Audiovisual ITU Video

• Baby

  • Developmental

  • Immunization

  • Pediatrician

  • Examinations

• Care

  • Bathing

  • Day Care

  • Diapering

  • Twins

• Parenting

  • Grandparenting

  • Motherhood

  • Fitness

  • Health

  • Obstetrician

    • Labor

• Social

  • Pets

  • Siblings

Bathing Your Baby

Most babies come home from the hospital with remnants of the umbilical cord still attached to the belly button, or the umbilicus. Until this falls off give your baby only sponge baths. Clean the navel area twice a day or so with a cotton swab dipped in antiseptic. Do this gently but thoroughly, making sure to get to the base of the cord stump. Watch for yellow matter, a sort of “weeping” that may develop, and for redness. These are signs of possible infection-notify your doctor if they persist. Keeping the top edges of the baby’s diaper folded down below the navel will help to keep the area dry. When the cord falls off, usually within ten days to two weeks after the baby’s birth, it is not unusual for a few drops of blood to be left on the navel. No bandage, binding, or tape is required. If the umbilicus doesn’t dry up in a few days after the cord comes off, an umbilical granuloma may be present. This is a little nubbin of tissue in the umbilicus at the junction of the old cord and the new skin. Your doctor can remedy the situation easily at the baby’s first checkup. If there is much bleeding or a foul odor coming from the cord, consult your doctor earlier for any special instructions needed.

For a sponge bath, you will need a warm, draft free room, a basin of lukewarm water, and two big towels-one to bathe the baby on, and the other to wrap him in after the bath. If your baby cries when totally undressed, give him a bath in stages, removing only part of the clothing at one time. Many babies love the feeling of being totally naked, though and enjoy waving their arms and legs about freely. You don’t really need soap for a newborn, some parents don’t use it for several months. If you can’t bring yourself from skipping it altogether, use very little because soap will dry up your baby’s delicate skin. Ordinary scented soap may trigger an allergic reaction, and it will disguise the wonderful “baby smell” that lets everyone in the house know that an infant is present.

Infants do not need to be bathed every day. The diaper area is of course, cleaned frequently, and two or three full baths a week are sufficient.

Diapering and Dressing

You’ll probably feel a little awkward and clumsy the first few times you diaper and dress your baby, but with a little practice, you’ll be handling him with ease and confidence. Use a waist high table of some kind even for a tiny baby so you won’t have backaches. An old dresser with a pad on top will now, but modern changing tables have built-in safety straps to hold your baby when he is old enough to squirm and resist. If you use disposables, diapering is almost automatic: lay the baby on the diaper, fold the front half of the diaper up over the baby and fasten it with the convenient attached tapes. [Those tapes sometimes tear, instead of throwing a diaper away, mend it with masking tape.] To keep wetness from soaking into outer clothing, use disposables with elasticized legs and turn the plastic top of the diaper to the inside. A cloth diaper can be given a figure eight twist at the crotch for both double thickness and a tighter fit. Pin the back of the diaper over the front, slipping one or two fingers between the cloth and the baby’s skin to keep the pin from sticking the baby. Use a pincushion or bar of soap to hold diaper pins [do not use ordinary safety pins, and keep them out of the baby’s reach] Never hold pins in your mouth. Whichever kind of diaper you use, lay an extra one over your baby boy to avoid being squirted while you change him.

The kinds of clothing you select for your baby will reflect your own taste and inclinations. Some parents are willing to spend the extra time necessary to iron natural-fiber, woven- fabric because they like the look of a dressed up baby; others opt for simple knit clothing that needs little care. Whichever kind of clothing you prefer, look for garments that will be easy for you to put on and take off the baby-those with few, if any buttons, necklines with large enough openings to fit easily over the baby’s head, and sturdy crotch fasteners that make diaper changing easier.

• Baby

  • Baby Blues

  • Baby Care

  • Baby Names

  • Baby Nursery

  • Baby Shower

  • Baby’s First

  • Cognitive Development

  • Down Syndrome

  • Teething

• Parenting

  • Birth

  • Child Care

  • Fatherhood

  • Grandparents

  • Labor

  • Motherhood

    • Breastfeeding

    • Pregnancy

  • Twins Triples

• Social

The woman who at 43 has still not decided to have a baby will probably join the increasing numbers of women who are choosing never to have children. Recent statistics have shown a definite increase in the number of women choosing to remain childless. In I982, 4.9% of all women of childbearing age were voluntarily childless. By I995, the percentage had increased to 6.6%. (National Center for Health Statistics, I995) Although there is a shift towards later childbearing, statistics show that this increase in childlessness is likely to continue among younger women.

Aside from those who decide not to have children, there are those who want children very much and are unable to have them.

Tremendous advances have been made in infertility treatment over the past two decades. Of the nearly 5 million American couples who report difficulty or delays in achieving a live birth, I.3 million will receive medical advice or treatment for infertility. According to the American Medical Association Encyclopedia of Medicine (I989), professional treatment aids approximately half the women who seek help for fertility problems.

For those who have, for whatever reason, postponed having a baby into their mid- to late 30s, infertility can be a devastating blow. “I know it’s covered in the papers and I knew it was a risk, but I still didn’t think it would ever happen to me,” says Gina, 37. “After six months of trying I went to the doctor and he said, ‘Give it time. You’re not as fertile as you were. If you haven’t conceived in another six months we’ll do something.’ I hadn’t, so back to the doctor. He referred us to a clinic, but the first available appointment was three months away. Meanwhile, nothing happened. We had tests. They went on for months; each test had to be done only at the most fertile time of the month, so that took months to arrange. In the end they discovered I had blocked tubes, probably as a result of an appendicitis operation I had when I was a teenager. The discovery that there really was something wrong was appalling. I felt I only had about three years left.” Gina conceived two years later on her second attempt at IVF (in-vitro fertilization).

Many women find infertility is a terrible irony after years of using contraception. “I was on the Pill for I2 years. Then I discovered I had never ovulated to begin with. Those pregnancy scares I had when I’d taken chances before I went on the Pill, all those years of swallowing hormones-it all seemed so pointless. I was really angry and distressed.”

Rachel had always wanted children, but didn’t marry until she was 36. “We tried for a baby immediately. Nothing happened. After about nine months we started to do temperature charts. They seemed to show I was ovulating, and so then there was the awful business of trying to time sex for the most fertile time in my cycle. Those temperature charts started to dominate our sex lifePaul said he couldn’t stand being told when to perform. He thought I was being neurotic. Once he found out it wasn’t his sperm that were at fault, he lost interest in the whole process. I was devastated-if I didn’t have children, what else was there to look forward to?”

Those who remain childless, whether by choice or not, often find themselves put under considerable pressure by others. Questions such as, “So, when are you going to have a baby?” or

“Don’t you think it’s selfish not to have children?” are heard frequently. Some women do feel pressured into having a child by the outside world. “I had been putting it off and putting it off, and I’m not sure I really wanted a child. But then I thought, this is something almost everybody does. Will I feel I’ve missed something?” Pressure is put on women to have children by family and friends and, notoriously, by parents wanting grandchildren.

“My mother went on and on about having a grandchild and finally I said, ‘My career is important to me. If I have a baby, will you take care of it while I go back to work?’ She agreed-and it has worked out really well for us.” Others are not so lucky or do not give in to parental pressures. This can create a lot of stress in family relationships. “My mother complained about it so much, how unhappy I was making her, that she couldn’t see the point in life if she didn’t have grandchildren, that I started avoiding her.

Not only does she not have a grandchild, she’s on the way to losing her daughter, too.”