Newborn Baby Care Six Must Do’s

Newborn Baby Care Six Must Do’s

What Your Newborn Wants You To Know

1.  Baby Sleep Patterns

Your newborn baby will sleep sixteen to seventeen hours a day. Usually two to four hours at a time, day and night. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, sleep when your baby naps as well. Sleep with the baby on your chest for the deepest sleep at nap time for both of you. Your body heat will be soothing to your baby’s immature digestive system providing warmth on the tummy. Your heart beat has been your baby’s home. What might it feel like to be without another heart beat at this time?

2.  Underdeveloped Digestive System 

Your baby’s digestive tract is not fully functional. In the first six months, your baby’s digestive system will undergo enormous change as it develops the ability to produce enzymes to digest food and antibodies to protect itself.

The esophageal valve, which controls the entry of food into your infant’s stomach, is underdeveloped. This is why babies frequently spit up. These digestive shortcomings, along with the immature state of the infant kidney, can put your baby at risk for dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and insufficient absorption of nutrients. All of this activity will waken your baby with the pain of gas and air bubbles. Remember to burp your baby and massage the tummy for relief. Also your body heat helps…it works like a heating pad and is soothing to the tummy. A warm bath with a 1/2 cup of pink Himalayan salt, will relieve the gas.

3.  Regulating Body Temperature

Your newborn baby can not adjust to temperature changes as well as an adult. Babies can lose body heat rapidly, nearly 4 times faster than an adult. They will feel colder sooner than you. Babies don’t have much body fat. Their bodies are be too young to control their own temperature, even in a warm environment.

When your baby gets too cold, the baby uses energy and oxygen to generate warmth. If skin temperatures drops just one degree from the ideal 97.7° F (36.5°C), your baby’s oxygen use can increase by 10 percent. You can check to see if your baby is overheated by feeling her ears and fingers. If your baby is hot, red, and sweaty, the baby is overwrapped. If your baby is only slightly warm and not sweaty, the temperature is probably perfect.

Any time the baby does not have your body heat, the baby needs a fabric against the skin. Just like you would if you were to lay down to sleep. A baby that is experiencing thermal stress is very hard to calm down. A day out in the elements without proper temperature control can create a evening of stress for everyone.

4.  Heart To Heart

Your baby has just arrived from a warm wet nest that has kept your baby curled up and protected. To arrive to dry air while still developing a digestive system and being alone is a very new experience. The most soothing act for your baby is to be body to body with you or another loving family member. Heart to heart, it’s the rhythm of the heart that calms. This experience can be trumped by the feeling of being rocked, in a rocking chair or a glider.

5.  Swaddling Your Newborn

Tight bundling is so successful at soothing infants that some babies even have to be un-swaddled to wake them up for feedings. Babies can feel like they are free falling in dry air after being cocoon in the womb. Never put your baby into bed with loose blankets. Make sure your babies swaddling is snugly wrapped around your baby’s body so it doesn’t loosen during the night. Loose blankets can get around a baby’s face and contribute to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The swaddling is lose near the bottom around the baby’s hips and legs. There is a sleepy for this, check out zipadee zip.

6.  Crying Is Your Invitation To Listen

Crying is the only voice your newborn baby has to communicate what is needed. The parent’s job is to listen to this new voice and hear the clues in the crying. It’s an inquiry that you will  soon learn. Is the baby hunger, wet, have gas, too cold, under some kind of stress? What is needed? Don’t let anyone tell you it’s okay to let a newborn cry. It’s not. If you can not respond get someone to help that can. Babies cry to communicate not to manipulate. They have a need and are telling you. Are you listening?

Learn how to perform an amazing baby calming method by Doctor Robert Hamilton.

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