Newborn Baby Health Guide

What to put on your baby's bed has often been the source of many debates. In the past, it was a matter of keeping your baby soft and secure and safe. There were crib mattresses, mattress pads, sheets, blankets, and linings that were meant to be something soft for the baby to sleep up against.

Some people even used pillows and stuffed animals in their newborns' beds. However, lately it has become clear that suffocation is a very real threat, and keeping babies safe has become very important indeed.

It's important to know that a crib mattress is usually comfortable enough to stand alone. A baby does not need a mattress pad; he or she should be fine with just a crib mattress and a sheet that covers it.

This sheet should be fitted, and you should be sure that it is tucked around the mattress completely, with no way of pulling up and become loose. It should be a tight fitting crib sheet, which is made to stay on the mattress. Don't use sheets that are made for adult beds, because these will become loose and dangerous.

A baby does not need a pillow, or even need padding around the sides of the crib. Even if they bump up against the side of the crib and are uncomfortable, a pillow and padding are much more dangerous than helpful.

These are some of the things that have led to many babies being suffocated, because they are not made up of breathable materials, and a baby doesn't have the body strength to move if they are not able to breathe. Your baby does not need a pillow or pads along the sides of the crib.

On the same token, you should not have stuffed animals in your baby's crib. These, too, might become things that will suffocate your baby, so do not allow them to have stuffed animals in their beds until they are old enough to completely move by themselves.

If your baby needs a blanket to cover them, you should make sure that the blanket is securely tucked in, and does not cover their face at all. Since a newborn will stay where you put them, you can position them in the middle of the crib and you can cover them up to their chests without worrying about them pulling the covers over their heads. However, you should always be sure to use a lightweight blanket if needed, and you should try to dress your baby for sleep in such a way that they won't need a blanket at all, because this is the safest thing to do.

Rock-a-bye Baby

One of the most troubling and trying times for parents of newborns are the moments where you know your baby needs to go to sleep, but you just can't get them to drift off.

This can be the time that is perhaps the most stressful, because getting a newborn to sleep can be a trick, and it can be something that you struggle with, which can become a source of frustration for your young family.

However, there are several things that you can keep in mind which will make getting to sleep a little bit easier for everyone to deal with.

First of all, remember that the most important thing is to make sure that your newborn is comfortable before you try to put them to sleep.

Make sure that they are clean and dry, and that they have been fed. Also make sure that you have burped them, because excess air in their tummies can be what causes them to not be able to go to sleep. After they have been changed, fed, and burped, they are going to be ready to go to sleep.

However, there are several things that you can check for before you begin. Make sure that their clothing is comfortable, you don't want them to not be able to sleep because their clothes are too tight.

However, they will feel safer if their clothing is snug, because babies like to be wrapped up and feel like they are being held. You should dress them for sleep so that a lot of blankets are not necessary, because these are not safe for babies.

The best way to put a baby to sleep is on their back, with no loose covers. This is important because a baby does not have a fully developed body when they are born, and loose covers or laying on their tummies or sides can increase the chances that they will smother very easily.

Making sure that they are sleeping in the correct position can save your baby's life. If you can dress them warmly enough so that they don't need covers to be comfortable, they are going to sleep better, as well as sleeping safer.

Consider buying white noise machines to help your baby fall asleep. Others simply like taking a car ride or being rocked. By using these techniques, you can help your baby get into a normal sleeping schedule, which is the key to a good night's sleep for everyone.

Babies younger than four months have different sleep needs than older babies. Learn to understand your newborn's sleep patterns and develop reasonable expectations when it comes to your baby and sleep.

Some new parents will go to extreme lengths to get their baby to sleep, rocking them to sleep in their arms for hours or driving them around town until their eyelids finally flutter shut.

Bedtime doesn't have to make parents and their babies crazy.

Newborns typically sleep anywhere from 10 to 18 hours a day, so there is incredible variability in how much a 2-week-old or a 4-week-old is going to sleep.

There is no differentiation between night and day, so they're sleeping anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours around the clock.

Starting around eight weeks, they're awake more during the day and sleeping more at night.

Infants (3- to 12-month-olds) need between 14 and 15 hours of sleep a night.

