The first looks of your New Born Baby

Few newborns look picture perfect at birth. They have many variations in normal appearance - from color of the skin to its texture to the shape of the head. Some of these differences are just temporary, part of the physical adjustments a baby goes through. Mentally, mostly all babies are awake and alert during the first few hours after birth.

Physical appearance:

Head
The head may look pointed due of pressure during birth. It would become normal in two weeks. When you touch on the top of your baby's head, you can feel a soft spot. This is the part where the bones of the skull have not joined together. It becomes normal when your child is 16-18months.

Skin
You will find little marks, spots and rashes, red or greenish blue on the skin of your new born baby. This is completely normal and some babies may have more than others. Skin may be peeling on the hands and feet and some babies may have noticeable downy body hair. But all these will disappear on their own accord.

Hands and Feet
The fingernails of the baby seems long at birth. The legs look bowed as he had been lying curled in the womb.

Eyes
The eyes may look as if they are squinting. This is very common in the first months. Puffy or blood shot eyes should be checked by the doctor.

Nose
The nose may appear flat as the bone hasn't yet fully developed.

Genitals
Most of the babies genitals look large. There may have a milky discharge from the breasts and sometimes blood or discharge from the vagina in a baby girl. This is because of an infusion of mother's hormones from the placenta, just before birth. This is perfectly normal and will soon disappear.

Mental Ability :
Mostly all babies are awake and alert during the first few hours after birth. They are attracted to human sights especially faces and human sounds. They have a grasp reflex and sucking reflex. If an object is placed in his palm he involuntarily clenches his fists around it, likewise if the newborn is placed near his mothers breast, the baby will seek the nipple and begin to suck. Babies can see now, although objects may be blurred.

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A Child's Promise: Dental problems disrupt education, life

Dental caries (tooth decay) is the number one untreated disease in children, five times more common than asthma. Each year, 52 million school hours are missed due to dental-related issues. Untreated tooth decay leads to problems with learning, sleeping, eating and growing. Nearly 80 percent of childhood tooth decay occurs in 20 percent of children. Nationwide, 30 to 50 percent of 4- and 5-year-olds in Head Start already have tooth decay. Surprisingly, the number of children getting cavities is increasing; low-income individuals are disproportionately affected by dental disease and most do not have access to dental care. Common barriers to obtaining dental services include:
1. Lack of information regarding the importance of early dental care. A child needs to see a dentist by age one, with six-month check-ups and cleanings. Instead, some parents seek dental care only when their child is in pain. At that point, several teeth may be involved and treatment is more complex.

2. Out of date contact information. Routine dental appointments are scheduled months in advance. When the family address or phone changes, parents do not receive reminder calls or letters and miss their appointments.

3. Lack of access to dental care for individuals, ages 19 to 21. Dental needs for qualifying children are covered comprehensively by MO HealthNet (Missouri Medicaid) through age 19, or age 21 for those with certain special needs. After that, everyone must carry private dental insurance or pay out of pocket. Although several safety-net dental clinics offer a discount through sliding fee programs, dental care cost is still out of reach for many in this age group. No adult dental benefits are provided unless a covered person is blind, pregnant, or in a nursing home.

Locally, several community organizations are addressing this problem. Jordan Valley Dental Clinic and Mobile Unit partners with area organizations to ensure regular dental care for children. The Tooth Truck, part of the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile, visits Springfield schools to provide services to children with the greatest needs. Missouri Mission of Mercy, a program of the Missouri Dental Association and the Greater Springfield Dental Society, will host a free dental clinic in September 2011 for patients of all ages who cannot otherwise afford care.

Below are tips for parents who want to ensure better dental care for children:

1. Take your children to see a dentist by age one or soon after their first tooth erupts. Many dental issues can be resolved quickly if caught early enough. The dentist can also provide information on appropriate bottle and sippy cup use and good nutrition habits.

2. Make sure your children have regular six-month check-ups and cleanings and fluoride applications as needed.

3. Help your children brush their teeth until they can write in cursive. Until then, children do not have the small muscle control to brush as carefully as needed.

4. Provide current contact information to your dental and medical health providers.

5. Set a good example of good oral care by brushing and flossing your own teeth daily.

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Is your child ruining your health?

You might think running around after children would leave you in good shape, but a new study suggests mothers and fathers of toddlers are unhealthier than their childless piers.

Women of young children are heavier and consume more calories, fatty foods and fizzy drinks than those who don’t have kids, according to research from the University of Minnesota.

‘This isn’t a study about blame, this is about identifying a very high-risk time period for parents,’ says co-author Dr Jerica Berge. Doctors should be aware of the risks and be able to offer solutions such as diet advice and parent-child activities, say the researchers.

