Things to know about newborns
Learning, Play, and Your Newborn (for Parents)
Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD
en español Aprendizaje, juego y su recién nacido
Play is the main way that infants learn how to move, communicate, socialize, and understand their surroundings. During the first month of life, your baby will learn by interacting with you.
The first thing your baby will learn is to associate you with getting their needs met. So, the feel of your touch, the sound of your voice, and the sight of your face will begin to mean nourishment, warmth, and comfort.
Even at this young age, babies are ready to learn about the world around them. Your newborn loves to look your face. Newborns can recognize and respond to a parent's voice (or other interesting sounds) by looking alert and becoming less active. Babies may try to find out where a sound is coming from by looking around.
When is My Baby Ready to Play and Learn?During the first month of life, your newborn will spend much of the day sleeping or seeming drowsy. Over the next several weeks to months, your baby will begin to be awake and alert for longer periods of time. You'll learn to recognize when your baby is ready to learn and play:
- A baby who is quiet and alert will be attentive and responsive and interested in their surroundings. Encourage learning with smiles, soothing sounds, and gentle caresses.
- A baby who is awake but active (squirming, flapping arms, or kicking legs) or fussing is less able to focus on you. The baby may seem upset or cry when you try to get their attention. These are signs that your baby may be getting hungry, tired, or overstimulated.
As you care for your newborn, talk, smile, and interact with your baby. Pay attention and respond to your baby's cues. For example, watch how your baby moves or starts to make sounds back when you speak. Take turns "talking" to each other. This is how your baby learns to communicate.
In the first few weeks, you may want to introduce some simple, age-appropriate toys that appeal to the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, such as:
- rattles
- textured toys
- musical toys
- unbreakable crib mirrors
Choose toys and mobiles with contrasting colors and patterns.
Strong contrasts (such as red, white, and black), curves, and symmetry stimulate an infant's developing vision. As vision improves and babies gain more control over their movements, they'll interact more with their environment.
Here are some other ideas for encouraging your newborn to learn and play:
- Smile, stick out your tongue, and make other expressions for your infant to study, learn, and imitate.
- Use a favorite toy for your newborn to focus on and follow, or shake a rattle for your infant to find.
- Let your baby spend some awake time lying on the tummy to help strengthen the neck and shoulders. Always supervise your infant during "tummy time" and be ready to help if they get tired or frustrated in this position. Never put an infant to sleep on their stomach — babies should sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).
- Talk and read to your baby.
- Put on soothing music and hold your baby, gently swaying to the tune.
- Pick a soothing song or lullaby and softly sing it often to your baby. The familiarity of the sound and words will have a soothing effect, particularly during fussy times.
There is a wide range of normal development, so some children may gain skills earlier or later than others. Talk to your doctor if you have any concerns about how your newborn sees and hears, or if you have any questions or concerns about your baby's development.
Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD
Date reviewed: May 2022
Jaundice in Newborns (for Parents)
What Is Jaundice?
Babies with jaundice have a yellow coloring of the skin and eyes. This happens when there is too much bilirubin in the baby's blood.
Bilirubin (bill-uh-ROO-bin) is a yellow substance that comes from the normal breakdown of red blood cells.
The liver removes bilirubin from the blood and passes it into the bowels so it can leave the body.
A newborn baby's liver does not remove bilirubin as well as an adult's does. Jaundice (JON-diss) happens when bilirubin builds up faster than the liver can break it down and pass it from the body.
Most types of jaundice go away on their own. Others need treatment to lower bilirubin levels.
What Are the Signs & Symptoms of Jaundice?
A baby with jaundice has skin that looks yellow. It starts on the face, then the chest and stomach, and then the legs. The whites of a baby's eyes also look yellow. Babies with very high bilirubin levels may be sleepy, fussy, floppy, or have trouble feeding.
Jaundice may be hard to see, especially in babies with dark skin. If you're unsure, gently press the skin on your baby's nose or forehead. If it's jaundice, the skin will appear yellow when you lift your finger.
Call the doctor if your baby:
- starts to look or act sick
- is not feeding well
- is sleepier than usual
- has jaundice that gets worse
What Causes Jaundice in Newborns?
Most healthy newborns have physiological ("normal") jaundice.
This happens because newborns have more blood cells than adults do. These blood cells don't live as long, so more bilirubin is made when they break down. This kind of jaundice appears 2–4 days after the baby is born and goes away by the time a baby is 2 weeks old.
