The first changes in the newborn

Huge changes occur with your newborn. Part of acquaintance with your child is the enjoyment of these fleeting changes.

Respiratory rhythm and sounds

See how your newborn breathes. Note the irregularity of the rhythm. The child does a lot of short breaths of different duration, sometimes breathes in deeply and even from ten to fifteen seconds, it seems, does not breathe at all;then the child takes a deep breath( and you too), and the cycle continues. Called periodic breathing, this irregular breathing is normal for the first few weeks. By the end of the first month, breathing becomes more regular. The smaller the child or the earlier the time he was born, the more irregular his breathing.

First cold. Since the nasal passages of the newborn are very small, even if they are only slightly clogged, this can lead to noisy, labored breathing. You may think that this is the first runny nose of your baby. But, although it is very loud and noisy, this first sniff is usually caused not by infection. The nasal passages of a newborn baby are quickly clogged with down and fleecy from diapers or clothing, dust, remnants of milk, or irritants present in the air, such as cigarette smoke, deodorants, hair spray and aerosols. A clogged nose can cause a child to have many difficulties with breathing, since newborns are forced to breathe through their noses, not the mouth. The newborn, who does not breathe through the nose, does not easily switch to breathing with the mouth, but instead struggles to get more air through the nose. One of the reasons that newborns often sneeze is to clear their nasal passages. It is unlikely that this is the first runny nose of your child. He's just trying to brush his nose.

Anxiety about sudden child death syndrome

Periodic testing of your sleeping baby is a normal protective instinct, but do not let fear of stopping breathing in a dream, or sudden infant death syndrome( apnea) completely take over you. New discoveries about this syndrome, catching up so much fear, but rarely taking place, and what parents can do to prevent misfortune.

The child is choking and suffocating. In

, the time spent in the womb of your baby's lungs was filled with fluid. Most of this fluid was squeezed out of the lungs during passage through the birth canal or was pumped out by a doctor or nurse after birth. If a little mucus is left, your child can cough it out and it instantly sticks to the back of the pharynx. The child chokes, then swallows the excess mucus, and with him again everything is in order. If you put your baby on your side or on your tummy, turning his head to the side, you will not allow the mucus to accumulate in the back of your throat.

Noisy breathing. In addition to the fact that babies are breathing unevenly, they breathe more and noisily. By the end of the first month, you can hear a gurgling sound in the child's throat and feel for something like a rattle in his chest. Your child seems generally healthy and joyful - he just makes noisy sounds. This is not a cold, as it is rarely caused by an infection. Toward the end of the first month or within the second month, children begin to produce a lot of saliva, often more than they can swallow. Part of the saliva accumulates in the back of the pharynx. Passing through it produces a gurgling sound. When you put your hand on the back or on the breast to the child, the rattling that you hear and feel with your hand does not really come from the chest, but from the vibrations created by the air passing through the saliva in the back of the pharynx. These perfectly normal sounds will disappear when the child learns to swallow saliva at the same speed with which it produces it.

You may notice that sounds fade when the child is asleep. This is because the production of saliva decreases when the child falls asleep. Putting the baby to sleep on the tummy, you will allow the saliva how to clean the small spout

Here's how you can ease the breathing of your newborn:

• Put your baby on the tummy, slightly turning his head to the side. In this position, children breathe better, as it allows the tongue and saliva, if present in the pharynx, to move forward, freeing up space for air passage.

• Keep the room where your child sleeps, as clean as possible from fluff and dust. Take out of the room collectors of dust, such as feather pillows, fluffy animals and dozens of donated soft toys, with which most of the newborns are filled up.(There is no need to take everything fluffy out of the nursery if the baby's spout is clean.)

• Keep the baby away from irritations of the nasal passages: cigarette smoke, paint vapors and exhaust, aerosols, perfumes and hair varnishes. Do not allow smoking in the house where your child is. This is one of the most common stimuli of the sensitive nasal passages of the newborn.

• Use a salt spray for the nose or a drop so that the discharge of the nasal mucosa lags behind the walls and the baby sneezes so that these discharges move from the back of the nose to the front where you can easily extract them with a syringe with a rounded tip called a nasalaspirator and is sold in a pharmacy.

flow outward or accumulate behind the cheek instead of the pharynx. Your child will not choke on these secrets and eventually learn to swallow excess saliva. No medication is required.

Normal noise. Newborns can not be called quiet, even when they are asleep. Most sounds are caused by the fact that too much air passes too quickly through narrow paths. Here are our favorite, precious sounds: gurgling, caused by air passing through a pool of saliva in the back of the mouth;if a blocked nose is added, a combination of snoring and gurgling, which we call "grunting", is heard. Through the mucus in the mouth or in the nose can pass a sound, as with belching. Normal breathing can acquire a purring sound( as when pronouncing the throat sound "p"), when air and saliva apply for one place. During sleep, the already narrow airways relax and become even narrower, causing each breath and exhalation to acquire either a musical, or grunting, or sighing sound. And do not forget about this wonderful, like birds, tweets and whistles. Enjoy these sounds, because they will not stay with you for long.

child's peace. If you feed your baby during hiccoughs, it usually goes away.

Hiccup. All children hiccup, in the uterus and outside it. We do not know the cause of this phenomenon, but it does not deliver the