Immeasurable love for their child makes parents react sharply to all changes in the state of the crumbs, even if there are no real reasons for this. Depending on age, the nature of the stool in an infant changes significantly, and in the first month of life, calling it diarrhea is not entirely correct from a medical point of view. It is important to recognize other alarming symptoms in time and take action. Let's take a closer look at what can cause diarrhea in an infant during breastfeeding, how to distinguish the norm from pathology, and what to do to avoid complications.

The body of an infant is still imperfect, and all its systems are not sufficiently developed to fully withstand any irritating factors. Therefore, diarrhea in an infant can provoke even a banal climate change. What can we say about more serious threats to health.

So, the main causes of diarrhea in a newborn:

1. Dysbacteriosis. The condition is characteristic of babies in the first month of life, when the digestive tract is being formed. Useful microflora populates the intestines gradually, and so far it is not enough to fully resist even the slightest irritants. And any failure of this process is manifested by yellow loose stools.
2. Overfeeding. Diarrhea in a newborn during breastfeeding can be a reaction to an excess amount of breast milk, which simply does not have time to be processed. In this situation, the body simply gets rid of excess food by accelerated defecation.
3. Teething. Nervous stress due to pain, crying, poor sleep and inflammation in the gums of the crumbs impairs the process of assimilation or breast milk. Such loose stools in infants are not dangerous. However, this does not eliminate the need to monitor the condition of the child in order to prevent dehydration.
4. Reaction to food. Usually, with the introduction of new foods in the diet, the feces become thicker and more formed. But it will be a little later, when the amount of dense food will be increased. And the first time is quite possible and the opposite reaction. Most likely, the appearance of loose stools in a breastfed baby. Artificial children endure this process somewhat easier.
5. Food poisoning, intestinal infection. This cause can provoke diarrhea in a child 8 months and older. It is impossible to completely exclude the possibility of infection at a younger age. But during the period of active knowledge of the surrounding world, the risks increase significantly.
6. Viral diseases, inflammatory processes. Diarrhea in a baby can appear as one of the symptoms of the disease, and as a response to treatment, in particular with antibacterial drugs.
7. Allergy. In the case of diarrhea in infants as an allergic reaction, other symptoms complement it. Among them - redness and itching in the anus, the presence of small rashes.

Diarrhea that occurs during breastfeeding in infants is an alarming symptom that signals disorders in the body. Before giving the baby medicines, you need to make sure that there is a pathological process, because the signs of diarrhea in children are similar to the usual liquefied stools. Today we will talk about the signs and causes of diarrhea in infants, it will be told how to identify the disease, and what to do to help the baby as soon as possible.

Features of the chair in infants

Folk remedies

If a breastfed baby has diarrhea, you can try folk remedies, but after consulting a doctor. Cowberry berries and leaves occupy a special place in the piggy bank of folk recipes. A handful of leaves is poured with a glass of boiling water, after which the composition must be insisted and, after cooling, give the baby a teaspoon every 60 minutes.

If cowberry berries are used, then they are kneaded to extract juice, then the resulting amount is diluted with water and the baby is also given 5 ml once an hour. A good effect is given by the pomegranate peel from diarrhea - it is dried, crushed in a mortar and poured with 250 ml of boiling water. Then they boil for a quarter of an hour and filter, before each feeding, the crumbs are given a teaspoon of the product to drink.

Mom's diet for diarrhea in a baby

During the treatment of diarrhea in a child, the mother should follow the principles of hypoallergenic nutrition - give up citrus fruits, cow and chicken protein, cereals with a lot of gluten, sweets and soda. You should not refuse breastfeeding, even if the doctor suggests that the baby's diarrhea is provoked by pathogenic flora in breast milk. This problem is easily eliminated by the introduction of bacteriophage preparations and probiotics.

Features of complementary foods for diarrhea

Babies shouldn't fast when they're sick, unlike adults who are advised by doctors not to eat during the first 24 hours of diarrhea onset. It is imperative to restore feeding - breastfeeding should be offered at every opportunity, even if the interval between applications is 20-30 minutes. In the intervals between breastfeeding, the baby is given a rehydration solution.

Artificers need complementary foods already 6 hours after the first dose of rehydrant, during the first day the mixture is diluted with boiled water 1:3 or 1:2, the usual diet is restored only after 48-72 hours. With a mild form of diarrhea in infants older than 6 months, the feeding regimen is not changed, rehydrators are not used - you can solder the baby with water and dried fruit compote.

Signs and treatment of dehydration in an infant during diarrhea

Dehydration with diarrhea in a child is a dangerous condition that requires immediate medical attention, it occurs when the fluid is washed out and its reserves in the body are not replenished enough. Dehydration can be recognized by the following symptoms:

• darkening of urine and its excretion less than once every 6-8 hours;
• signs of weight loss;
• cyanosis of the skin, peeling, the appearance of dark circles around the eyes;
• drowsiness, lethargy;
• sinking fontanel.

When the water-salt metabolism is sharply disturbed in the child's body, there is a decrease in protective forces, irreversible changes are noted in the hematopoietic and nervous systems. It is necessary to independently solder the baby with a liquid to replenish water supplies and restore vitality. The algorithm of actions is as follows:

• breastfeeding on first demand, if diarrhea is not caused by a food allergy to mother's milk and not by overfeeding;
• soldering the child with saline solutions (listed above) and boiled water;
• use granulated baby teas, rice water and clean water after each act of defecation - this will replenish the volume of liquid.

Remember! Signs of dehydration require immediate treatment, as the condition of infants with diarrhea rapidly becomes severe. Sometimes the account goes not for hours, but for minutes.

