How do you count your BM's?

Just curious, how do you count your BM's?

I count everything, no matter how small.

Also, if I have a BM, leave the toilet, and then have another a minute or two later, I count it as 2.

Anyone else?

Same. If I get up, flush, walk away and have to come back then that counts as two. I started a poop journal whwen I was diagnosed lol.

same.

If I have to sit for more than 5 minutes I'll count it as 2, lol.

I don't count at all anymore. I did for years, & wrote it down in a little notebook I kept stashed in the bathroom! I never once had to go back & reference that count for anything aside from my own curiosity. I found that counting my BM's made me obsess more over them, so just blew it off. I'm obviously aware of them, & some bad days will have  8+ BM's. But overall, I just guess. No one ever asks, my GI does, but I generalize & say somethng like "Oh, 6-8 per day". which is about right!

I count everything--every visit as a bm, even if it's tenesmus. Any urge that requires you to go/run/fly to the loo should be counted, even if the end result turned out to be just a fart--I mean how were you to know that? It could have been much worse for all you knew, you can't afford to take chances with this horrible disease can you?

3-4 bms is a 'good' day for me.

It depends on what aspect I am trying to track but generally i'll count all times my bum touches the toilet seat (regardless of timing, urgency, amount).

Interesting. I always assumed everyone counted the number of times they went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, had a BM, and flushed the toilet; and then just noted the consistency: liquid, mushy, hard, ... After all, how would you determine how many poos you went if you had one huge poo that consisted of very many small poo balls all stuck together? Would you really go to the trouble of breaking up the huge poo to see how many balls there were? And what if it's hard poo with poo balls that has trouble coming out so it breaks up and comes out in pieces? Do you count each poo ball that broke off, but not the ones that didn't break off? Do you count each piece as one poo? Or do you count the whole thing as one poo? And what about diarrhea that comes out like pee? Is that one poo too?

The best poo is one very long, S-shaped, toothpaste consistency BM that is of course very hard to wipe and takes a whole bunch of wipes to get off entirely. I hadn't gotten any of those for a really long time, until that is I did fecal transplantation. Now I get them often.

The worst poo is one very long brown pee out the butt and then a whole bunch of blood clots. I got that when I was flaring.

If I poo in my pants. Well that's one poo too, even though I didn't get to sit on the toilet. I've done that twice.

Post Edited (subdued) : 8/8/2011 12:08:40 AM (GMT-6)

You're over thinking the replies subdued...I count every time I wipe my butt from a bowel movement, not every wipe of my butt from a bowel movement and usually for me it's just one wipe as the TP is often clean (meaning no poop on it) since the majority of my BM's come out nice and clean (hard enough that nothing is left "be-hind" pun intended)...I would also count the times (there have been many) that I had an accident in my pants....and no, if you have a lump of poop with a bunch of "ball" shaped poos all stuck together, I don't think anyone in their right mind would even think to seperate and count each one since afterall, if it's clumped together it's considered one poop. I also don't think anyone counts each piece of poop, regardless of them being long or not (broken off pieces) as a bowel movement for each one...which is why in my reply I described that I count mine by each time I wipe (meaning each time I sit on the toilet, I'm done for the time being and I wipe) as it seems self-explanitory.

Poo balls? Wow, I've finally found it, a non-vulgar English synonym for turds. Even if it took two words; I had been convinced that none existed.

There’s an app for that, GI Monitor for both Android and iPhone logs number and consistency of BMs, has a meal log, and quality of life (pain, stress, etc.) as well as other features like making reports for your GI.