Newborns with Dry Skin (Not Eczema)

A. The Appearance of a Newborn Baby’s Dry Skin

Your baby has dry skin on face, back, feet or arm ? It can be a very first sign of eczema in babies. Don’t panic, it can be simply a baby dry skin symptom. However if you don’t take care of it enough, it can become more serious and, in the worst case, it can develop into a mild form of eczema.

This little article is to help you to differentiate Eczema in babies and Dry skin in babies and how to take care properly of your newborn with dry skin.

B. Causes of Dry Skin in babies

Your newborn skin system is not yet fully developed, it’s still very thin and sensitive. That’s why environmental elements can easily impact on it:

·         Some babies can have more dry skin than the other however all of them are at high risk during winter time. 2 reasons: the cold outdoors and the artificial heat indoors.

·         In summer a baby can have dry skin as well if you put him/her in sun too long time

·         Environment change, weather change: temperature, humidity, chlorinated water in swimming pool, natural salt of the ocean…

 You know now how is sensitive your baby skin.

C. Is Dry Skin a Symptom of Eczema?

Yes it can be if you let it develop for long time.

Most people don't’ know the difference between Eczema and Dry skin in babies. In fact, they are very different:

·         Normal dry skin: is just dry and flaky, it’s normally very easy to treat.

·         Eczema: it’s hurtful, causing skin crack and bleed.

Check out our full article reporting on the technicaldifference between Eczema and Dry skin in babies with images and very detailed information + caring tips.

D. Some very simple but effective tips for baby healthy skin:

·         Don’t bath your baby more than you absolutely need to.

·         Hydrocortizone is another ingredient to look out for.

·         Dry your baby as soon as they’re out of the bath.

·         Keep a tub of petroleum jelly handy at all times.

·         Wrap your baby up nice and warm when it’s cold

·         Try to find baby products that contain oatmeal.

Tips for Breast-feeding a Baby

About breastfeeding

Have you never tried breastfeeding your baby before ? You should try it out, at least once, it’s a very special experience. Some says that breast-feeding a baby is an essential way of life in the beginning, it seems that make the relationship between you and your baby stronger. However, sometime it can be daunting, but don’t worry, there are a lot of products that can make you comfortable. We can list out here some very userful products such as: The Medela Harmony manual breast pump or Lansinoh Breastmilk storagebags.

As time goes on, you and your baby will become very familiar and comfortable with breastfeeding stuff, at some point your baby will not accept other milk resources. Experts say that we can keep breastfeeding a baby until he/she gets 6 months old. After that you, you should add more food resources into her/his menu. Here comes another question:

Why Should I Stop Breastfeeding a Baby?

It’s mostly because mother will not free enough to breastfeed her baby all the time. Then an other reason, and very important one is after the time of 6 first months, baby needs other food resources to be more independent and accustomed to the environment. At the beginning, your baby maybe will lose weight but in the long run, everything will be fine!

When to Stop Breast-feeding a Baby

Normally expert say mother should stop breast-feeding after 6 months old, however I’ve seen some mothers still keep breastfeeding their baby until 2 years old or until when the baby refuse to take it. It depends really on you/on your schedule.

In all the case, you need encourage your baby to take additional foods after 6 months old.

How to Stop Breast-feeding a Baby

• Don’t just stop all of a sudden
• Follow the rules: The general rule is that you breastfeed exclusively for six months.
• When your child reaches one year’s old: on their first birthday, assess their general progress.
• Putting things into action: when you decide your baby is ready, take things slowly
• See full tips on how to stopbreastfeeding a baby on our baby blog

What if Your Baby Doesn’t Want to Stop Breast-feeding?

• Try to find the drinking routine of the baby and modify it slowly, drive it little by little onto solid foods .
• Once you establish a routine, try to get more control on the situation: make it the way your baby can still be breastfed however lesser on frequency and on quantity.

Read out our full article onbreastfeeding a baby on our baby blog.

Baby Throw Up Mucus: understanding and treatment

Introduction

As new parents, you’ve been surely very worried facing baby vomiting/baby throw up mucus problem. Don’t worry that much, it happens to every baby in the world since their digestive system is still immature. In this little article we’ll go deeper in this topic to see what is baby throw up mucus phenomenon causes and how to treat it at home and when you should take it serious. Read our full article on the “babythrow up mucus” topic here.

