Does your baby cry when defecating but does not have hard stools?

If you have a child who does not have a comfortable fecal excretion, we recommend that you read the following.

If you want to keep the baby and infant away from painful and uncomfortable fecal excretion, be sure to read on.

Did you know that infants, despite having soft stools, may also cry when they defecate? Do you know the reason for your baby crying at these times?

Are you familiar with the term dyschezia?

In this article, we intend to give scientific and understandable answers to the above questions.

What you will read next:

Why may infants and toddlers cry when defecating?

It is better not to consider constipation as the only reason for the crying of infants and young infants.

Remember that crying infants intend to increase the pressure inside their abdomen and pelvis to increase the pressure to help move stool in their intestines.

Do not worry because this problem will resolve on its own over time and your baby will get rid of this problem, so if your baby cries despite soft stools, one of the reasons will be the increase in intra-abdominal pressure.

Another thing you need to know as a baby’s parent is familiarity with the following terms:

Infant dyschezia

Also known as Grunting baby syndrome

Read more if you have a baby who has grunt or squirm when defecating.

Do not think that your baby is one of the few babies who has these conditions when defecating, this is commonly known as baby grunting symptom, so if your baby has soft stools do not worry because this condition is common and will be “self-limiting “.

Do not think that your baby’s grunting or squirming posture is just a matter of experiencing pain when defecating.

The baby can only cry during defecation due to pain when the stool is firm or the number of bowel movements has decreased due to age.

dyschezia in infants

Lack of adequate and quality coordination, between the pelvic and anal muscles causes a disorder called dyschezia.

Why does your baby cry when he defecates softly?

In order to push the stool forward in the intestines, it is necessary to contract the muscles of the intestinal wall and the anus. There should be coordination between the contraction of the pelvic floor muscles and the intestinal wall in order to have proper and easy bowel movements.

The contraction of these muscles and the coordination between them is controlled by the many communication pathways that are established between these muscles and the brain and the central nervous system. In other words, there are conditions called fecal reflexes that will be the result of the above evolved neural pathway.

In infants and young infants, this pathway is not yet fully developed, and the muscles around the right end of the rectum and anus do not relax to pass stool, so the baby has to pass stool through diaphragmatic contraction to increase intra-abdominal pressure and crying will actually

Help that.

This is done to increase the pressure inside the abdomen and help pass squirming and grunting stools into the baby’s gut.

This process may take about ten minutes or more. With this process, the muscles of the intestinal wall relax and the stool will come out of the intestine.

So you see, without any worries or problems, even in the presence of soft stools, babies and infants may cry when they defecate.

Crying at these times will help the baby defecate more easily.

Will these conditions continue?

No. Over time, your baby will become accustomed to defecating properly and will learn to defecate, so you need to be a little patient.

As the digestive system evolves and the development of the muscles to communicate with the central nervous system, the fecal reflex is gradually established, and your child’s intestinal system will function properly, so it will take some time for the neural and gastrointestinal communication pathways to develop. do not worry.

Can parents play a helpful role in this?

Over time, the myelin sheath of the nerve fibers, which are responsible for delivering nerves to the gastrointestinal tract, gradually completes, and your baby’s nervous messaging path will be completed.

By completing the coverage of the nerve fibers, the transmission of nerve messages from the brain and spinal cord to the baby’s muscles and digestive system will be faster and more accurate. Little by little, the baby’s body learns how to respond properly to these neural messages.

As a parent, you can use tummy massage for your baby. This will help stimulate the baby’s intestines and make bowel movements easier.

In addition to massaging the baby’s abdomen, you can use comforting and reassuring touching, ie put your hand on the baby’s abdomen and move slowly.

What should be avoided?

Avoid doing the following:

  • Rectal stimulation:

Sometimes parents gently stimulate the baby’s anus with a wet towel or, unfortunately, use a rectal thermometer. Be aware that these actions will cause your baby to defecate.

But these measures will be a serious obstacle to the baby’s learning to defecate. With these measures, you will delay the recovery of dyschezia, that is, by delaying your baby’s physiological learning, you will make the baby’s grunting syndrome last longer than usual.

So dyschezia in infants is an evolutionary functional condition that is described as follows:

The baby will cry for about ten minutes with the grunting and straining before defecating soft stools, which is seen in infants and babies under six months of age.

Rarely, Infant dyschezia will take more than one to several weeks, so do not worry because this problem will resolve on its own.

Important additional points

Familiarize yourself with the following points:

A normal baby born on time will usually have their first bowel movement in the first 36 hours (in premature babies this may happen later).

In infants who are breastfed, the frequency of bowel movements is on average higher than in infants who are feed on dry milk. However, there is an average of 4 bowel movements per day in the first week.

Breastfed infants may have a bowel movement every time they breastfeed and may also have bowel movements every 7 to 10 days, both of which are normal and should not be confused with diarrhea and constipation.

With age, the number of bowel movements will decrease.

Concluding remarks

With the above information, we wanted to acquaint you parents with this normal path and the importance of learning the physiology of defecation by the baby.

So now you know that crying baby when defecating will not always be due to constipation, and if you have a baby who cries despite soft stools, there is no cause for concern.

And this will be part of the baby’s natural developmental path. This evolutionary problem will improve over time.

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