Diarrhea in a child is not a joke problem that requires timely diagnosis and proper treatment. Parents who know the differences between liquefied and pathological stools will be able to seek help from a doctor in time and provide first aid to the baby on their own. The development of diarrhea in newborns is dangerous - the disease causes dehydration and intoxication of the body, therefore, with symptoms of a violation of the water-electrolyte balance and an infectious intestinal process, hospitalization should not be delayed.

In the process of getting used to the baby's digestive system to new products, the child's body is subjected to the most diverse and far from pleasant tests, among which one of the most common is diarrhea.

The main difficulty at this stage lies in the fact that the feces of infants themselves are liquid, so the parent needs to learn to distinguish normal stools of the mentioned consistency from unhealthy diarrhea.

In the following, you are invited to review key information regarding gastrointestinal disorders in newborns, existing normal options, and recommendations for action in such situations.

As noted, the parent should be able to tell the difference between simple loose stools and real diarrhea. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, in infants, the default stool cannot be hard due to the food they take. In the absence of concomitant abnormalities, a stool of a similar consistency is quite normal and does not require any additional action on the part of parents or doctors.

Secondly, prolonged and sudden diarrhea may indicate the presence of a number of serious diseases. Next, symptoms will be noted that indicate the presence of diarrhea in the baby, and not a simple liquid stool.

Thirdly, if any disease has led to diarrhea in an infant, it threatens the rapid development of dehydration, which poses a danger to the life of the baby. That is why it is important to be able to identify diarrhea in a timely manner and start treating it without delay.

Causes and signs of diarrhea in infants

The most common causes of diarrhea in infants are:

• intolerance to any food;
• rejection of new products by the body;
• eating dirty foods, contact with unwashed objects;
• overheating of the body;
• disorders arising from fear;
• various infectious diseases;
• teething;
• the use of drugs that violate the normal microflora of the body.

When loose stools are found in a child, parents are guided mainly by personal life experience, believing that diarrhea under any circumstances is evidence of any kind of problem in the body. Along with this, as has been repeatedly noted earlier, the body of a baby differs in many ways from the body of an adult in that for the first bowel movement with liquid masses can be considered a completely normal condition that does not need any intervention.

Even if it’s hard for you to believe it and many friends vied with each other that the child needs to be urgently taken to the doctor (this, of course, will not be superfluous), first of all, follow logic and common sense: the baby eats liquid food - mother’s milk or mixtures that replace it . There are no solid particles in such a diet that the body could use to form solid fecal matter.

Thus, if in older babies who have already been introduced to solid foods, loose stools under certain circumstances can be a sign of the presence of a disease, in infants, on the contrary, solid stools are a more alarming symptom, especially if their excretion from the body causes The child has constipation problems.

Normal characteristics of bowel movements in infants

In addition to the consistency of the stool, you need to pay attention to its color and regularity of bowel movements. In general, according to experts, a change in the color of the stool can occur almost every day and there is nothing wrong with this, provided there are no other aggravating circumstances.

So, within a few hours after the birth of babies, for the most part, they defecate with almost black feces with some greenish tint - this is a completely normal state of the original stool. If the child's body did not remove all the meconium during the first day of life, it is necessary to notify the doctor about this, because. a similar condition may indicate the presence of intestinal atresia.

During the first months of life, children's stools are predominantly brownish or greenish-yellow, often with inclusions in the form of white lumps or a small amount of mucus. If the baby feeds on mother's milk, the bowel movements will have a sour-milky smell. In the case of feeding the baby with artificial mixtures, the smell of his feces will be sharp and unpleasant.

On average, after six months of life, the stools become thicker and roughly correspond to sour cream in consistency. The color changes to yellow-brown or even bright green, often there are small inclusions of mucus. If the baby eats artificial mixtures, the color of the feces can turn yellow-brown, sometimes even dark green. The smell is still extremely unpleasant.

The frequency of bowel movements up to 4-5 months of life on average reaches 5-10 times a day, sometimes more. If a child under such circumstances is gaining weight and does not show signs of illness, such a frequency of bowel movements should not be alarming.

Often in infants aged 2-6 months, especially if they feed exclusively on mother's milk, stools can be extremely rare, for example, once every few days, and sometimes even once a week. If the child does not show signs of illness, the consistency of the stool remains soft and liquid, and the bowel movements themselves come out without significant complications, there is also no reason for concern.

How to treat children's diarrhea?

Previously, signs were given to distinguish diarrhea from normal loose stools. If a child has real problems with the body, parents, first of all, need to take measures not to suppress the diarrhea itself, but to replenish the volumes of fluids and salts leaving the body during such unhealthy bowel movements. The first aid measures available to parents are listed below:

• a sudden deterioration in the child's condition in the absence of any visible provoking factors;
• an increase in body temperature to +38 degrees and above;
• the occurrence of profuse and very frequent diarrhea;
• frequent vomiting;
• crying without tears and other evidence of dehydration in the form of sunken eyes, parched lips, lethargy, drowsiness, sunken fontanel, etc.;
• abnormally liquid consistency of the stool with a high content of mucus, foam, copious gases;
• slowing down weight gain or even losing it;
• the presence of streaks of blood in the stool;
• the appearance of rashes on the skin, especially in the form of scaly marks;
• diarrhea after recent use of any medications.

Thus, loose stools in infants can be relatively normal, and the main task of parents at this stage is to be able to distinguish simple bowel movements from real diarrhea. The above information will help you decide in a difficult situation and take the necessary actions to preserve the health and life of the child.

Video - Diarrhea in infants during breastfeeding. Signs and treatment.