Activities performed in the maternity hospital
In order to assess the overall health of your child and take certain preventive measures, the following procedures are performed in the maternity hospital and even sometimes after childbirth outside the hospital walls.
The Apgar Scale
Immediately after birth, your child receives an "evaluation", a reminder that the child enters a quantitative world where people compare and evaluate from the moment of birth throughout life. The Apgar scale, developed by Dr. Virginia Apgar in 1952, is a way to quickly assess the child's initial health status. On this scale, first, one minute after birth, and then five minutes after birth, an assessment is made of your child's heart rate, respiratory effort, skin color, muscle tone and activity, as well as response to stimulation.
Not a dozen. What does the Apgar scale actually mean? A child who scored 10 points is more healthy than the one who scored 8?Not necessary! The Apgar scale was originally developed for medical personnel in order to determine which children need more careful observation. A child who received 5 points needs closer observation than a child who received from 7 to 10. This scale could be called "What kind of child is especially taken care of."A child who received an Apgar score of 5-6 points a minute after birth, but five minutes after birth, increased his score to 7-10, goes into the category of children, which you can not worry about. A child who started an
life with 5 Apgar points and remained at the same 5 points 5 minutes after birth needs closer observation, possibly in an intermediate children's room, from which he will then be transferred to the mother's ward when the life support systemsstabilize.
Ideal 10 points are rare. Although there are newborns that are all bright pink, breathing normally, have a normal heart rate, demonstrate strong muscle movements and scream with all their might, most perfectly normal, healthy newborns do not get the maximum score. Since the newborn's blood circulation system requires at least a few minutes to adjust to life outside the uterus, it is perfectly normal for a newborn to have blue hands and feet in the first few hours. In addition, some children are naturally quiet right after birth. In fact, some of the healthiest newborns I've ever seen, five minutes after birth, are in a state of calm alertness, but on the Apgar scale they lose points because there is no "healthy scream".
This is not an IQ test for babies.
The Apgar scale should be labeled: "Strictly for the medical staff", but over time this scale got to parents who saw in the resulting figure something like a result of intelligence testing - hence the parents of children who scored few points are unnecessarily worried. It is rare to trace any correspondence between the points scored for Apgar and the development of the child in the distant future. If your child has pink lips and he breathes normally, there is every chance that this is a healthy newborn.
Vitamin K
A newborn can have a temporary vitamin K deficiency. Immediately after birth, the baby is injected with vitamin K, which ensures normal blood clotting and reduces the risk of hemorrhages to vital organs and tissues. You can ask the nurse to postpone this injection for several hours so that the child can first stay with you. But if the idea that your baby, who is only a few hours old, is to receive the first injection, is unbearable for you, recent studies have shown that the same dose of vitamin K is equally effective for healthy children born on time, if you enterher orally( through the mouth).
Eye Ointment
To protect the child's eyes from pathogens that could enter the eyes during passage through the birth canal,
in them lay ointment with an antibiotic - erythromycin. This ointment is completely harmless to the eye, but it can temporarily cloud your eyesight. Since it is very important for the child to look into your eyes immediately after birth - this is one of the culmination moments of establishing contact - you can without any damage to the child's health ask the nurse to postpone the introduction of this ointment until you spend some time together with the child.(Drops with silver nitrate, a source of irritation to the child's eyes and anxiety for the parents are no longer used as a mandatory medicine for the eyes.)
Blood tests
After the baby is born, a sample of blood from the umbilical cord is taken to determine the blood group and the Rh factor of the child. Several days later, a few drops of blood are taken from the baby's heel for analysis on the following diseases, listed since the most common.(This screening test, or mandatory blood test of newborns, is usually called a phenylketonuria assay, but since this analysis most often reveals hypothyroidism, this blood test should be renamed.)
Hypothyroidism( hypothyroidism).
The cause of this disease is the anomaly of the thyroid gland, found in one out of every five thousand newborns. If the disease is not detected and not treated, it can lead to mental retardation. Treatment with thyroid hormones is all the more effective than before.
Phenylketonuria. The analysis of the blood of newborns also reveals fe-nilketonuria, an extremely rare disease that occurs in about one in fifteen thousand newborns. Without treatment, damage to the brain can occur;With early detection and treatment of a special diet, a child can develop normally.
. Galactosemia. Among the diseases detected in this analysis, galactosemia is the rarest, occurring in one of sixty thousand children. It is caused by deficiency of a certain enzyme;as a result, harmful substances accumulate in the blood of the child and damage vital tissues, which, without treatment, leads to death. Like phenylketonuria, this disease can be treated with a special diet.