I have been practicing pediatrics for 28 years. As a pediatrician, it is my responsibility and necessary to tell parents about the prevention and health care of common diseases in infants and children.
When a child is sick, the child’s fever is probably the most anxious for parents, how to handle it better after the fever?
Fever is the most common symptom in infants and toddlers, and I teach parents to deal with their babies’ fever with ease. Fever is a defensive response of the body to disease. Pediatric fever is a common symptom of many diseases in pediatrics. Low fever, body temperature between 37 to 38.5 ℃, is not harmful to the body, for some diseases, but also help the body to recover, so there is no need to take special cooling anti-fever measures. However, moderate fever (body temperature 38.5 ~ 39 ℃) and high fever (body temperature more than 39 ℃) if it lasts too long, it can cause damage to the body, especially to the central nervous system has a negative impact, so measures must be taken, should be early to the hospital, careful care.
The first choice for fever is to take the physical cooling method. You can use ice packs to cold compress the neck, warm water to rub the large blood vessels, such as the armpits, thigh roots; loose package cooling, and then there can be a warm bath for the child, which can quickly lower the temperature to.
If the temperature does not drop or exceeds 39 degrees later, you should be alert, especially if the parents have a history of high fever convulsions. Because the child’s nervous system is not well developed, high fever is particularly likely to cause convulsions, convulsions, burn too high, the child’s brain is affected. Therefore, generally more than 38.5 degrees need to give children to take some antipyretic drugs, take antipyretic drugs must read the instructions of the drug, or under the guidance of a doctor to use. Be sure to master the dosage, as well as the time to take the medicine, the time should not be too close together.
In addition, I would like to emphasize that antibacterial agents should not be used indiscriminately, because more than 90% of respiratory tract infections are viral infections, unless there are some viral infections that may be combined with bacterial infections, so do not abuse antibacterial agents, or change them frequently, because an antibacterial agent is effective for at least three days.
Many parents have the problem that as soon as their child has a fever or cough, they become particularly anxious. This is because the development of disease treatment is a process, especially viral infections need a time, fever is generally 3-4 days, the course of the disease is generally 7 to 10 days, which is the minimum, pneumonia to 10 to 15 days of the course of the disease. Therefore, parents should not be too anxious, such as the morning to the hospital did not look good, and then go to the hospital in the afternoon to find a doctor, and prescribe a drug, so that frequent changes in medicine labor, but the child because of the frequent use of drugs, drug resistance to drugs. This point should remind parents that we mainly take good care of our children when they are sick and must drink and feed them in a timely manner.
For children with fever, the following three taboos must also be noted.
1, avoid tightly closed doors and windows, too much clothing. Doors and windows closed, not conducive to air circulation, too much clothing, hindering the distribution of heat and evaporation, are not beneficial to reduce fever.
2, avoid the abuse of antipyretic drugs. Antipyretic drugs have side effects, some can even cause white blood cell hypotension, bleeding, hemolysis and other serious reactions, more with no benefit.
3, avoid antipyretic too fast. Fever reduction too fast, too fierce, can cause a large loss of body fluids in children, causing a drop in blood pressure, and even shock, so the fever should be gentle, should not be too fast.
Fever in children is only one manifestation of various diseases. The absence of fever does not necessarily mean that there is no disease, and the remission of fever does not mean that the disease has been cured. Therefore, the key lies in the treatment of the original disease.
How to prevent respiratory and digestive tract diseases in winter?
1, children’s clothing problems: our northern region, indoor heating is very warm, go out very cold, indoor and outdoor to be appropriate according to the change in temperature to increase or decrease clothing. From a medical point of view, the clothes should be moderate, do not wear too much, because the growth of small infants heat production, young children are very active is the nature of the child overdressed a sweat immediately after the activity. After sweating, a little bit of cold wind a blow will be easy to get sick. Therefore, parents should pay special attention to the child wear less clothes than adults wear.
For children who go to kindergarten again, try to give children clothes that are better to put on and take off, don’t wear too much, don’t wear too complicated. Because it is easy to put on and take off in kindergarten, put on a jacket when you go out and take it off when you come in. In this way, the child will not easily sweat profusely and come out of the air to catch a cold. In this way, teachers and parents are careful not to suddenly go outside with sweaty conditions on their children.
When the seasons change, the temperature difference is relatively large, therefore, some parents worry about their children freezing, they give children overdressed, the result of this practice often makes children lose the ability to adapt to climate change. The old saying: cover spring cool autumn makes sense.
2, pay attention to the baby eating and drinking sleep problems: winter because of the cold, baby food, you can properly increase some high-calorie protein, can enhance his resistance. Eat more meat, fish and soy products, and drink more bone broth. Also pay attention to the supplement of fresh vegetables and fruits that contain more vitamins. Especially eat foods that contain more vitamin C
, such as dates, kiwi, bananas. Vitamin C has an antiviral effect. At the same time should drink more water, infants and young children have a strong metabolism, need a lot of water plus dry weather, especially indoor heating should drink more water. In addition, to ensure that infants and children sufficient sleep.
