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The doctors introduce the topic and explain how often newborns eat, how feeding is monitored, and how parents can tell if baby is getting enough milk.
hi everyone we are the doctors bjorkman a physician couple going through pregnancy ourselves for the very first time sharing with you all our medical expertise and our real life experiences along the way this week we are going tocover a question i had myself so stay tuned as we find out together everything that your pediatrician wants you to know when you are taking home baby for the first time yeah and in case you've never met usbefore i'm kurt i'm a pediatrician i'm sarah i'm an ob gyn and i am 25 weeks pregnant and we are the doctors bjorkman
so this week we were sitting having dinner and i kind of realized how little i really know about what you need to know about bringing home a new baby i just deliver them and i said to kurt isaid you know do they even have diapers at the hospital for the baby or do you need to take them like what do we need to be doing and so with that this week we're going to dive intoall the things that i as a board certified pediatrician want parents to know about taking home and caring for a brand new baby so the first thing parents need to know is that babies eat a lot you canexpect your baby to be eating at least eight to 12 times a day and that comes out too at least every three hours and so in the pediatrics world we say feet we gauge feedings on from the time
of the beginning of one feed to the next and we say babies are going to feed at least every three hours usually on average it is very normal for babies to have cluster feedings or they may feed andthen feed again and then feed again but it is safe to assume that as new parents you're going to be very busy with baby just from a feeding standpoint and i've heard that from a lot of my friendswho have just recently had babies just that you're gonna be surprised how much time you actually spend feeding the baby in those first few weeks it's just all day you feed the baby yep and so one of thethings that the pediatrician is gonna do at the each day in the hospital before you go home and then at checkups when you come back a couple days later then at a two-week visit is they're going to see
how a baby's feeding by measuring their weight but you may say hey you know i don't have a scale at home how do i know baby's getting enough and a good way you can know babies getting enough toeat is by how much is coming out
This section covers what to expect from newborn wet and dirty diapers, including normal stool colors, frequency, and signs that should prompt concern.
and so with that just as much as they're eating you're going to expect that they're going to be peeing and pooping a lot too so we like to say babies should have a wet diaper or pee at leastthree times a day but oftentimes babies may pee with every feeding too and then with that too they're going to poop a lot too and so in those first couple days that poop is going to be kind ofblack tarry meconium looking stuff but over the course of the first few days it's going to thin out it's going to go to green and then to yellow if they're breast-fed babies they're usually looks a little seedy likethere's mustard seeds in it it's not what they are it's just kind of the texture of the digestive breast milk they're formula fed it's sometimes maybe a little thicker but usually we say you know day one they have
one poop day two they have two poops by the time they're four days old they're having four poops a day sometimes with every feeding just the same and i would say poor kurt on this one one of themost common questions that we kurt has gotten from my friends um is is is my baby's poop normal and they will send me pictures of their babies diapers full of poop or come show him at the hospital isthis normal so it is very normal to be wondering having those questions and so you can refer back to this of kind of what to expect it to look like in those first few days it's going to changea lot yeah and you might see all colors of things in your baby's diapers um you know the things that i like to say is yellow is fine green is fine brown is fine black in those first couple
days is fine things that would maybe alarm me as a pediatrician or like make me look into it further would be if the poop was white or if you thought you saw like actual blood in the poop ithink another thing that sometimes parents wonder about is just babies straining you know this is a brand new thing for them and so you may say like babies are just look like they're straining to poop a lot ofthis is just kind of their normal way of learning their bowels and as long as those poops are soft then you don't have to worry so much about constipation as babies get a little older they may start topoop once a day or every other day and as long as they aren't having pain with that or firm balls of poop then you know that they're in a pretty good spot with that
They explain safe sleep practices, including back sleeping and keeping the crib empty, then move into how to care for the umbilical cord and diaper-area concerns.
