February 19, 2011
Filed under: New Born — Alan @ 6:21 am
If your baby is having problems sleeping, then chances are that you are too and that cannot be good for either of you. The most important thing to remember in a baby’s early stages of development is that your baby has come from a very specific environment, that of the womb, therefore, in order to keep your baby happy, you should aim to replicate the environment of the womb as much as possible.
It should not surprise you to know, then, that your baby may need noise to sleep and not peace and quiet. It’s not so strange as it sounds. You would think that the womb is a quiet place to be, but you would be wrong. The womb contains plenty of fluid and fluid is a great carrier of sound. Think about it, when you’re under water, you can hear plenty of sound, you may not be able to make out exactly what the sounds are, but you can certainly hear them.
Recreating the right kinds of noises will help your baby to sleep. Think of that time spent under water, think of noises that you cannot make out, in short, white noise. Your vacuum cleaner is a good example. It might even be worth changing your cleaning route to do the vacuuming at the time your baby is settling down to sleep. Fans are also a good idea. Not only will they keep your baby cool but the noise they make is also the right kind of noise. You can also get CDs that play white noise.
Whichever method you choose, the volume level should be about that of the average vacuum cleaner, that is, loud enough to drown out any extraneous noises. You could even try and drown out the noise from a neighbour’s party, but the muffled noise from the party may actually help.
November 23, 2010
Filed under: New Born — Alan @ 10:57 pm
The Apgar score is a point system, which can be standardized to assess the clinical condition of newborns. Using this score, it manages to describe the adjustment to life outside the womb and the release of the foetal to the neonatal condition. Next result is the effect of resuscitation measures. The score was first introduced in 1952 by the American anaesthesiologist Virginia Apgar and was named after her.
Many babies died from undiagnosed prenatal damage that worsened after birth, but also as a result of defects or injuries during the birth process, such as cerebral haemorrhage, oxygen deficiency, or a combination of such damages.
Prior to the universality of the Apgar scores, one newborn was wrapped in a blanket and studied later in the nursery. Respiratory and circulatory problems that could easily be treated if they had been detected immediately after birth, often lead to many complications with lifelong consequences or even death of the child.
Virginia Apgar wrote in her book “Is My Baby All Right?” “The birth is the most dangerous period of life. It is urgent to assess the health status of newborns and quickly diagnose symptoms occurring immediately to take appropriate action.”
Implementation
The Apgar score has five components:
Heart rate
Respiratory effort
Reflex irritability;
Muscle tone;
Skin colour.
The determination is now 1, 5 and 10 minutes after birth. For the characters there are each 0 points (features missing), 1 point (features not developed) or 2 points (features existent) and this is entered in the study protocol, the maximum achievable score being 10. “Mature” babies, i.e. after 37 weeks of gestation, have no abnormalities and have adapted well, and remain on the maternity ward with their mother.
Criterion 0 points 1 point 2 points
Heart rate over 100/min with no heartbeat
No irregular respiratory drive, child cries
No strong reflections grimacing screaming
Limp muscle tone, slight flexion of the limb, active movement of the extremities
Blue in colour, pale pink trunk, extremities blue, whole body rosy
The optimal score for newborns are 90 – 10 points. With scores between 5 – 8 the newborn is considered impaired.
The Apgar score describes the physiological and path physiological condition of the newborn within a limited period of time. It also includes subjective components. The score can be affected by drugs, infections, birth trauma, congenital abnormalities and other factors.
The maturity of the child also affects the Apgar score. Premature babies can not sufficiently assess the score, with features such as breathing, muscle tone and reflexes which are dependent on gestational age.
Thus a healthy preterm infant without signs of asphyxia may be able to get a low Apgar score, because it is immature. The frequency of low Apgar scores is inversely proportional to birth weight.
The score alone is not enough also to make the diagnosis of asphyxia. A low Apgar score therefore allows no prediction regarding morbidity and mortality. There is a clear difference between an Apgar score, which is charged during resuscitation, and a score in a spontaneously breathing newborn, because the components of the score will be influenced largely by the resuscitation.
September 26, 2010
Filed under: New Born — Alan @ 4:28 am
The survival rate is the percentage of babies who live a certain length of time after a disease is diagnosed. This term is used in most cases in diseases that have a poor prognosis by causing high mortality in a given period, such as cancer. The survival rates of five years are used to establish a conventional wisdom to establish the prognosis.
The survival rate can be of two types:
Relative survival rate or specific to five years of statistical calculations exclude patients who have died from other diseases and is considered a more accurate way to describe the prognosis of baby’s with particular types and stages of cancer (although death from other causes does not mean that in that period they could not have died of this disease in particular).
Rate or actuarial overall survival at five years: Refers to the percentage of children alive after five years.