1. Causes of Baby Throw Up Mucus

Image caption: Understand the baby vomiting phenomenon helps you to not having usefulness worries.

As mentioned above, baby can have baby vomiting issue quite regularly in their baby-life, it’s normal that happens since their digestive system is not working perfectly yet. A little thing may trigger baby throw up mucus. In general, we can list out cases as below:

Overfeeding

Gassy tummy

Fast milk flow: Take your time and give your baby time to digest smoothly his milk.

Allergies

Other illness infection: Fever can trigger baby vomiting issue.

2. How to control baby throw up mucus?

As parent, you must be very calm facing this issue. The first thing when your baby is throwing up mucus is to avoid that can stuck his/her breathing, it’s primordial. Baby in laying-up position while vomiting is absolutely to be avoided.

• Reduce amount of milk baby takes in each time
• Control milk flow while feeding
• Burp baby after feeding: very important, that helps baby digest better and throw away air while eating. You can ease him/her by handling the baby in standing position, and clap slightly on his/her back. The below video will more speaking:

More tips on babybreastfeeding on our forbabycare blog.

3. When it would be serious ?

It happens many time per days. It’s normal that your baby could throw up a little bit of mucus after feeding time. However when it happens many times per day, it’s not a good sign. Your baby could get an allergy or more serious: a stomach damage.

It’s coming along with breathing issues on your baby.

Baby vomiting mucus with orange, green or bright yellow fluid or dark red one. That means your baby has a serious issue with his/her stomach. You should call your pediatrician as soon as possible.

How to Bathe your Newborn

Being new parent, it’s always stressful. Everyone tells you the newborn is super sensitive and you should be extra careful on looking after her. However, believe me, no matter how many of advices you can remember, no matter thousand of books/articles about baby care you’ve read, you will not know how to hold properly your baby at the first times. In this article we’re talking how to bathe a newborn, it’s even much more tricky!

However, don’t worry, everything will be on track with practices. You just should go slowly and don’t think too much. For how holding properly your baby, you just need to keep her neck/head and her back supported. The neck support is very important because newborn’s neck is still weak and can not hold the head yet.

On the other hand regarding “how to bathe a newborn”, the key point is the preparation. The preparation need to be perfect because once you start bathing your newborn, you will not be able to leave her alone, even for a second.

Initial Preparation

You need to decide what supplies needed for bathing your newborn and make it ready 100%. Item list you can base on:

•  A tub, baby lotion, baby soap, a mug for pouring water, two washcloths, and cotton balls for wiping residual water from your baby’s eyes and ears.
•  Bath toys for your baby
• A soft fluffy towel, baby oil or lotion, a diaper, diaper ointment, and clean clothes.
•  Recommended: rubbing alcohol to clean the umbilical cord area. Read more in our full article on how to bathe yournewborn.
• Optional: baby powder.

Getting the Bath Ready

• Get the baby bath tub ready. FYI standard or full-sized tubs are too deep and big for bathing a newborn. If you don’t have baby tub, use your kitchen sink instead. In this case, do clean up your kitchen sink first in hot water.
• Fill the tub with/sink with warm water. Check the water temperature by your backhand or by one of your arms. It’s more obvious than checking by hands since you’ve touched hot water by hands in above step.

Bathing a Newborn

• Check out all stepsto bathe a newborn on our baby blog.

Fever in Infants: How to Care for your Baby when they have a Fever

What is fever in infants ?

We all know a fever is an abnormally high body temperature. Technically the key number is 98.6 F(37C), however in reality, we consider a person has a fever when his body temperature is above 100.4 F (38C). This little article will make you understand clearly about the fever in infants so that you, as a parent, you will know what to do when your baby has fever.

How can I check out the baby body temperature?

You can check out your baby body temperature first with your hand. To have a specific temperature to see if you need bring your baby to the doctor, you can use a thermometer. Some thermometer is better than other , mostly in term of rapidity measuring.

Check out allamazon thermometer in deals in the full article on our baby blog.

