A baby in Texas was born or the second time recently, 12 weeks after having had surgery to remove a tumor.
The mother, Margaret Boemer, of Plano, Texas, went in for what was supposed to be a routine ultrasound at 16 weeks only to be told that her unborn baby had sacrococcygeal teratoma. Though sacrococcygeal teratoma is the most common type of tumor in newborns, it is actually a rare condition that affects only one in every 35,000 births.
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New evidence from a Brazilian study has the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urging parents of infants exposed to Zika virus during pregnancy to undergo hearing testing.
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By Vanesa Sallego
Swaddling has been found to be an effective way to soothe a fussy or colicky baby, as well as a way to help your baby sleep better. This method for wrapping your baby, which mimics the warmth and comfort they felt in the womb, needs to be done properly in order to be effective and safe.
The following are step-by-step instructions on how to swaddle a baby.
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The APGAR score (also called “newborn scoring”) is the first test that your newborn baby will ever be given. It is performed in hospitals throughout the world by the doctor, midwife or nurse. It is usually done twice, at 1 minute after birth, then again at 5 minutes. Occasionally, if the baby does not appear to be doing well, or the score was low at 5 minutes, the test may be done a third time 10 minutes after birth.
The APGAR scores are simply a way for the healthcare provider to quickly assess a newborn’s physical condition, and determine whether extra medical or emergency care is needed. The tests indicate if the infant needs help breathing or is having heart trouble.
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Babies come into the world helpless and completely dependent on others to protect them and care for them. That much, we all know. But it turns out that newborns come equipped with a number of instincts — reflexes that will help insure a baby’s survival from the start, even before the infant has had a chance to learn how to do anything. Doctors test reflexes as a way to assess how well infants’ nervous systems are developing.
Most newborn reflexes start fading by the second month, and they’ve generally disappeared by the fourth month. Doctors caution that if baby reflexes continue beyond the fourth to sixth month, parents should tell that to their pediatrician, as it could possibly indicate that there is a neurologic concern.
We are all appreciative of the advances that have been made in safely delivering infants in our modern age, which have increased the number of live births, compared to many decades ago. However, just like doctors can get carried away doing unnecessary medical interventions and prescribing drugs that aren’t really needed, in general and specialized medicine, the specialty of obstetrics is no different.
An expectant woman does well to gather all the information she can about labor and delivery, before her due date arrives. Quite unfortunately, in regular hospitals, it is more the norm than the exception to subject mother and baby to procedures that go too far, and which can result in unnecessary complications for mother and infant.
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The placenta is the organ that a pregnant woman develops inside her uterus, to transfer oxygen and nutrients to her baby via the blood, while removing gasses and other waste from the infant. Researchers once thought that the placenta was a “sterile” environment, devoid of any bacteria that might find its way to the growing baby attached by the umbilical cord. But a new study has uncovered that the placenta actually harbors hundreds of bacteria species; most of them are harmless or beneficial.
Scientists found about 300 types of bacteria; they then compared the distribution of bacteria types with those that had been found previously in other parts of mothers’ bodies, including the mouth, skin, gut and vagina.
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In most hospitals, a newborn’s umbilical cord is clamped within 15-20 seconds after birth. Doctors do this to lessen the possibility of hemorrhaging for the mother. But a review of studies has found that delaying clamping of the cord just a little longer is very beneficial for the baby, and does not appear to increase the risk of severe bleeding (or other complications) for the mother.
The review, published online recently in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, found that delaying cord-clamping for at least one minute after birth greatly improves iron and hemoglobin levels in newborns (hemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to all the tissues and organs; more iron means more hemoglobin will be made). Delaying clamping of the cord allows more blood and its iron to pulsate from the placenta and umbilical cord into the baby.
Read MoreA study in Japan has shown that a crying baby’s heart rate drops very quickly if the infant is picked up and carried by a familiar caregiver. Just holding the baby won’t do; the infant has to be picked up and carried.
Lead researcher and neurobiologist Dr. Kumi Kuroda, of the Riken Brain Science Institute, theorized that this is the same response that we see in other mammals, including puppies, kittens and lion cubs, all of which relax and go limp when picked up and carried with their mothers’ mouths.
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