They get between 10 and 12 hours at night, and then they nap during the day.

A 3- or 4-month-old is taking three to four naps a day, and a 12-month-old is typically taking two naps a day.

Toddlers (1- to 3-year-olds) are sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day and have shifted to one afternoon nap.

One of the problems answering that question is the definition of sleeping through the night.

The original definition in 1957 was a baby who sleeps from midnight to 5 a.m. is sleeping through the night.

I know as a parent that, if I was woken at 11:45 p.m. and at 5:15 a.m., I wouldn't feel like they're sleeping through the night.

So if you're looking for 12 hours straight, they will be at least 6 months of age until they can sleep for that long without a nighttime feeding.

For all children, adolescents and adults, you want a bedroom that's cool, quiet, dark and comfortable.

All babies should sleep on a firm surface. There should be very little bedding in their crib, so that there's no concern about suffocation.

And, of course, all babies should be put down on their backs to sleep to decrease the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.

A consistent sleep schedule with set nap times and a set bedtime is going to set their internal clock and make it so they fall asleep quickly and stay asleep. A typical baby bedtime is between 7:30 and 8:30 at night.

One of the key things in getting a baby to have good sleep habits is a bedtime routine.

You want that bedtime routine to be 20 to 30 minutes long and include about two to three activities, which are exactly the same every single night.

A typical bedtime routine may include taking a bath, massaging the baby, reading, singing lullabies.

You want activities that are soft and soothing. Now, if your baby hates taking a bath or can't sit still for books, you want to do that at a different part of the day.

One of the most important things that you want to do as a parent is figure out the sign your baby gives when he or she is sleepy.

Does she rub her eyes? Does she pull her ears? Does she twirl her hair? One baby I knew used to stare off into space.

The mom thought the baby was bored so she would sort of do antics, but, really, that was a sign for the baby that he wanted to go to sleep.

The moment your baby gives you that sign, that's your window of opportunity.

You want to go right away and put them down for their nap or for bedtime.

All babies naturally awaken between three and six times throughout the night.

As they change from one sleep stage to another, they're going to have a normal arousal. The question is whether or not a baby can fall back to sleep on their own.

A baby who can fall asleep on their own at bedtime is a baby who's going to fall right back to sleep when they waken during the night.

The National Sleep Foundation data from the Sleep in America poll found that 46 percent of children are being put down awake in their cribs rather than asleep.

So the majority of children are being put down asleep. But children who are put down awake fall asleep faster and sleep, on average, one hour more at night.

A baby who's rocked to sleep, nursed to sleep, driven in the car to sleep, pushed in a stroller to fall asleep at bedtime is going to need that exact same thing to fall back asleep at 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00 every time they naturally awaken.

If a parent has a baby who's having a difficult time falling asleep or staying asleep, they may choose to do what we often refer to as sleep training. So you do your bedtime routine, you put your baby down awake in their crib and then leave the room.

At that point, you want to check on your child. How often you check is going to depend upon your tolerance as a parent and your baby's temperament.

For some babies, it makes them more upset to check on them than not to check on them.

Every time you go in to check on your child, you want to go in for just a minute or two, be really calm, let them know everything is OK and leave.

It's best not to pick them up, but, if you need to, that's OK, as long as you put them back down.

The first night, they will often fuss (that's our nice way of saying they may be upset) for 30 to 45 minutes. The second night is going to get worse, because it's sort of "last night was a fluke, tonight I really mean it."

By third night, you're going to see dramatic improvement and, if you stick with it for a week, what you're going to find is a baby who falls asleep very quickly at bedtime and will start sleeping through the night.

The most important thing parents should do when they start sleep training is consistency. If they're consistent, they are going to see a major improvement.

When there are two parents in the household, sleep training always takes some negotiation. You both need to come up with a plan that you're going to stick to.

If there is one parent who can't tolerate any crying by their child, you may want to send them out to the store or to a friend's house, so you can help the baby get over the hump.

The other thing that's important for parents to realize is that they're doing this for the benefit of their baby.

Some parents feel as if they're being selfish. You have to realize that a baby waking three times a night is going to feel as awful the next day as a parent waking three times per night. Also, having a parent who's well rested is going to have huge benefits for babies.

