Discussing the frequent urination of your newborn baby is something unheard of. But, like adults, there could be a threshold of normal frequency for baby pee.
You may wonder how many times your baby should be in peeing a day. Or maybe, how your baby's pee looks or smells like. Knowing these things may be insignificant, but for parents, there is no such thing as insignificant about your baby's health.
What is Urinating?
Urinating is a way for our body to remove waste fluids. Urine (which components are water, uric acid, urea, and toxins) stays in the bladder until the bladder reaches its full point. At this rate, a person must expel it from his body.
Urination also involves various bodily systems, that is why it is a complex process that means it can cause several issues in other systems in the body.
Adult urination can be 6 to 7 times a day. Frequent urination, or urinary frequency, is when a person drinks 2 litres at most, and needs to pee more than 7 times a day.
Although it is good, sometimes, frequent urination might indicate serious problems in your health. But, is that also true in the case of baby's pee?
Baby Pee: How Frequent Is Normal?
Your newborn baby usually passes urine for the first time within 12 to 24 hours after delivery. If urinating did not happen after 24 hours, it might indicate an infection in your baby's urinary tract.
Since mum and baby need to stay in the hospital for about 1 to 2 days after giving birth, the doctor may easily detect and diagnose your baby's urinary problem easily if there is one.
During the first 2 to 3 days after birth, a breastfed baby may not urinate more frequently, and thus, may not have wet more than 1 diaper. Urinary frequency increases as the baby gets more milk.
After that, your baby might urinate every 1 to 3 hours a day, or as frequently as 4 to 6 times per day. If they are sick or feeling hot or feverish, or when the climate is overly hot, their usual urine output may be halved but it is still normal.
Peeing shouldn't cause any pain or discomfort in your baby. If you observe your baby and notice signs of distress while he is urinating, that could be a sign of infection or other health problems involving the urinary tract.
Better notify your child's paediatrician about it.
4 months old, 6 months old, and 10 months old baby's urinary frequency
Babies are still in their developing excretory system and their intake of foods and water seems likely suitable for them.
If the normal urination frequency of babies is 4 to 6 times a day, for 4 months old, 6 months old, and 10 months old babies would also be the same.
Later in their life, as they become adults, their urinary frequency will be the same as adults, which would be 6-7 times a day.
How Often Does a Breastfed Baby Pee?
The amount the baby would pee depends on their fluid intake. If the baby's feeding frequency heightens to more than 2 ounces of milk formula every 3 hours, they will obviously urinate more.
This means that there would be more diaper changes. If the baby is asleep and is feeding less, their urination frequency will also be less.
What Does It Mean When Your Baby Pees a Lot or Less?
What causes your newborn baby to urinate more frequently?
If your baby is peeing frequently, that is usually a good thing and this means that your baby is getting enough nutrition and eating.
In your baby's first month, if you are breastfeeding and have a sufficient supply, you need to change your baby's diaper 4 to 6 times a day. That means your baby is having a good amount of nourishment he needs.
But if your baby's urinary frequency surpasses the "normal" frequency (like more than once in an hour), observe other signs.
A baby with a urinary tract infection or UTI would pee more frequently and may show signs of pain or discomfort during urination, like crying or body tension.
What causes your newborn baby to urinate less frequently?
Your baby might be peeing less if:
- it is summer or hot weather
- the climate is very, very cold
- they have a fever or are sick
- they are not drinking enough fluids (breastmilk or milk formula)
When your baby is sick, or the climate is very hot or very cold, your baby may urinate less than normal frequency. Once your baby gets well, or the temperature comes back to normal, their urination frequency will also go normal.
If your newborn baby is not feeding enough, the tendency is he might urinate less likely. When mothers breastfeed their babies, they cannot measure how enough feeding is enough for the baby to urinate.
Look for other signs that your baby is not feeding well, such as:
- Lethargy - if your baby is not eating much, they might get more sleepy, or will seem "too easy" to care for
- Prolonged sleep - if your baby sleeps 4 or more hours always, that could be a sign that they are not getting enough nutrition.
Call a doctor ASAP if your baby is still urinating less after having fever breaks, when no illness is evident, or after breastfeeding, most especially when your baby did not urinate within 6 to 8 hours.
Baby's Pee: What Does the Smell and Colour Mean
Your baby's urine colour
If your baby is healthy, his urine colour must be light to dark yellow. The darker the urine colour, the more urine is concentrated. This happens when your baby is not drinking a lot of water for a day.
In the first two days of your baby's life, he or she may urinate dark yellow, orange, or even pink urine because of the excretion of urates into urine or the waste products, which is normal.
Some foods, edible herbs, and supplements may affect the colour of the breastmilk and might cause your baby to urinate a shade of pink, green, or orange.
In the first week after your baby's delivery, you may notice a pink or brick-red stain on the diaper, always mistaken for blood. In reality, this stain is usually a sign of urine with high concentration, which is pinkish in colour.
There is nothing to worry about if your baby is still wetting 4 diapers a day. But if the pinkish-coloured stain persists, better consult your paediatrician.
Newborn baby girls could have small spots of blood in their diapers; this may happen during the first week after delivery. These blood spots are caused by the mum's hormones affecting the baby's uterus.
After that 1 week span, spotting should stop. The presence of actual blood in the urine or spots of blood in the diaper is never normal.
It is possibly caused by a diaper rash sore, but it could also be caused by a more serious health condition.
If this spotting or bleeding is simultaneously happening with symptoms of abdominal pain, vomiting, disrupted feeding, fever, or bleeding in other body parts, better seek immediate help from your doctor.
Here's a rough guide of the baby's urine colour and what every shade means:
- Light yellow - healthy
- Dark yellow - usually healthy but might indicate dehydration
- Pink - highly concentrated urine
- Red - blood in urine, or due to food or medicine
- Orange - blood in urine, or due to food or medicine
- Brown - blood in urine, or due to food or medicine
- Cloudy (milky white) - a kidney or urinary tract infection
- "brick dust" - insufficient fluids
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The Scoop On Poop: The Parents’ Guide to Decoding What’s Inside Your Baby’s Diaper
Your baby's urine smell
The Bottom Line About Frequent Urination in Babies
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