The Poop Talk: Infant Gut Health: Common vs Normal

Is it truly normal for breastfed babies to go days without stooling — or has a widespread cultural myth been mistaken for physiology? This course challenges one of the most commonly held and broadly circulated assumptions in infant feeding, inviting participants to examine the gap between what has become common and what is actually normal. Participants will review the published science on infant gut function and explore how the historical normalization of bottle-feeding contributed to a conflation of these two distinct concepts. Participants will consider how ancestral shifts in the human microbiome — particularly in Western populations — have quietly shaped both breastfeeding outcomes and infant gut health, and will examine how genetic variants influence infant digestion and the early establishment of the immune system. Participants will also explore how these overlapping physiologic and cultural changes have adversely impacted breastfeeding, and…