When a woman finds out that she is expecting a baby, anxiety for him settles in her heart with joy. With the birth of the crumbs, such unrest intensifies - parents realize the immense responsibility for his life. Newborn babies are so helpless! Adults have many questions about caring for them: how much a child should sleep, eat, walk ... This is especially true for those mothers and fathers who became parents for the first time. I want every action to be right, bring only benefit to the baby, and in no case not vice versa. In order to protect yourself from unnecessary worries, it is important to carefully study issues related to the health of newborn babies, as well as the rules for caring for children.
A newborn baby is truly an amazing creature! In the first days after his birth, the baby experiences real stress, but it can easily tolerate such changes. The child enters a completely unknown environment for himself, with previously unusual for him breathing and nutritional methods.
Why does the newborn startle in his sleep?
My daughter is 2 months old, and she often trembles in a dream. I worry. Is this normal? Anna, Mariupol.
A healthy baby can sometimes tremble during sleep. Sudden sounds nearby can provoke such a reaction (for example, a doorbell / phone call, a dog barking outside a window, etc.), stomach cramps, as well as a change in the phases of sleep (when the phases of sleep change from superficial to deep). Even during wakefulness, a sudden noise can scare the baby. But the sounds are quiet and calm, cause the child to react backwards - he begins to listen to them and calms down.
To avoid frequent shuddering of the baby, you should try to reduce her nervous excitability. Neuro-reflex excitability may be increased due to stress and pathologies of pregnancy, birth trauma or developing rickets. Other symptoms of this disease are excessive sweating of the head or its baldness in the occipital region. Give the baby soothing baths and a relaxing massage, ventilate the room, do not overheat and do not overcool the child. Create calm and comfortable conditions for the rest of your baby.
But if trembling happens very often, rolling waves one after another, the baby should be shown to the doctor. Such symptoms are characteristic of childhood epilepsy. A neurologist will be able to give you the right advice. At the age of 3 months, the same specialist should examine the baby, even if there are no prerequisites for this.
READ ALSO: Why does a newborn baby startle in a dream?
How to massage babies?
I heard a lot about the benefits of massage for babies. And can he harm a child? Lily, Moscow.
The healing massage, which the young mother could have been taught by nurses in the hospital, is not harmful. But if we are talking about therapeutic massage - then it can only be carried out by a specialist as prescribed by the attending physician.
The only contraindication to an ordinary strengthening massage can be a disease of the newborn. You do not need to undress the baby and leave him naked for more than a couple of minutes if he has an increased body temperature, runny nose or cough.
But there are also massage elements that will help the baby recover more quickly: when a cold occurs, it is useful to massage the fingers on the crumbs, when coughing, rub and stroke the breast, with intestinal colic, gently massage the tummy clockwise, as well as bend and unbend the crumbs legs.
A restorative massage is best done in the morning, and it is advisable not to do such a massage at night - it excites the child. For evening massage, only light strokes are suitable. Also remember that it is not advisable to massage the crumbs after a meal. Give him time to rest - about an hour. Otherwise, the massage procedure will cause the child spitting up.
Massage is best done in a well-ventilated room with fresh but slightly warmed air. First, the massage time should not exceed 5 minutes. All your movements should be soft and gentle, but at the same time confident and clear. The child has a huge potential for growth and development, therefore, treat him carefully, but without fear. You should not be afraid of “breaking something” for the baby.
How to develop crumbs up to a year?
Our Lenechka is 6 months old. Tell me how to properly develop a baby at this age? What can you already teach him? Julia, Kharkov.
The most important thing you can do is stimulate the development of your baby. The following exercises will help you with this:
- Lay the baby on his tummy, place his favorite toy in front of him and interest him with it. Let the baby try to crawl to the toy;
- Lift the toy so that the baby begins to reach for it;
- First, encourage the baby to stand on all fours, and then on the legs. At the same time, support should be absent - support your son under the armpits so that he “danced” on your knees or bed;
- Teach your baby how to interact with toys: put light rattles (one in each hand) into the pens. Demonstrate to your child how they can knock on each other;
- Give your child a comfortable toy with a pen from which he can “extract” sounds himself;
- Take the baby’s open palm and gently slide it over your open lips and cheeks. In a gentle and calm voice, talk with the baby, repeating the syllables accessible and understandable to him (aha, la-la, ma-ma). Repeat the exercise several times. This technique helps the rapid development of the infant's speech;
- From the age of 6 months with a baby, you can begin to engage in developing cards. Bright and colorful images of fruits, animals or vehicles, together with the clear pronunciation of their names by their mother, perfectly stimulate the development of speech.
