Transcript:
Welcome to Episode 28; Let’s talk about POOP!
From a very young age most of us are conditioned to associate poop with negativity. It’s gross and it stinks. Unless your parents were really intentional about raising you to have a healthy and neutral relationship with poop, your subconscious mind is likely full of memories of your greatest mentors plugging their noses, making big scenes about your blowouts and telling stories of how terrible your diapers were. It’s no wonder this conditioning is unintentionally passed down from generation to generation. It’s likely you have never even considered pausing to ponder on this. Well, my friend! Today is the day.
In today's episode I want to flip this deep subconscious negative association with poop upside down. I want to invite you to join me on a journey where we are going to recondition your mind to see poop as the miracle that it really is. To release that deep conditioning with intentional and positive associations.
As mamas we have the opportunity every single day to learn new things and to change how we raise our children. It doesn’t matter if you unintentionally engrained this negative poop association into your child. That isn’t what this is about. Let go of the guilt so we can do the real work of healing. First yourself and then your children. It doesn't matter if your child is 7 weeks, 7 or 27 years old. It is never too late to expand your mama heart and soul because regardless of the age of your child, you are and forever will be their leader. Healing always starts with you and radiates from there.
So let’s jump right into this. If you are able to, I would like you to place one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart. If you are driving or walking or cooking dinner, its okay. Just envision yourself encapsulated in unconditional self-love. I am going to speak to your subconscious self for you.
POOP IS NORMAL. It is a natural part of existence. I am not gross. I do not stink. Therefore the natural elimination that is part of my human existence is not gross and does not stink. Right now I choose to view my poop differently. It is as normal as eating breakfast. My body is so darn amazing that it eliminates what it does not need. Thank you, dear body of mine, for pooping and keeping me healthy.
Okay. You can repeat this message to yourself or replay this little bit of the episode over and over as many times as you need. It is important for you to believe these words. Believing is as simple as succumbing to the truth. You can choose to do this anytime and I invite you to do it now.
Normalizing poop for your children and future generations begins with you knowing it through and through that poop is gross. Your child can tell if your words and your beliefs don’t align. Don’t try to skip the internal work here. I promise - it's worth it!
Because don’t you want to raise a child who is so confident in every part of themselves? Of course you do, so you need to love every part of yourself.
You probably didn’t expect a poop episode to be about subconscious self-acceptance but it is something that is culturally never addressed. That unintentional negative associations including your poop build up to create negative self perceptions.
It is so important that we as mamas get comfortable with our own poop so that we can teach our children a healthy neutral mindset about it. Which, combined with mindful parenting, leads to positive self-love and acceptance.
POOP IS NOT GROSS. The more comfortable you are with your elimination the healthier your body will be. When you have negative thoughts and feelings about poop you confuse your body. It doesn’t know how to navigate between doing what it is supposed to do and appeasing your mind and so unless you intentionally remedy your subconscious beliefs, your body will eventually get sick. DIGESTION IS GOOD!
Okay! So me and you and our subconscious minds are all on the same page now. We love poop!
Now we can move into what healthy poops should look and smell like and talk about digestive issues like diarrhea and constipation.
Poop is not just a natural part of our existence, it is like a secret window into you and your child’s health. Becoming a poop detective is honestly one of the most powerful things you can do in being the leader of your family’s wellness.
We are going to break this into two groups. Infant poop and solid food eating poop. This second group will include all children who eat solid foods and adults.
Infant poop should not stink to the mother. If it smells sour that is a sign of a bacteria imbalance. Healthy breastfed baby poop is considered normal when it's a mustard yellow, green or brown color. It is typically seedy and pasty in texture and may be runny enough to resemble diarrhea. Healthy breastfed baby poop will smell sweet and again, never sour. Healthy formula fed baby poop is typically a shade of yellow or brown with a pasty consistency that is peanut butter like. Formula-fed babies also pass fewer, but bigger poops and they tend to be more odorous than breastfed babies. But not sour. Neither breastfed or formula fed babies should every have mucus or blood in their poop.
As you begin introducing solids into your child’s diet, their poop may occasionally have bits of undigested foods but this should be rare. It is not normal for their poop to be filled with undigested hunks of food. For example, when my son had a significant gut imbalance he would sometimes poop straight mucus, other times it was mustard seedy but smelled really sour. By sour I mean acidic. As he started eating solids he would have whole blueberries and sunflower seeds in his poop. This is not normal. I wish I had had a podcast like this to listen to back then because it took me 2.5 really long and hard years to learn that his symptoms were connected to a gut imbalance. But once we rebalanced his gut bacteria his poop became normal. Which was amazing because healthy poop is a direct reflection of a healthy inside.
For solid food eating children and adults, healthy poop should be somewhere between firm and soft. If your poop is a well-formed log and it wasn't too hard to squeeze out, it's probably the right consistency. The smell is of course not as pleasant as flowers but it should not burn your nose or smell sour.
I am going to attach a poop chart in the show notes so you have a visual for all the different variations of poop. From severe constipation to severe diarrhea and everything in between. Don’t worry, they are just graphics. Not real pictures. But even if there were, that would be okay - right? BECAUSE POOP IS NORMAL, no matter the quality.
But you want top quality poop for top quality wellness. So now let’s talk a little about constipation and diarrhea.
Contrary to what you have likely been told, you don't need to poop every day to be regular. It's normal and healthy to have a bowel movement anywhere between five times a week and twice a day . If you're producing soft, well-formed logs that aren't hard to push out, your bowels are probably in good shape.
There are two parts to constipation. Emotional and physical. Embodying the self-love and acceptance that we went over at the beginning will take care of the emotional part. If your child is constipated, focus on normalizing poop in your family. Don’t make a big deal about it but weave conversations into your day. For the physical - you can focus on rebalancing the gut bacteria. Imbalance causes inflammation which can make it really hard to poop. Incorporating supplements like Cleanse and Nourish help breakdown the bad bacteria and build the good bacteria which will help regulate the bowels. Combine this with eating real foods and your poops will be healthy in no time!
For diarrhea, you need to know that when the gut bacteria is imbalanced the body is unable to optimally absorb nutrients. Your body knows something isn’t right so it tries so hard to flush out the problem. Cleanse and Nourish do the same thing for diarrhea as they do for constipation. Naturally kill the bad bacteria and build up the good which creates balance. A balanced gut is not inflamed and is able to absorb and digest food optimally.
If your child’s poop smells sour, has mucus or blood in it or if they struggle with constipation or diarrhea I would like to invite you to enroll in my course; Happy and Healthy From the Inside Out. I will teach you everything you need to know about healing your child’s gut, in addition to supplementing.
As we close this episode up I invite you to have conversations with your children about the wonders of elimination. Study animal poop and talk about how amazing it is that everything poops. Teach them how wild rabbits eat their poop so that they can absorb any remaining nutrients. If your children are young, keep the bathroom door open and let them study your healthy relationship with your own poop. Keep it a neutral thing. Everyone eats, everyone sleeps and everyone poops. It is part of being a living being.
Thanks for joining me on this subconscious healing journey and chatting about one of my favorite topics; poop. I’ll catch you next time.
