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Baby Poop 101: What's Normal, What's Not

Trying to decode what's normal -- or not -- in your baby's diaper? Check our our baby poop primer! (15 Photos)

By Jennifer L.W. Fink on Sep 24, 2012 at 6:10PM

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Baby Poop 101: What's Normal, What's Not

Martin Shields/Photo Researchers/Getty Images

14 Things You Need to Know About Baby Poop

You'll never care about (or talk about) poop as much as you will when you're a brand-new mama. From the color to the texture to -- sorry -- the odor, you'll wonder, "Is this normal?" almost every time you change your baby's diaper. And that's a good thing! "The extra attention to stool is very well-deserved," says Laura Jana, MD, co-author of Heading Home with Your Newborn: From Birth to Reality. "Your baby's poop tells a whole lot about how he or she is doing with eating." So get over any squeamishness over the squishy stuff, and check out our baby poop primer.

Black Goo

What it is: Meconium
When: Within the 24 hours after birth
What you need to know: You've probably never seen something as sticky, thick, tar-like and greenish-black as your baby's first poo. Meconium is "what’s been sitting inside the intestines while the baby is forming," says L.E. Wolovits, MD, a general pediatrician at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas and an assistant professor of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical School; it's a combination of amniotic fluid, mucus and cells shed during the baby's development. It's also extremely messy and sticky! Expect to be cleaning up a meconium mess for a while. The good news is that the meconium stage only lasts a few days.