When I was pregnant with my first baby, I wondered about how we would go with breastfeeding, how I would cope with the broken sleep, what the baby would look like and what kind of Mum I’d be. One thing I was blissfully unaware of until my sweet baby arrived earth side, is just how much of my time, energy and search history would be dedicated to human faeces. 

To be a Mum, is to google baby shit. 

That should be some sort of proverb they slap on the free bags of samples you get in hospital. At some point, you’re going to be staring into a soiled nappy thinking IS THIS NORMAL? Then, completely dissatisfied that it is or is in fact not normal, you’re going to take a photo to send to a horrified recipient because you’ve lost all sense of social appropriate texting norms. I can assure you sharing unsolicited photos of excrement, particularly to non-parent friends, is a faux pas akin to the now long-forgotten Tinder dick pic. Save that one for the doctor or those wonderfully strange friends who request them. Simultaneously you’re going to be googling things like 'green baby poo’ ‘mucus in baby poo’ and 'how many times should a newborn poo?’. Mark my words. 

In an effort to aid you on your sleep-deprived quest for poo answers, we’ve rounded up the top offenders and given them cutesy names you can share at the dinner table when your partner arrives home because they’re the only adult you’ve seen all day. Who says you can’t hold an intellectual conversation anymore?

The Aqua Turd

Much like those amphibious vehicles you’ve likely overpaid for on a holiday, baby poo is notoriously adventurous and enjoys both land lubbing and aquatic adventures. I have learnt in my seven years of being a Mum that some children are bath crappers and some just aren’t. It’s as simple as that. My first born child was a prolific Aqua Turd-er and we joked that all her baths were officially concluded when she crapped in them. Literally every bath time her grand finale would be to shart. My second and third children have been far less frequent bath bombers but I’ve still had to push more than my fair share of corn-laden shit down the bath plug. It’s actually a far more delicate operation than you might expect; you have to really assess the logs and decide which can be flushed via the pipes and which require a manual extraction. My third born recently stepped up his game and has started Shower Shitting straight after we remove him from the bath he just laid an egg in, to wash away the sins in the shower. So yes, don’t use the guest bathroom at our house.

The Berry Picker

If you thought new baby milk-fed poo was interesting? Well lady, strap yourself in for a HOOT when solids come around! Boy oh boy, are you going to study that poo with intrigue. There are a few foods which tend to look quite alarming when making their exit from your small humans body, and blueberries, sultanas and raspberries are repeat offenders. Blueberries look like blueberries for the most part. I mean, you can look at them and wonder quietly to yourself if you could wash them off and re-serve them. But alas, that’s not the most interesting part of post-blueberry poo; no that would be the colour. IYKYK. Somewhere between an inky midnight and straight out black, it can look horrifying for the uninitiated, particularly given that babies and toddlers are known for their tendency to eat an entire punnet at once. Similarly shocking, sultanas can balloon to ten times their ingested size if swallowed without being chewed. Yikes. And, funny story about raspberries. I once got a call from my daughters’ daycare about a rather alarming gift she had left them in the toilet. They were so aghast they called me AND kept it in the toilet for me. This thing was PINK. It looked like Barbie herself had visited the lavatory. An entire punnet of raspberries will do that to a kid. Kudos to the daycare centre for their commitment.

The Mt Kilimanjaro

Babies, much like volcanos in the south east asian region, are prone to bouts of explosion that you don’t always see coming and can strike at any time of day or night. It’s almost inconceivable that such small creatures are capable of such powerful anal projections. I’m talking up to the shoulder blades power. I’ve actually got a lot of questions about the velocity of some of the Kilimanjaros my kids have produced over the years. My first questions are what and how the actual f*ck? My first born (she was kind of a shitty kid in retrospect) was especially fond of a middle of the night Kilimanjaro so powerful we were left with no other option than to completely strip and bathe her. Peak times for a lethal explosion typically include; when you’re rushing out of the house with somewhere urgent to be and when you’ve quickly ducked out without any nappies, wipes or fresh clothes. Pro tip: I once got caught in an airport with 5 minutes to board my flight with a toddler Kilimanjaro that covered both of us. Whilst I had the foresight to pack HER a change of clothes, I didn’t have anything for me. If you want to know how quickly someone can drop $300 in Country Road and get changed, I’m the current record holder at 85 seconds.

The Metamucil Before Shot

Some babies, even breastfed ones, seem to have a delightful predilection for constipation. You can spot such a child in the wild by observing the bright red tensed face, and tears welling in their eyes as they perform a reenactment of their own entry into the world. In the aftermath you’re often greeted by a collection of pebbles reminiscent of an English beach or a packet of chocolate covered peanuts. This is one you should definitely bring up with MCHN or GP.  My veteran Mum advice for these ones is a warm bath with a belly massage and cycling legs, and prune juice in food (or water) for bigger babies. But also don’t take advice from (highly intelligent and hilarious) strangers on the internet and visit your small humans’ healthcare provider. Constipation ain’t fun for nobody.

In summary, rest assured that your fascination with your child’s bowel movements are very normal, will likely draw to a close, typically around the time they toilet train, and you get enough distance from bodily functions that you begin to feel disgusted by them yet again (I am truly repulsed when my 6 year old leaves me a gift in the loo, I am no longer studying it for signs of what she ate). In the mean time? Share this handy, shitty reference guide with your fellow Poo Patrollers.

What faecal focus area have you encountered?