liver and hence doesn’t have enough time to change the brown color to green.
5. Medication for yourself and baby
If you are taking iron or vitamin supplements that are artificially colored, it can reach the baby through feeding. Simultaneously, if the baby is taking these supplements. The chances of a stool being green are very high.
6. Oversupply of formula milk or foremilk
Foremilk is the thinner milk that is secreted at the beginning of the feeding, it is higher in lactose and low in fat. When breast milk is oversupplied, babies drink this foremilk leading to an improper balance of lactose and fat.
The baby digests this milk very fast and can result in the green or frothy stool. Also, consuming too much formula milk makes the baby constipated and gassy, which can also lead to green poop.
7. Food poisoning
An infant’s digestive system is very sensitive and is still developing, hence, consuming some foods or variety of foods becomes a burden for their system.
This leads to food poisoning if the baby has a green stool with fever and abdominal cramps it may indicate food poisoning.
Some important tips:
If the child especially a toddler has a green stool with these symptoms, it’s advisable to consult a doctor as it may indicate towards some health issue:
- Weight loss that doesn’t seem normal
- Severe indigestion and gas and bloating
- Diarrhoea that lasts more than 3 days
- Stools that have a bad smell
- Burning, irritable sensations in the rectum area
- Abdominal pain accompanied by cramps
- Excessive mucus in the stool
- bleeding from the rectum
- Respiratory difficulties
- Dizziness
- Less urine
In infants, if green stool passes for more than 5 days, consult a physician.
Don’t forget to look for practically tested home remedies for green stools in infants.
Also, check for dehydration, if the child drinks less water or has severe diarrhoea, they can have dehydration and can pass green or yellow stool with other symptoms like dry mouth or swollen tongue.
Green stool is usually normal for a child but it still keeps an eye on it to make sure that your child is healthy. For any further queries on causes of green stools, feel free to write below in comments.
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