Newborn Baby Care

Hello friends,

I am Dr. Abhishek Sharma. I am a pediatrician practicing in Faridabad. Today, let's talk about basic newborn care at home. A newborn is a bundle of immense joy to the family but at the same time while we are rejoicing it is important that we take a lot of care, a lot of precautions because they are so very small they need a lot of our care and attention.

What we can do as basic at home is that we should try to minimize all the unnecessary people to people contact with the baby as far as possible, so as to reduce the risk of transmission of any infection that somebody might be carrying, more importantly if the person concerned is having cold, cough or fever it is important that person should try to stay away from the newborn baby.

We can also look at a few other things such as the cleanliness and hygiene of the baby. We should try to keep the baby warm, comfortable, not very cold and not very hot, the temperature should be adjusted we can use AC, it should be adjusted at around 27-28 degrees, the draft of air should not fall directly on the baby and we should keep a sheet of clothing on the baby and after any adjustment in temperature we should always try to recheck if the baby is not feeling cold or hot by touching the baby's belly and hands and feet with the back of our hand.

The hands and feet should be as warm as the belly. We should also try to ensure that the umbilical is kept dry, nothing should be applied to it, it is meant to be kept dry. If there is any change of skin colour around the belly button, around the umbilical stump that is a cause of concern that should be informed to the pediatrician concerned.

The baby should be passing urine at least 6 to 8 times in 24 hours that is the minimum amount that we want the baby to pass out, the baby should be fed, if it is a term healthy baby we would like the baby to be fed on demand, but generally we advise not to wait more than 3 hours if the baby does not demand a feed for 3 hours we should wake the baby up and give the baby required amount of feed. To clean baby hair, you can try Rustic art baby shampoo - a pure herbal based shampoo specially made for new infants.

We sometimes notice that parents ask the babies have nails and they tend to scratch their faces, so what we can do is we can put cotton mittens on the hands in that way the baby's face will also be spared the scratches and the nails of the babies are generally very soft so they tend to break apart when baby moves fingers, so that way we can avoid cutting the fingernails as well.

We should try to ensure that the baby gets feeds even during nights, this is a bit of thing that we are concerned about during the initial few days, thereafter once the baby is strong enough after a few days it's not necessary that we keep on feeding the baby after every 2 or 3 hours during the night as well and we should get vaccinations done on the time that is very important. Vaccines are there to prevent diseases they were made so that our kids stay safe from diseases which are vaccine-preventable there are a lot of rumours regarding vaccines, lot of word to mouth things that people tend to share, but we should be careful enough to rely on scientific evidence that we have regarding vaccines.

Vaccines have a good track record of saving lives. We should get our babies vaccinated against all the vaccine-preventable diseases, as per the schedule advice by Indian Academy of Pediatrics.

If we follow certain basic guidelines just as I have outline now I am sure everything will be fine and all the babies will be happy, all the families will be happy and the bundle of joy will grow up to be a good human being, healthy human being.

Thank you.