Arash typically manifests itself as red, inflamed and often itchy skin. There may be crusty scales, pimples, hives or wheals.

It is important for a parent to distinguish between the different categories of rashes--some may be quite benign, while others require immediate medical treatment.

A simple diaper rash, for example, can be treated at home. However, a rash accompanied by a fever, swollen lymph nodes and other symptoms may indicate the presence of a more serious underlying illness.

Generic rash or irritant diaper dermatitis (IDD) is characterized by joined patches of erythema and scaling mainly seen on the convex surfaces, with the skin folds spared.

Diaper dermatitis with secondary bacterial or fungal involvement tends to spread to concave surfaces (i.e. skin folds), as well as convex surfaces, and often exhibits a central red, beefy erythema with satellite pustules around the border (Hockenberry, 2003).

Causes

Irritant diaper dermatitis develops when skin is exposed to prolonged wetness, increased skin pH caused by urine and feces, and resulting breakdown of the stratum corneum, or outermost layer of the skin.

In adults, the stratum corneum is composed of 25 to 30 layers of flattened dead keratinocytes, which are continuously shed and replaced from below. These dead cells are interlay with lipids secreted by the stratum granulosum just underneath, which help to make this layer of the skin a waterproof barrier.

The stratum corneum's function is to reduce water loss, repel water, protect deeper layers of the skin from injury and to repel microbial invasion of the skin (Tortora and Grabowski, 2003). In infants, this layer of the skin is much thinner and more easily disrupted.

Urine's effects

Although wetness alone macerates the skin, softening the stratum corneum and greatly increasing susceptibility to friction injury, urine has an additional impact on skin integrity because of its effect on skin pH.

While studies show that ammonia alone is only a mild skin irritant, when urea breaks down in the presence of fecal urease it increases skin pH, which in turn promotes the activity of fecal enzymes such as protease and lipase (Atherton, 2004; Wolf, Wolf, Tuzun and Tuzun, 2001). These fecal enzymes increase the skin's permeability to bile salts and act as irritants in and of themselves.

Diet's effects

The interaction between fecal enzyme activity and IDD explains the observation that infant diet and diaper rash are linked, since fecal enzymes are in turn affected by diet.

Breast-fed babies, for example, have a lower incidence of diaper rash, possibly because their stools have lower pH and lower enzymatic activity (Hockenberry, 2003).

Diaper rash is also most likely to be diagnosed in infants 8-12 months old, perhaps in response to an increase in eating solid foods and dietary changes around that age that affect fecal composition.

Any time an infant's diet undergoes a significant change (i.e. from breast milk to formula or from milk to solids) there appears to be an increased likelihood of diaper rash (Atherton and Mills, 2004).

The link between feces and IDD is also apparent in the observation that infants are more susceptible to developing diaper rash after treatment with antibiotics, which affect the intestinal microflora (Borkowski, 2004; Gupta & Skinner, 2004).

Also, there is an increased incidence of diaper rash in infants who have suffered from diarrhea in the previous 48 hours, which may be due to the fact that fecal enzymes such as lipase and protease are more active in feces which have passed rapidly through the gastrointestinal tract (Atherton, 2004).

Secondary infections

The significance of secondary infection in IDD remains controversial. Atherton contends that, "Candida albicans can only be isolated from a minority of IDD cases; in many cases this is a reflection of antibiotic therapy. It has also been established that bacterial infection does not play a substantial part in the development of IDD."(Atherton, 2004, p. 646).

Treatments

The most effective treatment, although not always the most practical one, is to discontinue use of diapers, allowing the affected skin to air out. Other commonly recommended remedies include oil-based protectants, often using various over-the-counter "diaper creams", but sometimes people use petroleum jelly and shark liver oil or cod liver oil; zinc oxide based ointments, and, in extreme cases, anti-fungal cremes. Low concentration hydrocortisone creams are also sometimes used to treat the symptoms of diaper rash, although they do little to clear up the rash itself.

Causes of other common RASHES

Rashes occur for many reasons. For example, they accompany common childhood diseases such as measles, chicken pox and scarlet fever. Other common causes include:

ALLERGIC REACTIONS: Rashes may occur more often in children who have a family history of sensitive skin and allergies. If you suspect an allergic reaction, try to identify and remove the allergen from the child's environment. If you cannot identify the allergen, it may be necessary for your pediatrician or dermatologist to conduct a series of allergy tests.

