Is it normal?

[@llli*bf4life365]

Hi this is my first post and I have several concerns but just one that I really am concerned with now. My baby girl is 8 weeks old. Super alert, nurses all the time(10-13 times a day) and she has lots of wet and dirty diapers. Or was...

Over the last day and a half she has continued to have plenty of wet diapers but not dirty ones. She has only had one small one. Usually she will have several at least a smear in every wet diaper and then at least 2 big dirty ones. I am concerned with this sudden change of no smears and only the one small bm.

My sister said after 6 weeks Her baby only had good bm's every couple days. I know every baby is different I just want to make sure I shouldn't be more concerned?!?!

She is eating really well still, only issue with that is the terrible pain I am still getting on one side when she nurses(I have had it for 6 weeks) she appears to have a good latch and the LC at the hospital when she was born said she was latching and nursing great. She said it was still a good latch about a week later when I had gone in to see her again after the doc told me she wasn't gaining enough. These Are just 2 things out of many that have been going on. Like I said before though, she is super alert, happy and sleeps good.

[@llli*bf4life365]

I should say too that we changed doctors because the one we were seeing with all the weight concerns didnt know anything about BF( she flat told me she new nothing about it). Our new doc said her slow gaining was fine as long as she is healthy. We are going in tomorrow for her 2 month check-up. I just don't want to wait that long to ask about the dirty diaper issue, if it is an issue. Sorry for the long post...

[@llli*mommal]

Welcome to the forum!

After 6 weeks, it is normal for a breastfed baby to poop as little as one time per week. Breastmilk is so completely digested that there's little waste to excrete. Constipation is almost never, ever a problem for breastfed babies, and you don't want to even bother thinking about it as long as the poop remains soft. When my girls pooped once a week, we'd usually get a flood of soft poop that we called a "diaper buster".

Can you tell us more about the pain you're experiencing? Does it happen at the beginning of a feeding, after the baby has been nursing a while, at the end of a feeding, or after the feeding has concluded? Are your nipples misshapen (creased/wedged/asymmetrical/ shaped like new lipsticks) after the baby unlatches? Is the pain more of a stabbing or more of a burning? Do you notice that the nipple skin is blanched (turns white) after nursing?

[@llli*bf4life365]

The nip pain is all the time. It hurts sometimes more than others when she is nursing and basically just gets more painful the longer she is on. Which can be a while...she takes her time... Anywhere from 30 min to an hour, usually closer to an hour. It isn't burning it's like an ache or bruise kinda?! Sometimes they are creased, usually those are the times it hurts really bad. They aren't blanched but look really pink/red. The pain is really severe on one side and almost never on the other... Unfortunately the bad side is the side she preferes...

[@llli*bf4life365]

All the time meaning, I can't put a bra on cuz it hurts..

[@llli*mommal]

Thanks for the description. It sounds mostly like a latch issue. When you see creased/wedged/lipstick-shaped nipples, often what is happening is that the nipple is landing too shallowly in the baby's mouth, and is being compressed between hard palate and tongue, instead of landing in the "sweet spot" on the back of the tongue underneath the soft palate. This often explains differences in degree of pain between sides, since minor anatomical differences in nipple shape or length can translate to big pain inside the baby's tiny mouth. The usual cures for shallow latch are time (bigger baby = bigger mouth = deeper latch), experimenting with different nursing positions, hands-on help from a lactation consultant, and did I mention time?

However, nipples that appear more red or pink than normal sometimes indicate thrush, which is a yeast infection of the nipple and/or the baby's mouth. You may want to discuss this with your pediatrician the next time you go in.

[@llli*bf4life365]

Thank you so much