A baby is more likely to get jaundice when he or she:
- is born premature. Premature babies are even less ready to remove bilirubin. They also can have problems at lower bilirubin levels than babies born later. Doctors treat them sooner.
- isn't getting enough breast milk. This often happens in the first few days of life, because a mother's milk isn't in yet or the baby is having trouble breastfeeding. If a baby has this type of jaundice (called breastfeeding jaundice), it's best to feed more often. A breastfeeding (lactation) consultant can help.
- is breastfed. Breast milk prevents the liver from quickly removing bilirubin. This is called breast milk jaundice and happens after the first week of life.
Bilirubin levels slowly improve over 3–12 weeks. - has a different blood type from the mother. If mother and baby have different blood types, the mother's body makes antibodies that attack the baby's red blood cells. This happens when:
- the mother's blood type is O and the baby's blood type is A or B (ABO incompatibility) or
- the mother's Rh factor (a protein found on red blood cells) is negative and the baby is Rh positive.
- has a genetic problem that makes red blood cells more fragile. Red blood cells break down more easily in health problems like hereditary spherocytosis and G6PD deficiency.
- is born with high red blood cell numbers (polycythemia) or a large bruise on the head (cephalohematoma)
How Is Jaundice Diagnosed?
Doctors can tell if a baby has jaundice based on a yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes. All newborns are checked for jaundice before leaving the hospital or birth center.
Babies with jaundice will get a blood test to check bilirubin levels. Sometimes, a light machine that measures bilirubin in the skin is used. But if the level is high, a blood test must confirm the result.
High bilirubin levels can lead to serious problems. So doctors carefully watch babies with jaundice.
How Is Jaundice Treated?
Treatment depends on the cause of the jaundice, the bilirubin levels, and a baby's age.
Mild jaundice goes away after 1 or 2 weeks as a baby's body gets rid of the extra bilirubin on its own. For newborns with breastfeeding jaundice, mothers should breastfeed the baby more often. If the baby is not getting enough breast milk, the doctor may suggest supplementing with formula.
For more serious cases of jaundice, treatment should start as soon as possible. Babies may get:
- fluids. A loss of fluids (dehydration) will cause bilirubin levels to rise.
- phototherapy. Babies lie under lights with little clothing so their skin is exposed.
The light changes the bilirubin to a form that can easily pass out of the body. Light-therapy blankets may also be used. - exchange blood transfusion. This emergency procedure is done if very high bilirubin levels do not come down with phototherapy. The baby's blood is replaced with blood from a donor to quickly lower bilirubin levels.
- intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg). Babies with blood type incompatibilities get this through an IV (into a vein). IVIg blocks antibodies that attack red blood cells and reduces the need for an exchange transfusion.
What Else Should I Know?
Call the doctor if your baby has jaundice that isn't going away. Babies with jaundice for longer than 2 weeks need more testing to check for other things that cause jaundice. These include infections, and problems with the liver or bile system, metabolism, or genes.
Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD
Date reviewed: April 2019
What you need to know about newborns
December 19, 2015 Life
The birth of a child is always stressful and full of new information.
You will gradually learn for yourself how to cope with your unique child, and now we will tell you how not to twitch over trifles in the most exciting first month of meeting your child.
Even if during pregnancy you read all the books about children that you could reach, still, upon returning from the hospital, you will surely feel as if an alien has suddenly settled in the apartment. Today, few people have experience with infants before having their own children. The main thing is to remember that all difficulties are temporary, soon you will learn to understand the child a little better. Rest when you can, watch your diet and allow yourself to treat this strange creature like a normal, strong and healthy person with very little life experience. Do not be nervous over trifles!
Newborns do not look like children from postcards
Having a good wrinkling in the birth canal, children are swollen, with bruises, with red eyes; skinny, with thin and long arms and legs; with scaly red skin, a scattering of pimples, or with black silky hair on the ears.
Do not worry, after a couple of months the baby will smooth out, eat fat, and excess hair will fall out. By the age of three months, most babies finally look like model baby photographs. However, some are beautiful right away, but be prepared for anything.
Newborns sleep a lot
During the first 2-3 weeks of a child's life, a baby spends 16-20 hours sleeping, interrupted by meals, soiling diapers and trying to understand what is happening around. As you prepare for sleepless nights with your baby, you might be surprised. Use this opportunity to recover after childbirth, sleep yourself! By the third week, many begin to have colic, with which everyone struggles with varying degrees of success, and that's when all the fun begins.
