My career as an amateur poopologist began not long after my son was born. Just in case postpartum depression and a sleepless, colicky baby weren't enough, there were also the troubling green poops. (My son's, not mine.)
From the breastfeeding class my husband and I had taken when I was pregnant, we knew that a "normal" baby poop was mustard-hued and seedy. And my son's fit the bill, at first. But within weeks, his poop soured into something resembling split-pea soup.
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I frantically scoured the Internet for answers. Most of the information I found said that green poop occurred when a baby wasn't breastfeeding for long enough and therefore not getting the fatty milk that comes toward the end of a nursing session. Since my kid was nursing almost constantly, this seemed unlikely. Also, the hindmilk/foremilk imbalance poo was always described as being both green and frothy; the only froth I was seeing was in the vanilla soy lattes that kept me vertical.
I experimented with my diet to see if we could return to the golden poops of yester-week. Once in awhile, my son would present me with a glorious, dijon-esque squirt. But it seemed totally random, and though I'd rejoice, he'd soon be back to his greenies. At mom groups, I looked longingly as other mothers wiped up their babies' amber-toned feces.
But I hit my bottom—so to speak—with my son's pediatrician.
Worried over the strings of mucous that I sometimes found in my son's green diapers, I smuggled a fouled diaper into a routine well-baby check.
At the time, bringing feces to a doctor's appointment seemed normal. After all, I spent much of my days pondering poop—surely this wasn't that big of a deal.
While many moms fret over their babies' funky poop, I eventually learned that unless a baby is pooping blood or snakes, she is probably OK.
The pediatrician, an affable young man, wrinkled his nose involuntarily as I pulled out a Ziploc from my diaper bag.
"Can you take a look at this?" I asked him.
"That's OK—you don't need to show me that," he said. My son gurgled and smiled.
"Well, but as long as we're here," I replied.
"Really, please don't—"
But nothing could've held me back. I removed the diaper from the bag, placing it on the examination table and gently spreading it out to unveil the stringy, chartreuse mess.
"It does look a little mucousy," he said, keeping a wide distance between himself and the defecated diaper.
I knew it!
"But so long as there's no blood, I'm really not concerned about it," he added. "OK if I toss this?" he asked, raising an eyebrow—as if this might be part of a collection of dirty diapers I kept at home, perhaps stored in mason jars and categorized by color and size.
After getting the doctor's seal of approval on my son's poop, I stopped worrying so much—at least about his bowel movements.
And like everything with babies, the green poo was simply a phase.
As my son began to explore solid foods, introducing a whole new array of colors and textures into his poo, I relaxed even more. Finally, once he potty-trained, it all started to look the same—perhaps the white backdrop of diapers had magnified the variety of colors and textures of poop. But once they were in their natural habitat of a toilet, the turds all look more or less the same.
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In retrospect, I recognize that I was completely insane in those early months. Exhausted and shell-shocked, his green poops gave my anxiety a focal point. Of course, I also worried about all kind of other things, like the time I kissed him, forgetting I had a cold sore, and Googled "dead herpes baby."
While many moms fret over their babies' funky poop, I eventually learned that unless a baby is pooping blood or snakes, she is probably OK.
Hopefully, his pediatrician will forgive me … someday.
