Keep feeding your baby. That’s the most important thing to know. The outdated advice to withhold food or stick to a bland diet has been replaced by clearer guidance: babies with diarrhea recover faster when they continue eating their normal diet, with extra attention to fluids. The specifics depend on your baby’s age, whether they’re vomiting, and how severe the diarrhea is.
Breast Milk and Formula: Keep Going
If you’re breastfeeding, continue without interruption. Breast milk contains antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory components that actively help fight the infection causing diarrhea. It’s also a clean source of nutrition that’s easy to digest, and the World Health Organization considers continued breastfeeding one of the most effective interventions for children with diarrhea. Babies who are exclusively breastfed get the maximum protection.
Formula-fed babies should stay on their regular formula during mild diarrhea. If your baby seems unusually gassy or bloated after feeds, a temporary switch to lactose-free formula may help. This is because diarrhea, especially from a stomach virus, can temporarily reduce your baby’s ability to digest lactose (the sugar in milk). This is common in children under two and typically resolves on its own once the gut heals. Talk to your pediatrician before making the switch.
When Vomiting Happens Too
If your baby has both diarrhea and vomiting, the approach shifts. Pause solid foods and regular milk feeds (except breast milk, which should continue) and focus on small, frequent sips of an oral rehydration solution (ORS). These solutions replace both the water and the electrolytes your baby is losing. Once the vomiting settles, usually within one to two days, you can slowly return to normal feeding.
For babies showing some signs of dehydration, the WHO recommends offering ORS over a four-hour period based on weight: roughly 200 to 400 ml for babies under 6 kg, and 400 to 700 ml for babies between 6 and 10 kg. A quick rule of thumb is to multiply your baby’s weight in kilograms by 75 to get the approximate milliliters needed. If your baby wants more, give more.
Solid Foods for Older Babies
For babies already eating solids (six months and older), the goal is to return to a normal, balanced diet within 24 hours of getting sick. That means offering the same foods they’d normally eat: vegetables, fruits, yogurt, meat, and starchy foods like rice, oatmeal, or potatoes. Processed vegetable starches and cereals are particularly easy for a sick child’s gut to absorb, and combining grains with a protein source (like rice with chicken, or cereal with yogurt) improves the nutritional quality of the meal.
Let your baby guide how much they eat. Some babies will have a reduced appetite and that’s fine. Offer smaller portions more frequently rather than pushing larger meals. The point is to keep nutrients coming in so the gut has what it needs to repair itself.
The BRAT Diet Is No Longer Recommended
You may have heard that bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast (the BRAT diet) are the go-to foods for a sick baby. Pediatricians no longer recommend this approach. While those foods are gentle on the stomach, a strict BRAT diet lacks calcium, protein, vitamin B12, and fiber. Following it for more than 24 hours can actually slow your child’s recovery by depriving the gut of the nutrients it needs to heal. It’s fine to include bananas or rice as part of a broader diet, but don’t limit your baby to just those four foods.
Drinks and Foods That Make Diarrhea Worse
Certain sugars pull extra water into the intestines through an osmotic effect, making diarrhea worse. The biggest offenders are fructose and sorbitol, both of which are poorly absorbed by a young child’s immature gut. In practical terms, this means avoiding:
- Fruit juice, especially apple, pear, and prune juice, which have a high fructose-to-sorbitol ratio
- Soft drinks, sports drinks, and fruit drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup
- “Sugar-free” snacks or drinks containing sugar alcohols like sorbitol, maltitol, or isomalt
Plain water alone isn’t ideal either, particularly for young infants. Water doesn’t replace the sodium and potassium being lost in watery stools, and too much plain water can dilute an infant’s blood electrolytes to dangerous levels. Stick with breast milk, formula, or ORS as your primary fluids.
Probiotics May Shorten the Illness
A large meta-analysis of 25 trials involving over 5,000 children found that probiotics significantly reduced the overall duration of diarrhea and also shortened vomiting. By day five, children taking probiotics had noticeably fewer episodes than those on placebo. Probiotic supplements or probiotic-rich foods like yogurt are generally safe for babies on solids, but check with your pediatrician on the right product and dose for your baby’s age.
Zinc for Children in Recovery
The WHO recommends zinc supplementation during and after a diarrhea episode: 20 mg per day for 10 to 14 days for children over six months, and 10 mg per day for infants under six months. Zinc helps the gut lining recover and has been shown to reduce the severity and duration of diarrhea. This recommendation is especially emphasized in developing countries where zinc deficiency is common, but it’s worth discussing with your pediatrician regardless of where you live.
Signs Your Baby Needs Medical Attention
Dehydration is the real danger with infant diarrhea, not the diarrhea itself. For babies, fewer than six wet diapers in 24 hours signals mild to moderate dehydration. Severe dehydration looks like only one or two wet diapers per day, along with a dry mouth, no tears when crying, sunken eyes, or unusual drowsiness. Watery stools every one to two hours or more frequently counts as severe diarrhea and warrants a call to your pediatrician, since your baby may need closer monitoring or supervised rehydration.
Most episodes of infant diarrhea are caused by viruses and resolve within a few days. The single most helpful thing you can do during that time is keep your baby fed and hydrated with the foods and fluids they already know.