Babies make sounds all the time
They sneeze, sniffle, creak, scurry around. Most often, the cause of sneezing is too dry air in the apartment, causing the mucus in the nose to dry out and the appearance of familiar boogers. A child with boogers can become a real tyrant, because the nasal passages of a newborn are narrow and tortuous, and without nasal breathing it becomes difficult to eat and sleep, which the child honestly reports with the only means available during this period - screaming.
The way out is air humidifiers and instillation into the nose of saline or its analogues “with the water of some sea”, of which there is darkness in any pharmacy.
Hiccups are extremely rarely caused by hypothermia
The most obvious cause of hiccups in a newborn is air entering the stomach during feeding or overeating. A full stomach presses on the diaphragm, the nerve endings of which are irritated, send an impulse to the brain and immediately receive a response back - the diaphragm begins to contract often, often, while the lungs grab air, producing a specific sound. You can hold the baby in a “column” so that he burps. The child himself does not suffer from hiccups, although sometimes it lasts a very long time and prevents him from falling asleep.
It is not necessary to bathe a newborn
Of course, bathing a baby is a pleasant process for everyone, but it is during the newborn period that it is complicated by an umbilical wound, which is not recommended to be wetted.
Here you can get out: bathe in a small baby bath, in boiled water, or you can simply wash it after defecation under the tap or wipe it with a damp baby wipe until the umbilical wound overgrows. Then - complete freedom, bathe as much as you like.
Newborns can swim
The sight of a baby swimming in a bathtub can completely change your ideas about a child's adaptation to the outside world. It's really impressive. Unfortunately, the umbilical wound greatly complicates the child's acquaintance with water. However, after 3-5 weeks he will still be able to swim, later the ability will be lost without training. If you take the trouble to accustom the child to an inflatable ring or free swimming, it will be possible to let him into a large bath, and sit next to him and be touched. It is categorically impossible to leave a child in the bathroom unattended, either with a circle, or even in an inflatable spacesuit as a whole.
Breast milk will be the way it should be
The child will receive all the trace elements needed at the moment, even if you eat poorly and irregularly.
Your body's resources will be enough to compensate for the shortcomings of your diet for the first 2-3 months. The child will definitely receive calcium, you must choose from where: from your teeth or from the cottage cheese you ate.
Sterile cleanliness around the newborn is not necessary.
Of course, you should wash your hands with soap and, if possible, limit your child's contact with snotty relatives. But daily boiling, sterilizing and washing everything around with bleach is superfluous. With elementary household bacteria, the child's body must learn to cope on its own.
Do not lick a baby's pacifier
You can just rinse it, wipe it with a damp cloth, pour boiling water over it if you are very afraid of germs, but does it really occur to anyone that your saliva can neutralize anything other than visible debris? If you are absolutely confident in the health of your and your partner’s teeth, don’t smoke, drink enough fluids – okay, lick (I’m against it anyway!).
Do not try to make breast milk fatter
No need to eat sour cream instead of yogurt while breastfeeding. Most of the calories will likely end up on your sides, and full-fat milk will be harder for your baby to suck out and much harder to digest. In the first month, the child should gain only 600 grams. Despite the fact that it is traditionally customary for us to brag about well-fed babies, it will be difficult for you to carry it yourself, and all physical activity is given to a chubby child with great difficulty.
Babies are born with a certain set of reflexes
There are about 75 of them in total, it's not necessary to know them all, but the following look pretty funny: collarbone, knee Hungry babies are furious and picky.
Healthy skin does not need to be smeared with anything
If your baby does not have irritation, the multi-stage diaper changing schemes (remove, wash the bottom, dry, sprinkle with powder, spread cream, put on a new diaper) can and should be simplified. You really only need to rinse your ass or wipe it with a damp cloth and dry it. If there is irritation, there can be a great many reasons: too many clothes under which the child sweats corny, too much baby cream that clogs the pores of the diaper and prevents the rapid absorption of secretions, poor-quality diapers, errors in the mother's diet. The easiest way to soothe a little irritation is to leave the child to ventilate more often with a bare, clean booty.
If the skin of the armpits and under the diaper is noticeably redder than the rest of the body, the problem is overheating. No need to stop using diapers, it is better to reduce the temperature in the apartment or wear less clothes.
Children's poop is very different from adult poop.
