Infantile Dyschezia – Overview

Transcript

When you have a baby, parents often become very obsessed with their bowel movements. From worrying about not pooping enough to pooping too much, too how it looks like to the color, to blow outs, to anything else like that. You are always a little bit thinking about it, which is a bit of a different adjustment for most people. This gets extra challenging because babies frequently change their pooping habits. They will go from pooping five times a day, 10 times a day to once every five days, and that’s actually considered normal. And this happens because babies aren’t in fact born knowing how to poop. Most babies really don’t understand how to do it. You have to coordinate certain muscles and also open up your backside at the same time. And accordingly, a lot of babies will get red in the face, flushed, fussy, and really cranky until right up until the moment where you hear a sound, you’re like, oh, they pooped.

And that’s what infantile dyschezia is. It’s Latin for “baby” and “it hurts when it poops.” And this is really, really common. Like I said before, you have to learn how to coordinate squeezing your stomach muscles and relaxing your anus to let that poop out. And if you do one but not the other, if you just relax, you get a little tiny one, which everyone’s seen if you’re a parent, and if you are tight at the exit, but you’re squeezing really hard in the stomach, then you’re pushing against a closed door. And that’s pretty uncomfortable too.