"Nine yellows for ten babies", neonatal jaundice is the first problem encountered by many novice parents.
In simple terms, neonatal jaundice is due to the hypoplasia of the newborn liver function, and it is not yet able to effectively decompose the bilirubin in the serum, causing the child to look yellow, which is jaundice.
Neonatal jaundice is divided into physiological jaundice and pathological jaundice.
Most newborns are pathological jaundice, which generally begins to appear 2-3 days after birth, peaks in 4-5 days, gradually declines for about 7-10 days, and is completely normal for 10-14 days. Premature babies may last a little longer, but generally do not require special intervention, increase the number of feedings, and promote the baby's bowel movements. But be careful that if it has not subsided after two weeks, it is best to go to the hospital for a check-up.
Parents should pay attention to pathological jaundice.
Pathological jaundice generally appears within 24 hours of the baby's birth and lasts for a longer period of time, with full-term babies over two weeks and premature babies at more than 4 weeks. The color of jaundice deepens rapidly throughout the day, repeats itself, and may be accompanied by abnormal body temperature and vomiting. Poor spirits, drowsiness, screaming, etc.
If pathological jaundice is not treated in time, the jaundice will worsen and your baby is likely to develop bilirubin encephalopathy. Once a serious bilirubin encephalopathy occurs, the damage to the brain is irreversible, and may even cause death, even if it survives, it will also leave sequelae such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, deafness and so on. Therefore, parents must pay attention to observing the baby's situation, deal with it in time, and actively cooperate with the treatment.
At present, the treatment of neonatal jaundice, blue light irradiation is the most commonly used and relatively safe and effective way, blue light can harm the nerve bilirubin into bilirubin can be directly excreted from the urine and bile, slowly let the child yellow.
But there are also some jaundice that requires special treatments, such as jaundice due to hemolysis, which may require blood exchange, and so on.
There is also a folk way to treat jaundice - basking in the sun.
Theoretically, basking in the sun does help to reduce jaundice, because the sun also includes blue off that can treat jaundice. However, the therapeutic effect of light therapy needs to meet the factors of skin area, light intensity, and light time at the same time.
Hospitals use blue light to treat neonatal jaundice, except for the child's eyes and perineum, other parts are all exposed, and usually require 8 hours of irradiation to reduce bilirubin, and sun exposure, these factors are basically not satisfied.
Moreover, the newborn is exposed to the sun, on the one hand, there is a wind direction of sunburn, and the ultraviolet rays in the sun may also cause damage to the child's eyes, which is not worth the loss.
Now basically after the birth of every newborn, the hospital will detect jaundice, when discharged, conditional can rent a "yellow detection" instrument, test every day, some babies in the discharge when fine, home a few days after the slow start of yellow, as long as there is "yellow" need to continue to test, timely measures to prevent more and more serious.