Sweet Potatoes Make Babies Poop

Disclaimer: Please don’t read this post if you are uncomfortable reading about baby poop.
Last week one of Daniel’s new foods was sweet potatoes. I have loved sweet potatoes since I ate them for the first time in college, so I was hoping that Daniel would get excited about them. In grad school, I went through phases where I would eat them at both lunch and dinner for weeks. Once, even, I had a spell where I ate them with toast for breakfast. I never had any negative effects.

Last week I bought four medium-sized sweet potatoes and baked one in the oven for him. I baked it for about an hour until it was completely soft and spoonable from the peel. Daniel LOVED it! He ate half of the sweet potato as fast as I could feed him. I was so pleased. So, I baked the other three potatoes and over the course of the next two days, he ate ALL of them (about half a sweet potato per meal). I thought all was well. I was thrilled that he liked sweet potatoes so that we could add them to our food repertoire. Then, he started pooping. Thank goodness they were just regular normal poops and not crazy strange poops, but he just couldn’t stop! He had five poops one day, five poops the next day, and four poops the day after that. I felt like I was checking and changing his diaper every 30 minutes. And we just switched to cloth diapers last week, too, so I got lots of practice (cloth diapers take a little longer to put on, and you have to put the poop in the toilet before you put the diaper in the pail). The funniest thing is that several of my friends who are moms said that sweet potatoes were known for doing that. I can’t believe I never heard that or read it anywhere. Well, I know now. At the last grocery shopping, I bought ONE sweet potato, and I will spread it out over s-e-v-e-r-a-l meals. Look at all the great things I am learning being a mom!