# Coffee Grounds in Stool



## anabelster (Jul 26, 2007)

My 2.5 year old has coffee-ground-like stools. They are very dark, too. This has been happening for a while and we have a pedi appt later today, but wanted to see if anyone here has any info.

The thing is that I was, up to recently, taking an iron supplement. I only took it for a couple weeks because it caused me and my son diahrrea. He had been tested for dairy allergy and is highly allergic. The iron supplement I was taking is Slow Fe and it was supposed to be gentler on my system.

What it did was all the opposite and when I looked at the ingredients it has lactose in it. Of course, I didn't think to read those before taking it! Duh! So, I'm also highly allergic to dairy/lactose and figured that was why.

Right about that time my son's stools began to be dark and like coffee grounds. Now, my endo told me that taking iron supplements will cause "me," to have some blood in my stools. I'm wondering if the coffee grounds in my son's stools could be due to the iron supplementation.... But I stopped taking it a while ago. His stools were returning to normal after I removed all the "hidden," dairy and the occassional cheese pizza, but once I started taking the supplement it went back to being very runny and a while later it began with the coffee grounds. Now, this doesn't happen every day, though, but for the past 3-4 days it's been like this.

Anyone have any experience with this?

I knew about the coffee grounds in stools being indicative of upper gastro-intestinal bleeding or bleeding fromt he stomach/esophagus. But for some reason it just didn't click until today. The thing is that we've been eating black beans lately and so I didn't even think about it because that usually yields funky poop anyhow. We eat those a lot, so I never know what to expect. It seems that the more natural and organic our diet the weirder his poop gets! LOL! Then when I was wiping him minutes ago I realized how gritty it was and how annoying it was to get those little hard bits to come up...so I washed him. Then the lightbulb lit up, coffee grounds!

I'm so worried now.


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## anabelster (Jul 26, 2007)

Another thing is I read it could be a sign of dehydration. I haven't been able to get him to drink much, lately, and I'm weaning him so right now he's only nursing about 4 times per day. The thing is that I don't think I'm producing any milk because I can't hear/see him gulp. It mostly seems like comfort-nursing before/after naps & bedtime.


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## Asiago (Jul 1, 2009)

Upper GI bleed came to my mind first too, as it could be digested blood (once it gets through lower GI).
Good luck with diagnosis, hopefully whatever it turns out to be isn't serious and he'll soon be back to normal. You sound like a very good mom, very observant


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## DoulamamaOE (Apr 29, 2009)

Iron is one of the few things that is not easily transferred through breatmilk, so I would doubt your supplement is causing this. I would get it checked out ASAP though.


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## Ifluffedthree (Dec 3, 2004)

my thoughts parallel with your thinking of blood in the gastro tract somewhere.
I would address it soon. Any loss of blood can bring additional issues.

I take Fe here an there, and I have never had blood in my stool due to it. My gastro just put me back on 625 mg again for a month and never mentioned any bleed concerns.

Hope you get some answers soon.


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