This fact must simply be accepted. While the baby is eating, growing and sleeping (that is, doing everything that a newborn is supposed to do), the contents of his diaper can be anything. Any color and consistency. If you are breastfeeding, there may be no stool for 2-4 days at all, and this is also the norm: milk is absorbed completely. The motherly “I don’t like our poop” is perhaps the bread and butter of probiotic makers. If you don't like it, don't eat it.
No children are the same
Comparing your child with someone else's is not the best thing to do. Compare it with the norms of development at the current age, this is quite enough. A child is born with character, usually the character of the next of kin.
Perhaps you will finally have the opportunity to look at yourself from the outside in some way. Relax and receive.
helpful tips for baby care, feeding and sleep
Everything you need to know about your newborn baby. We list the main features of feeding, sleeping and caring for a newborn baby
Newborn baby: advice to new parents. Photo: pixabay.comBehind 9 months of pregnancy, childbirth - and here you are at home with the long-awaited baby. There are a thousand questions in my head, how and what to do. The first month of a child's life is perhaps the most exciting for parents. We tell you what mom and dad should know in order to create the best conditions for their baby. By the way, a newborn is considered a child from the moment of birth to the 28th day of his life.
Newborn care
The basics of caring for a newborn baby are quite simple. Here are some important tips for young parents from a pediatrician, candidate of medical sciences, author of the blog Anna Levadnaya .
- The apartment where you bring your newborn from the hospital must be clean and well ventilated. Try to keep the temperature around 20-22 degrees, humidity - more than 40 percent. In winter, when the heating is on, it is recommended to use a humidifier. Remember that it is better to dress a child warmer than to keep him undressed, but in a stuffy and hot room. Babies are still poorly developed thermoregulation, and they easily overheat.
- Change diapers regularly. If the newborn has frequent and loose stools, then you can use a diaper cream to protect delicate skin. Give your baby air baths regularly.
- You can bathe your baby as soon as you have returned from the hospital. It is not necessary to boil water (in urban conditions, the water has already passed through all the filters). Start bathing with a water temperature of 36-37 degrees, gradually reducing it to 30.
- In the morning, wash your baby with clean water.
- As needed (once every 5-10 days) the child needs to cut his nails.
To do this, use special safety scissors with rounded ends so as not to injure the baby's skin. Don't cut your nails too short. It is recommended to leave 1 mm free edge, the shape of the nail is a square with slightly rounded edges. If redness or inflammation appears around the nail in a child, be sure to consult a doctor.
Feeding a newborn baby
No one will argue that mother's milk is the best food for a baby. The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding up to 2 years of age. True, a woman does not always manage to establish lactation. Here is what WHO advises at the very beginning and most important stage for successful breastfeeding.
- It is during the first month that lactation is established. It is very important to feed the baby on demand, and not by the hour, as was customary in the past.
- It is not recommended to supplement newborns with water (unless there are special indications for this). Mother's milk contains enough water to meet the needs of the baby.
And supplementation can cause problems with lactation, as the child will eat less milk. - For the same reason, it is not recommended to abuse the pacifier and bottle during the first month.
- Remember that the main factors that indicate whether a child has enough milk or not are weight gain per month (an increase from 400 to 1200 grams is considered the norm) and the number of urination per day (at least 12 times).
If it doesn't work out with breastfeeding
If it so happens that a mother cannot breastfeed a newborn baby, artificial formulas will come to the rescue. It is important to choose a quality formula that will suit your baby. Be sure to check with your pediatrician. Choose mixtures of well-known, proven brands that have proven themselves well. The best option is an adapted milk formula. It is as close as possible to the composition of breast milk, easier to digest. Be sure to look at the age label and pay attention to the expiration date.
As for the introduction of the mixture, all recommendations and dosages are detailed on the instructions, follow it.
Newborn sleep
A good sleep for a newborn is just as important as feeding and caring for him. In the first months of life, children sleep most of the day. But often young parents are faced with the fact that they can’t rock a screaming baby in any way. There can be many reasons why your newborn baby does not sleep, ranging from the most trivial (for example, the child is uncomfortable dressed) to the very serious (health problems). But there are some important tips from sleep consultants that will help you organize your newborn's sleep.
- Make sure that the child is dressed comfortably: nothing presses anywhere, neither hot nor cold.
- The room should also provide comfortable sleeping conditions.
- For a newborn baby, sleep consultants recommend creating conditions that are as close as possible to intrauterine.