Common causes of fever in Infants

We can list out here some very common causes of fever in babies/infants: teething, vaccination, night sweats and get cold. Other than that there are more serious cause of fever:

•  Rubella
•  Convulsion Fever, or Febrile seizures as it’s more commonly known
•  Malaria
•  Flu

High Fever in Babies Less Than Three Months.

•   0-28 days old and 38 C or higher: you need to bring him/her to hospital right away.
•  29-90 days old considered as high risk if they have any of the following:  a toxic clinical appearance, an abnormal cry, or a fever of 38.5 C or higher. In this case you should bring him/her to hospital as well.

On the other cases, check out now how taking Care ofYour Baby with a Fever at Home in our baby blog.

Eczema in babies - how to care?

Have you ever heard about eczema in babies? It is not simple an itching feeling in skin but will lead to the skin inflammation causing dry skin and peeling off. Now, let us discover about the reason to know how to treat and prevent when the babies got eczema.

1.                      What is Eczema and what disvantages that baby eczema causes to their health?

Eczema in babies is a skin condition that happens in about one five babies and make the baby’s skin dry, sensitive, easy to get itchy, red, scaly patches. In the present, people haven’t found the exact reason caused this disease but it seems to be always happen to babies in the family has a history of allergy, asthma and hay fever.

Eczema in babies

There are two popular kinds of Eczema in babies as:

-               Dry, easily irritated skin: the skin of babies become red, itching, inflammable and scaly. When scratching, there will occur the rift and snatchy line in the skin lead to the secondary infection and becomes scarred.

-               Eczema caused by chemicals such as: nike, shampoos,  washing powders and the fabric softeners…

2.     How can we treat and prevent  the dangers that the baby eczema causes?

There are 5 main aspects of treating and prevent eczema in babies that you could do:

●     Avoid dry skin: this seems to be the simple but very important step to minimize your child eczema. You need to do this following things as your daily routine action:

+ Lukewarm baths: hot water with soap can dry your skin and make the eczema worse so let your baby play and soak in the lukewarm baths.

+ Do not rub dry your towels.

+ Use moisturizing soap with no perfume instead of plain soap.

+ Use moisturizing body lotion for two or four times per day, especially in the affected area.

Have a bath without plain soup and lukewarm water

●     Avoid skin irritants by:

+ Use cotton clothing, don’t use wool and synthetic materials because they will be more abrasive and irritating to skin.

+ Use cotton and soft blanket, towels.

+ Wash new clothes before using to get out the chemicals from the manufacturing process to prevent baby dermatitis.

+ Maintain your home in humidity of 25 to 40 percent. You could buy a humidity gauge and use during winter months as well as use periodically in summer months.

+ Shower or bath after your child plays in grass or engages in the sports.

+ Do not use: perfumed or scented lotion, bubble bath.

●     Avoid allergic triggers as:

+ Food allergies: milk, egg, soil, peanuts, fish and wheat. You should eliminate all above food in 2 to 3 weeks and see dramatic improvement and then, re-introduce each food one as a time to determine which food causes the allergy.

+ Environmental allergies as: pet, dust, pollens…

●     To control the itching the baby eczema causes:

+ Keep fingernail cut short and clean to avoid the bacterias live under the babies nail and skin get pushed deeper into the rash and lessen the trauma to the skin.

+ Wear long sleeves and pants, weather permitting to keep their skin covered as they can’t scratch much.

+ Use medications to reduce baby dermatitis: the effective way to control the itching . Remember that, when using the medications, don’t automatically give the babies medicine everyday. When the eczema is under your control, the rash is mild and your children have little or no itching, let them have a break from the medications.

●             Topical steroid cortisone cream: these creams will minimize the crash and itching that the baby eczema causes. There are many various creams with strength from the extremely mild over the counter hydro cortisone cream to mild, medium. You should use after a bath, apply the cream to the slightly damp skin and apply the steroid cream before applying the moisturizer. You shouldn’t keep using the same strength cream until the rash is gone, when you see the rash, step down to a weaker cream.

Use the creams to minimize the crash and itching

You should be aware that the baby eczema causes the sensitive skin that are very susceptible to bacterial skin infection, especially in the area where the rash becomes worst. For most children, eczema improves during the childhood and may always have a very slight with dry skin but the majority of the children grow up with very little inconvenience of this condition. For the above reason, you don’t need to be too worried. Incase of you think they need for more help, ask the doctor about the counselling. I think that will be alright. The last, wish your babies strong!

