Sniffing around

Warning: this post is about poop. If you don't like posts about poop, read no further...but what is a Mommy Blog without at least one poop story every few months?

For those who aren't aware, breastfed babies have poop that is the color of mustard, and it is described as "sweet smelling", meaning it smells like it might have sugar in it, not sweet like flowers. When Lukas arrived in our home, Tom and I were very able to detect when he went poop for three reasons: no one else in the house was pooping outside of the bathroom; we hadn't had our senses dulled with other children (this being our first child); and Lukas had rather explosive sounding poop while he was breastfed....you heard the sound, and you knew. The main challenge was that Lukas ate so much that...well, you know, what comes in must come out, and usually in a similar quantity. And that resulted in MANY "blowouts" that soiled many clothes and baby gear items. (BTW, OxyClean is the best solution I've found for anything that comes out of either end of a baby...if you soak it long enough, anything will come out).

When Natalie came along, she took in so little food that we never (I can't remember any) had a blowout with her while she was taking breastmilk (by tube). Since she's been eating a normal human diet since about 18 months, she will have large poops that we can definitely smell. They smell like regular poop.

Now with our third child, Konrad is breastfed again and we have to get used to being on the smell-out for his poop, because it is much more mild smelling than Natalie's. Yes, our senses have been dulled. AND, he doesn't have the explosive-sounding poops that Lukas had, so he can be sitting in something for a while before we realize that his whining cry is because he's uncomfortable. AND then we see the blowout and have to change his clothes, wash the bouncy seat (eventually, wash the car seat...thankfully this hasn't happened with him yet). I don't think I have mentioned this before, but it seems like Konrad eats much less than Lukas did (he nurses about half the amount of time that Lukas did--not an exaggeration!) but he has similarly huge blowouts.

So if you see me sniffing my child's diaper area, that's why. I'm trying to head off the blowout. He's switching to size 3 diapers today, and I hope that makes a difference, but I'm not taking any chances.