It is understandable that with a houseful of young children, parents opt for quick and easy meal options, but the study shows mothers with young children eat about 368 more calories than women without. Fathers ate about the same as childless men but got about two hours less physical activity.

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U.S. Kids Getting Lots of Radiation Scans, Study Finds

Exposure to radiation from medical imaging procedures such as X-rays and CT scans has become general among American children, a latest study has found, prompting researchers to call for steps to be taken to ensure appropriate use of the tests to protect children.

Increasing use of diagnostic imaging has led to concerns about radiation exposure. Although X-rays emit relatively little radiation, CT scans emit more and may raise the risk for cancer, mainly in children.

Compared with adults, infants and children are at top risk for tumors because their developing tissues are more sensitive to radiation, the researchers noted.

For the research, Dr. Adam Dorfman, of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor and his colleagues looked at the health insurance records of 355,088 children and teens younger than 18 for a three-year period, from the begin of 2005 through the end of 2007.

In that time, 42 percent of the children had a scan that used radiation, the research found. Most of the 436,711 imaging procedures were done on children older than 10, but infants 2 years or younger also were given scans.

Study: Antibiotics have little impact on child ear infections

Giving children antibiotics for ear infections does little to speed their recovery while raising the risk of some side effects, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical organization.

The study found that 80 out of 100 otherwise healthy children would recover from an acute ear infection within a few days if given medication only to relieve pain or fevers. If all 100 were given antibiotics instead, 92 would be better in the same period, said Dr. Tumaini Coker, the study's lead author.

"But we would also expect three to 10 kids to develop rash and five to 10 to develop diarrhea," said Coker, a pediatrician at Mattel Children's Hospital at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Coker noted that the increased number of children in the study who benefited from treatment with antibiotics was similar to the number that could be expected to get side effects from the antibiotic treatment.

"Clinicians and parents need to know the benefits and side effects on how to manage their child's ear infection," Coker said.

The 5 Bathroom Hazards to Know

Bathrooms should be places of practicality and relaxation, a place to start and end the day. But there are a number of ways in which one room can pose potential threats.

A new study published today in the journal Pediatrics, for example, finds children are falling prey to bathtub injuries at surprising rates.

Lead by Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, the study found that more than 43,000 children younger than 18 are treated in an emergency room each year after a bathroom- or shower-related injury.

"That's 120 kids a day," Smith said. "It is a big problem."

Smith said the injuries occur suddenly, with children often slipping and falling, even under adult supervision, but that there are strategies for prevention that can reduce the number of injuries.

But slips and falls are only one of the ways researchers say items in a bathroom can be hazardous. Some of the threats are founded and others are on shakier ground. The following is a list examining potential bathroom threats.

Bathtub Slips and Falls

Even under parental or other adult supervision, children get injured in bathtubs at an alarming rate, Smith said.

"Supervising your child is not enough," said Smith, whose report showed that most injuries happen under adult supervision. "Slips and falls -- boom, they happen -- and there's nothing you can do once it starts to happen."

Smith said he conducted a study on similar data using admittance records from the emergency room of Nationwide Children's Hospital in 2005 and saw the number of bathtub-related injuries was unusually high, compared to other kinds of injuries.

"I thought, gosh, this is something we really did not expect," Smith said he thought at the time.

That study led him to conduct a more thorough analysis on national data.

The most common cause of injury was slipping and falling, which accounted for 81% of all the injuries, Smith found, and the face is often most injured. The highest-risk age group was children younger than Five.

"The reason we have not done well preventing injuries is we fundamentally don't think of this as a health problem," Smith said. "We know if we focus on the cause ... and think of this as a physical problem, we can resolve them. But the idea that they happen as accidents ... I really disagree with that."

For the time being, Smith said rubber bath mats and padding protruding objects could cut down on the number of injuries but recommended that manufacturers incorporate new design features, including slip-resistant surfaces, rounded edges and holding bars, into new bathrooms.

"You don't have to rely on the user to remember to put the mat down or step carefully each time they bathe because, then, the chances of effective prevention go down," Smith said. "If we design the problem out of existence, we have shown over and over in the field of injury prevention that we can dramatically decrease injury."

Shower Curtain Vapors

A shower curtain may be in order to preserve modesty in the bathroom. But could you be harming yourself at the same time?



An environmental group claimed in a study of vinyl shower curtains that some of them may release toxic chemicals into the air which could cause asthma, eye irritation or cancer.