HEAT, ABRASIONS, SUN EXPOSURE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS: Childrens' sensitive skin is especially vulnerable to these conditions.

DRUG REACTIONS: Many medications, especially antibiotics, cause an allergic reation that produces rashes and possibly other symptoms. Drug allergies should always be reported to a doctor.

ECZEMA: Children with eczema are generally predisposed to having highly reactive skin, resulting in frequent itchy rashes that may be accompanied by oozing blisters or thick scaly patches. In children age four and older, the skin eruptions tend to be more scaly than oozy.

CONTACT DERMATITIS: This condition is a type of eczema, which is triggered by direct contact with an allergen or irritating substance. Diaper rash is a common example of contact dermatitis.

SKIN INFECTIONS: These often occur from scratching dry and sensitive skin. Impetigo, a highly contagious bacterial skin infection, characterized by blisters and red, oozing sores, often results from a preexisting skin condition, such as diaper rash. Ringworm (tinea corporis) is also a contagious skin rash caused by a fungus. It derives its name from its roundish, red, crusty eruptions. Scabies is also a highly contagious condition that is caused by tiny mites that burrow into the skin, producing an itchy red rash.

INTERTRIGO: This rash appears in skin folds, especially on arms, knees, neck, diaper area and armpits. Moisture and heat trapped in these skin folds promote a red, oozing rash.

PITYRIASIS ROSEA AND NUMMULAR DERMATITIS: These skin conditions are often confused with ringworm because they both produce roundish, red, crusty eruptions. However, unlike ringworm, they are not contagious.

SYSTEMIC ILLNESSES: In addition to contagious childhood diseases such as chicken pox, various types of measles and scarlet fever, rashes accompany a number of other illnesses that are not contagious. These include Lyme disease, rheumatic fever and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Such systemic diseases usually have other symptoms such as fever, swollen lymph nodes, joint pain, etc. in addition to rashes.

ENVIRONMENTAL IRRITANTS: Heat, sun and chemical pollutants are among the many environmental factors that cause childhood rashes. Prickly Heat or miliria results from overheating. If the sweat ducts are blocked, the perspiration is unable to escape. It can occur at any time of year and is especially prevalent on the neck and trunk.

Dermatitis of the hands and feet can occur as a result of exposure to harsh chemicals and environmental conditions. Winter dermatitis is an itchy, scaly inflammation which occurs during the winter when the air is dry with little humidity.

How Early Should Dental Care Begin For Your Baby?

The majority of people take a long time before they embark on taking dental care for their kids.

Before reaching age five, twenty five percent of children have their first cavity, and a lot more cross that number also - 50 to 70 percent of children will have at least one cavity when they are in the grade schools.

Because we are grown ups, we can value the need of the right care of our teeth. But our children should also be made abreast of the importance. You should begin dental care before a baby gets his or her first tooth.

Below are given some methods:

Infant Dental Care:

1.After the baby consumes anything solid or liquid, you should rinse their gums with a damp cloth and clean the gums with it. Decay can begin even without any teeth.

2.Do not let your child go to bed with a milk bottle or formula because that would be in his mouth the whole night.

3.When the first tooth of the infant appears, you can begin the process of dental care by using a soft brush and infant toothpaste for their precious pearl.

4.Visit the dentist just after the baby gets their first teeth. The maximum number of doctors asks to see the child when he is around 1 years of age. However, if you notice anything that can be cause for concern then visit the dentist before. This will
again assist them to be more adjusted getting dental care in the times to come.

5.Brush your child's teeth twice every day, once in the morning, and once surely at night.

Children:

1.When the whole set of teeth has made its appearance, definitely visit the dentist without waiting any longer.

2.Provide guidance to your child when he brushes his teeth for the first 6 years of his life.

3.When your child grows permanent teeth, with your assistance he should learn how to floss his teeth.

4.When a child loses his tooth or teeth, take both the child and his tooth to the doctor. The teeth may be restored when kept in a bowl of cold milk for sometime.

5.After the age of seven or eight, dental care for your child can begin serious earnest.