Baby eczema causes and treatments

As you know, eczema is one of the most common skin problems for children. Baby eczema causes is a condition of extra-sensitive and dry skin. Most of infants will outgrow it by the time when they are 2 to 3 years old. Children who still have it will usually outgrow it by the time when they become teenagers. If eczema runs in the family, it is more likely to be a lifelong condition. Even so, it is often worse in the first years of life.

Most of infants will outgrow it by the time when they are 2 to 3 years old

Eczema is a vicious cycle! Something irritates your baby’s skin, making it inflamed and red. It itches. He rubs it. The skin becomes more and more inflamed. The outer protective layer of the baby’s skin is lost. The affected area is extra-sensitive to irritants, and dries out easily. He continues to be exposed to whatever it was that triggered the episode in the first place. Even more rash develops. The cycle perpetuates itself.

1.     What are the reasons for eczema in babies?

Many different things can be the trigger or irritating agent for baby dermatitis. Here is a list of common triggers for parents to watch for:

-      Moisture, such as saliva or milk

-      Rubbing the skin

-      Common housedust

-      Overheating

-      Dog or cat dander

-      Wool or other scratchy fabric

-      Clothes washed in irritating detergent

-      Body soap

-      Cigarette smoke

-      Water

Occasionally, the baby eczema causes can be is affected by an allergic reaction to food or foods in the baby’s diet. In general, breast milk is tremendous for controlling eczema (in fact, 6 months of nursing can actually prevent eczema in some children). In some cases, if the nursing mother is consuming dairy products, nuts, seafood, eggs, or possibly other foods (which vary from individual to individual), the baby will be negatively affected. Foods children directly consume that can make eczema in babies worse include egg whites, cows’ milk, citrus like tomatoes, oranges, strawberries, and lemons), nuts and chocolate. If you are using a cows’ milk-based formula, you should try using a soy formula or another hypo-allergenic formula.

2.     What are the treatments for eczema in babies

The first step in treating eczema is to identify the baby eczema causes and avoid it if possible! You may not see an immediate improvement, but if you are going to successfully treat eczema, it is important to break the cycle! Here are some tips for you:

- Avoid situations that will make your child sweat - don’t pile on blankets or put him in a blanket sleeper.

- Cut eggs, cows’ milk, citrus fruits, and peanut products from his diet.

- Wash his clothes in a laundry detergent made for sensitive skin.

- Avoid dressing your baby in wool or any other harsh material (cotton is excellent).

- Avoid long baths to keep baby’s skin healthy. Long baths and soaps are the problem for most children. When the skin prunes, this disrupts the moisture-retaining layer of sensitive skin.

Avoid long baths to keep baby’s skin healthy

- Aim for brief baths, frequent, in lukewarm water, and use a small amount of very mild cleanser, don’t use any unless he is particularly dirty. These brief baths will hydrate the baby’s skin, not dry it out.

- Apply a moisturizing lotion to the affected areas at least twice a day. Apply the moisturizer immediately following his bath, while he is still damp. Consider moisturizers which are hypoallergenic and fragrance free. Regular moisturizer use will keep the skin moist and help protect the skin from other irritants. A humidifier for the room can also help prevent the skin from getting too dry which reduce baby eczema causes.

- Using the mildest form of cortisone will break the cycle. It is not recommended for everyday use. On his face, an over-the-counter strength cortisone cream will usually be sufficient. Do not use anything stronger than the over-the-counter cortisone, unless prescribed for his by her pediatrician. Once the cycle is broken, gradually reduce, then stop, using the cortisone over one week to prevent rebound.

- Recent studies showed that Vitamin D and DHA, one of the important omega-3 fats found in breast milk, can help prevent eczema in young children.

If the baby dermatitis is not adequately controlled with the above measures, you should ask for your doctor an oral medication or stronger creams to control the itching.

Asking doctors for advices

You can help minimize baby eczema causes, but her skin will remain sensitive until she outgrows the condition. A rash on your baby’s face invites you to look beyond the shallow covering of the outer layer of skin to see her true beauty that lies beneath.