The inverse of the survival rate is the rate of mortality. Because 5-year rates are based on patients being diagnosed and initially treated more than five years ago, it is probably no longer correct today. Improvements in treatment often result in a more favorable prognosis for newly diagnosed patients. Terms related to survival rate, although they are not synonyms are:
Median survival
Survival time
Survival function
August 25, 2010
Filed under: Baby health,New Born,Premature babies — admin @ 8:59 pm
As part of the First Cut strand, showcasing, bold, bright and original documentaries by up-and-coming film-makers, Lucy Morgan directs The Incubator a film that sensitively considers the story of children born too early to survive outside an incubator. For the 50,000 children who are born prematurely each year, the incubator provides them with a chance of survival. With unique access to a neonatal intensive care ward, this film follows the journey of four different families. In a world of high emotions The Incubator shares personal family moments as parents hold their babies for the first time, see their children through life saving surgery and, after many months of sitting beside an incubator, get to take their children home.
The Incubator is being shown on Friday 24th August at 7.30pm on Channel 4. More information available here – http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-incubator/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1.
June 3, 2010
Filed under: New Born — Alan @ 11:21 am
When Richard Roden found out that he would be the oldest father of twins in 2009 at the age of 72, he and his wife started to discuss the possibility of more children. This week it was revealed that their wish was granted quickly with Lisa Roden already two months pregnant within very little time.
The incoming child will be the 13th child for Richard who has been married three times before and her third. Similar to the twins, the child was conceived without any fertility treatments.
Richard stated that he is overjoyed at the news and while it is a bit more tiring to be a father at 72 versus in his twenties he is pleased at the idea. He was 71 when his twins were born in 2009, making them 50 years younger than his first child.
Often, Richard says that he is confused for the children’s grandfather while he is out in public with the twins and also is hassled with shouts of ‘cradle snatcher’ while out with his 26 year old wife.
The couple met at an adult education college in 2005 and became lovers one short year later marrying in September of 2009.
Lisa said she was surprised by how quickly the pregnancy occurred and that there will be three babies in the home under the age of three once the new baby is born but that Richard and her are soul mates and the age gap does not matter.
She added that he is great with the twins and she expects that he will be just as excellent when her next child arrives. Lisa has one child from a previous child also age 8.
December 4, 2009
Filed under: New Born — Alan @ 4:57 am
During Dafi Evans birth doctors used a form of superglue called Histoacryl to plug up a hole that had formed in his brain and would have caused his death within a few days of his birth.
The leak in his brain is part of a condition known as Vein of Galen malformation and is a condition in which the veins and arteries in the brain are missing capillaries that help increase the blood flow. As a result of the problem the brain is not able to absorb enough nutrients or oxygen.
Most of the time this leads to death due to stress on the heart or water that forms in the brain.
However, 16 months after his birth Dafi is now on par with a normal development path and his parents are sure that he was a miracle.
According to his mother, Catrin Evans, it is hard to look at Dafi now and believe that he is doing so well given that the operation was extremely dangerous but seemed so simple with only a simple cut required.
Evans first knew of the condition in her child when a scan showed that there was a dark patch on his brain and doctors informed her that there was not much hope her son would survive.
The procedure to seal the brain involves placing a catheter through the groin area and stringing it up to the brain area where the “superglue” is squeezed out.
November 10, 2009
Filed under: New Born — Alan @ 7:37 am
Although many people say babies are speaking baby talk while infants, studies state that their crying actually forms melodic patterns that resemble patterns found in adult conversation.
In a research study led by medical anthropologist Kathleen Werme and her team of colleagues at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, babies are able to form cries that resemble their parents’ language by just two to five days of age.
Each language and accent uses different melodies and pitch shifts to emphasize certain phrases and words with extra meaning. According to Wermke, a baby can hear what adults in their life are saying a few months before they are born thus training them to recreate the melodies they hear while in the womb.
Wermke continued to say that infant crying is the root of the beginning of language development since melody is the root of both the development of music and language.
Proposals by the team suggest that newborns are replicating the voice and melodies that are the most common in their mothers’ voice. After birth the researchers found that the babies offered some recognizable changes in melody that may reflect the language that was spoken prior to birth.
In order to compile data the research by Wemke and her team members included 60 healthy newborns half of which were French and the other half which were German.
October 2, 2009
Filed under: New Born — Alan @ 7:21 am
Babies born with oxygen starvation may now have a better chance against possible brain damage, this is due to a new therapy that lowers the baby’s body temperature, and thus, the babies the risk of brain damage is lowered.
Common birth complications that cause oxygen deprivation include the baby twisting the umbilical cord around its next, which happens in two births out of every thousand. The results of this devastating complication can be as severe as long lasting neurological problems, and cerebral palsy.
Traditionally, babies are placed into an incubator on a ventilator to facilitate breathing and to keep the child warm. But a newly published clinical trial shows, that lowering body temperatures may actually increase the long term outcomes of children facing oxygen deprivation.
The study included 325 newborn infants and showed that those who were cooled instead of warmed showed a 57% better chance of avoiding brain damage.
The principal of the study is based around the fact that lower temperatures lower the metabolism of the body. Lower temperatures create a longer window in which brain neurons can be deprived of oxygen, before they suffer irreparable damage.
Additionally, reducing the amount of oxygen metabolism that takes place in the body means that the oxygen is distributed to cells in a more efficient manner.
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