If the newborn has not had a bowel movement for 24 hours after birth, the mother should take the newborn to the hospital for an examination as soon as possible. The main purpose is to check if the newborn has any congenital abnormalities of the digestive tract. Most newborns begin to pass dark green, sticky stools, called fetal stools, within 12 hours of birth. Fetal stool is formed by a mixture of digestive juices, shed epithelial cells and swallowed amniotic fluid. The amount of feces is not large, and it is pulled on the diaper and cannot be easily flushed. If no fetal stool is passed for more than 24 hours, you should go to the hospital to check for congenital anal atresia or congenital megacolon. How long does it take for the fetal stool to be excreted: After starting breastfeeding, the fetal stool can usually be excreted in 2~4 days. As a result of breastfeeding, the stool will gradually turn into a yellow paste, usually 3~5 times a day. Breastfed children are prone to “saved belly”: children who simply eat human milk will have 2 to 4 bowel movements per day, mostly once a day after 1 week. The stool is yellow or golden yellow, uniform soft paste, sour gas, no odor. Some newborn babies sometimes 2 to 3 days or 4 to 5 days to defecate once, but the stool is not dry, still soft stool or paste, defecation to force breath, face red, as if defecation difficulties, which is a common phenomenon of breastfeeding, commonly known as “save belly”. Each baby’s stool is different, as long as the appetite is good, good mental state, weight in the recovery of physiological weight loss gradually increased, then do not worry too much about the number of stools once more or less than once, and do not worry too much about whether the stool is paste or stripes. It is not advisable to “play fetal feces”: in our folklore there is an old custom to feed the newborn after birth not open milk, rhubarb water or rhinoceros yellow and other drugs, called “playing fetal feces”. This is harmful and unhelpful. The newborn’s body organs are very delicate and immature, especially the gastrointestinal function is very poor, if you take these bitter cold nature of Chinese medicine, it is bound to hurt the child’s spleen and stomach digestive function, disrupting its normal physiology. Therefore, it is not advisable to beat the feces for newborns.