3, to pay attention to exercise children, enhance physical fitness, improve physical resistance is very critical. From the summer time should start to pay attention to training children to adapt to temperature changes, enhance the ability to regulate. For example, from the summer, bath water a little cooler, increase outdoor activities, do not wear too much clothing. Small babies should be more sun bath, air bath, water bath. Let the little baby more lying down, crying, newborn period began to practice crawling, swimming exercise, do not cover too much; young children should strengthen outdoor activities, receive sunlight, strengthen physical exercise, respiratory cold air stimulation and cold tolerance exercise. Especially cold exercise, usually should not wear too much, big point toddlers early in the morning to take children to walk outdoors, it is best not to let children wear hats, masks, if you can adhere to, is definitely beneficial to the body of young children;
4, pay attention to indoor ventilation is very important: this is what we have repeatedly stressed. Every day during the day to pay attention to open the windows to ventilate, so that the air circulation is not easy to catch a cold. Children’s rooms must be open windows and ventilation, parents should not be afraid that children will catch a cold if they blow, in fact, the foul air in the closed room is more detrimental to the health of children.
5, small babies, do not go out when it is particularly cold, at noon there is sun, the weather is warmer and then take out to play, this is one aspect. Then again, it’s best not to take your child to a crowded place in winter. Like public places, there are more people, bacteria and viruses are particularly easy to cross-infection. So, try to take your baby to public places as little as possible.
6, parents who go out to work, should first come home to wash their faces, hands, rinse mouth, and then go to hold the child, so as not to bring home the outside germs to infect the baby. If the mother has a cold, it is best to wear a mask when caring for her infant to avoid infecting her child.
7, if repeated respiratory infections, the resistance of the respiratory tract is poor. Some children may start out with a cold and fever all the time and slowly develop pneumonia or induce asthma. Therefore, such children are also effective in winter with a little vitamin A and D supplementation as appropriate. Because vitamin A has a role in the repair and protection of mucous membranes. In addition, the deficiency of trace elements, such as iron and zinc, can affect the resistance of children can be properly supplemented.
In conclusion: to prevent respiratory infections in infants and children, parents have to do is not to buy some resistance enhancing drugs for their children, but more importantly to do a good job of care and change some bad habits.
What’s wrong with babies who don’t sleep well at night?
First of all, parents should understand the sleep pattern of their children. Because the younger the age, the shorter the sleep cycle, very young babies, the sleep cycle on 60 minutes, the process has light sleep, deep sleep, many parents children a little movement to care for him, attention to him, to hold him, pat him, in fact, if you do not care about him, he entered the next sleep cycle. So, don’t disturb your child’s sleep too much.
There are many reasons for poor sleep, first of all, we must find what causes poor sleep.
1, the environment in which the child sleeps, like the house is too hot or too cold.
2, the bed is not comfortable, bedding is not comfortable, also may not sleep well.
3, too much food at night, or hungry, can make him sleep restless.
4, especially small babies, sleeping more during the day, sleeping upside down may also.
5, like wet diapers, poop up.
6, some diseases, can also sleep poorly, such as calcium deficiency, fistula will also sleep restless, of course, there are easy to panic, excessive sweating, night crying. And then some children do not eat well, tummy pain, etc..
7, slightly older babies, especially excited before bedtime, may sleep poorly at night.
8, too noisy such as when parents sleep late at night, watching TV, which can affect the baby’s rest.
Parents should first take a look for themselves, the baby may have any problems. If you can not solve, you take the baby to the pediatrician, so that he can help you to identify the cause to correct. So, there are many, many reasons for poor sleep, and parents need to look carefully at what is causing the problem.
Families who have the means can take a bath and massage before going to bed at night to make him sleep better. It is best for the baby to have a separate crib and not to sleep with adults. Many are babies sleep with their parents in a bed, so that the baby is easy to sleep restless, it is best to have a separate crib. Don’t keep patting him, holding him or rocking him when he sleeps, let him fall asleep by himself.
What about babies and toddlers who sometimes don’t like to eat and are partial to food? Can I give him food suppressants?
First of all, it depends on the reason why the child does not like to eat. Each child is different in age, grows at a different rate, and the body does not need the same amount of nutrients. Therefore, each child’s appetite and size is different.
We judge whether the child has eaten enough, mainly to determine his growth and development, if his height and weight are growing well, are normal, the body is also very healthy there is no problem, this amount of food is enough. If it is fed too much, stuffed with a lot. Especially to give him a lot of protein stuff, meat to eat, shrimp to eat, parents are very happy, think he eats very well. The result is a poor mix of staple foods, because carbohydrates are needed for energy, and must be supplemented with protein in the case of adequate carbohydrates, protein can be used by the body to grow in the body into meat. Some parents are so focused on their children eating more that some children are particularly disgusted by the sight of rice and are reluctant to eat. Resulting in negative effects, one is that the baby does not like to eat, and then as in the accumulation of food, more likely to get sick. Children hungry to eat is instinctive, can not be forced, eat how much should be decided by the child, and then small babies do not know what to eat, what can not eat, eat what how to match, should be decided by parents, so baby paranoia should not blame the baby.
Many parents always use anti-eating tablets to solve the problem, a period of accumulation of food, eat anti-eating tablets may be relieved. It is medicine, we should not abuse it casually, and there is no benefit to over-eating. So, it helps to take a little when we really notice a problem, but don’t make it a routine.