READ ALSO: Monthly baby development calendar
Causes of noise in the heart of a newborn?
Our Matthew and a half months. Even in the hospital, doctors revealed a heart murmur in his heart, and an echocardiogram showed a small defect in the interventricular septum. Doctors said that after a while this defect would drag on. How can we help our baby now? Anastasia, Voronezh.
Ventricular septal defect (DMS) - Congenital heart disease, characterized by the presence of a defect between the right and left ventricles of the heart.
This partition has three parts, which, like a constructor, are interconnected. If for some reason such “parts” are not connected, a hole is formed in the partition. Before the appearance of the child, such a defect does not play a role and does not affect anything, but after the baby takes the first breath, the pressure in the left ventricle rises, and blood from it flows through the existing hole back into the right ventricle. This is the nature of heart murmur. In 75% of cases, such holes close themselves. The main thing in this situation is to be monitored by a pediatric cardiologist, and also protect the baby from infections so that he does not receive heart complications.
How to harden a baby?
I really want our Masha to grow up healthy. Now she is a month old. Can I start to temper her somehow? Marina, Krivoy Rog.
It is possible and necessary to temper a child from the first days. It is especially important to maintain the correct temperature in the room (from ~ 18 to 22 ° C) and humidity in the room. And do not worry if you did not start tempering your daughter earlier. In fact, you have already been tempering when you dress up the girl. After all, at least a couple of minutes the baby spent naked, taking useful air baths. Gradually increase their duration.
Every mother wants her baby to grow up healthy. This will help hardening and its three main principles: gradualness, constancy and individual approach.
If everything turns out well, then after a month, in addition to air baths, you can add crumbs with water quenching. To prevent such hardening, suddenly lower the temperature of the bathing water from 36–37 ° С (in the first weeks) to 26 ° С (according to Dr. Komarovsky). If you are so invigorated by the temperature of the water, stop at 30 ° C, but be sure to pour the baby with water with a temperature of 5 degrees lower at the end of water procedures.
Extremely extreme parents pour cold water on their babies after bathing, but not everyone will decide. But those who decide, as a rule, then do not know what a cold is.
After a few months, the child can recommend useful contrast baths for the legs. It’s good to do them before the baby’s daytime sleep. To do this, you will need two basins. Water is poured into one with a temperature of 36 ° C, and in the other, water is a couple of degrees colder. The child's legs should be lowered into the first basin to the middle of the lower leg for a couple of minutes, and then in the second - for 10-15 seconds. The procedure is repeated several times. It is important that the water temperature in the second basin should decrease by a degree every week. It will be necessary to stop at indicators of 17–18 ° С.
We also read on the topic of hardening:
Take care of your baby, observe daily regime, develop and temper the baby - give him your love in every new day.
We also read on the topic of newborn care:
Video consultation of a neonatologist of the highest category: discharge from the hospital. The first days of a baby’s life. Newborn care
Doctor's advice on caring for a newborn baby on discharge from the hospital. Advises Romashina Marina Valerievna:
Massage comes to us to do my friend, a pediatrician in the past. There were suspicions of scoliosis, now the back is healthy. And about the startle - my baby does not do this in a dream. But since childhood, I still tremble in my sleep, waking up at the same time. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
To hardening, I would also refer to frequent walks in the fresh air. From the first days after the birth of our son, and it was cold November, we walked with him in any weather. I read that oxygen supports the level of hemoglobin in the blood, and this is a very important indicator for health.
On the contrary, it never frightened me that a child shudders in a dream. I think that this is normal. The child may dream something, or he can really react like that to some kind of sharp external sound.