"We've a clear-cut case that these products release elevated levels of harmful chemicals," said report co-author Michael Schade, PVC campaign coordinator for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, and noted that his team found 108 different volatile organic compounds, including phthalates, which can affect babies in the womb.

But some health experts are not convinced that the study holds water. Of particular concern was that the study only tested 5 shower curtains, of which only one -- not one brand of curtain -- was subjected to complete testing for its chemical composition, as well as those it released into the air.

"It is a great example of how quickly a sound bite can become dangerous and contagious," said ABC News medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard.

"The idea that people should be tossing out their shower curtains based on a study that more or less focuses on a single shower curtain is absurd. This is scare science at its best, or worst, depending on how you look at it."

Schade maintained that many of the compounds found in the curtains have been linked with developmental problems in children, cancer and other health effects. But he conceded that whether the chemical levels emitted by the curtains could be directly linked to health effects was difficult to determine.

"It is really hard to say that because there are currently no standards for indoor-air quality," Schade said.

Consumer Product Safety Commission spokeswoman Julie Vallese said that unless a stronger link can be proven, consumers can probably put their minds at ease the next time they purchase a new shower curtain.

"In our busy lives, there are so many things that people should be or could be focused on to improve their health and safety," Vallese said. "Their shower curtains are not one of them.

"I think there are a lot of people out there sounding the false alarm," she said.

Chemicals in Shampoo:

A report released in March 2009 from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetic Use highlighted the addition of the chemicals formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane to many shampoos, both of which have been linked to cancer and a number of skin conditions.



"Companies can obviously do better, and we need to demand that they do better," said Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetic Use and co-author of the report, released Thursday. "Many companies are already making great products that don't have any of these chemicals [and] many companies in the natural products industry have reformulated to get rid of that problem. We also know many companies are using preservatives that don't use formaldehyde."

According to the authors, the report, called "No More Toxic Tub," is the first to document contamination of bath products with the chemicals.

But while chemicals such as formaldehyde, which are added to many consumer products to increase their shelf life, have been linked to diseases such as cancer -- formaldehyde has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory rats, although no similar tests have been done on humans -- there is no definitive correlation.

There is, however, evidence that formaldehyde can cause skin irritation, characterized by red, burning skin and even allergic reactions, characterized by red, itchy, and blistered skin.

"There are a lot of [ubiquitous] chemicals and ingredients in common household consumer goods that have materials in them that cause allergic reactions," said Dr. Matthew Avram, chief of the Dermatology Laser Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "The skin may have an allergic reaction to the chemicals or an irritant reaction."

Toxic Mold:

A steamy shower might feel good, but the moisture left behind can ravage a bathroom and create health problems for people with respiratory problems.



Dr. Hale Yarmohammadii, an allergy and asthma specialist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, said that mold can wreak havoc in 2 different ways.

"One is an allergic reaction, but not everyone gets this," she said. "And the other problem results from the toxins that mold secretes."

The kind of mold found in homes that can bring about asthma is called stachybotrys -- a black, sticky, slimy fungus. To grow indoors, it needs water, so it is often found around water pipes or in moist areas

People often get vague symptoms from mold exposure, Yarmohammadii said. They might get headaches or feel nauseous or have asthma symptoms.

"If you've mold in part of your house, you've mold spores everywhere," said Harriet Burge, a former professor at Harvard University and the University of Michigan who now serves as director of aerobiology for EMLab P&K, an indoor-air quality testing facility. "The general advice from the public health perspective is if there's mold in your home, remove it."

Dr. Maureen Lichtyeld, who chairs the department of environmental health sciences at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said people with asthma should not be exposed to the mold and that people who were cleaning mold needed proper protection, such as masks and gloves, and people with asthma, especially children, need to stay on their medications.

Lychtyeld said a chlorine solution, plus proper ventilation to keep surfaces dry, should be enough to prevent mold forming in small areas.

Toilet Germs:

Bathrooms are a haven for germs, but not in the way you may think. Toilets, for example, are a beacon of cleanliness because they are cleaned and disinfected on a regular basis.



But germs lurk in abundance in areas or on items that people neglect to clean or position far enough from potential microbes.

"You get a great spray out of the toilet when you flush it," said Charles Gerba, a professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "This throws bacteria out of the toilet."

Fecal bacteria means the bacterium E. coli, which is found in fecal matter, among other things. Gerba's own research on bathroom microbes showed a spray coming out of toilets when they are flushed. That spray, which contains fecal bacteria, goes out but it is unclear how far it travels and where it might end up.

So, while it isn't clear whether the toothbrush in a bathroom will be contaminated with anything from a toilet, it may not be a bad idea to put the lid down and flush.

source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/Story?id=8053784&page=6