uh the next thing i like to talk about is sleep um and sleep is incredibly important and actually can be a dangerous time for baby because it's the time when they are not being observed as opposed to whenthey're awake and they're always in someone's arms are being watched and so the most important thing is that baby sleeps on their back okay we say an empty crib swaddled just in one blanket around maybe one layer ofclothes um on their back to sleep and this was what you know one i wasn't 100 sure of is what about the bumpers like the really cute bumpers for the crib yeah and so we say no bumpers noextra blankets no toys in the crib and the biggest reason for this is a young baby who isn't able to protect their own face or roll over on their own we would hate to have them have something in
front of their face that would impede them from taking normal breaths with that and be a potential risk for sudden infant death syndrome so we realize this may be sounds kind of um over cautious but this is avery real risk that we know that if we have babies on their backs to sleep in an empty crib that is the safest way for baby to sleep can i ever put the bumpers in her crib yeah soonce babies are able to roll themselves over and they're able to kind of take care of themselves you could think about having bumpers in the crib but again the biggest thing is for newborn infants empty crib on theirbacks it's just so cute but safe baby is more important the next thing i like to talk to parents about is just caring for the umbilical cord so you may ask gosh like there's this stump of tissue here
at the bellybutton site what do i do with it it looks nasty it looks gross there's all sorts of old practices with that the best thing to do is to leave it alone you don't need to wipe itwith alcohol you don't need to clean it the goal is to let it dry off dry out and it usually falls off in the first week of life you may notice a couple little drops of blood at thetime um but that's about it and that should be it after that you can start bathing the baby but before that you should just say sponge bathing to try to keep that area dry so you said leave italone keep it dry you don't need to do anything but what am i looking out for that would be not good yeah so there are some rare complications that can come up with the belly button the only reason
that you i as a pediatrician would want to hear from you about it is if you thought it was really red or angry looking or looked swollen around the bellybutton site there are some rare infections that can happenin this area or even if you thought there was persistent drainage sometimes that's a little thing that can happen that your pediatrician will be able to help you troubleshoot and take care of if it's an issue at alldoes it go like above the diaper or is it in the diaper does it matter if it touches the diaper um i usually say if you can keep the belly button exposed it just helps to dry out andfall off and do its normal process a little bit faster rather than keeping it covered where it might stay moist and get kind of goopy and gross okaythat which we just too talking about things in the diaper area so lots of questions about boy parts girl parts for young babies so for little girls especially it's very normal for them to have some sort of vaginal
discharge white discharge is normal you may even see some bleeding in the first couple days and this a lot of this is just a response to mom's hormones as that young baby girl is now transitioning to the worldoutside of mom for baby boys it's a little different it all depends on whether the boys had a circumcision or not in terms of circumcision care one of the best things you can do is really leave it aloneand we do say to to put vaseline on it is a good way to keep that tissue protected keep it from sticking to the diaper and to keep poop off of it these are good things to keep itboth clean and to keep it from adhering that can cause pain usually in the first five to seven days that skin will kind of transform and heal and then no longer be an issue for babies who aren't circumcised
get questions about this all the time it is best to leave the foreskin alone you don't need to retract it or anything that is something that will happen over the first couple years of the baby's life and soif baby's not circumcised you can definitely clean the penis but don't try to expose the head of the penis at all and that can do more harm than good for young babies
The doctors discuss what is needed to bring baby home, focusing on car seat safety, proper installation, and why hand-me-down seats may not be safe.
uh let's see what's next car seats are incredibly important um as something that you must have to bring baby home from the hospital it's one of the few things that you have to have for you to be ableto walk out of the hospital with your baby yeah to answer sarah's question that she had at the dinner table earlier this week you don't need diapers at the hospital you don't need formula you don't need bottles umand so the one thing you do need to bring is a car seat and then it's also a good idea to bring an outfit for baby to go home but even if you don't they will have little specialbaby shirts and swaddle wraps baby hats and baby hats at the hospital if all you brought was the car seat you'd be okay so i just want to kind of reassure you and encourage you that if you feel
like you're a little lost or don't know a lot of these things um that's okay i'm in ob gyn i've delivered hundreds of babies and i didn't know this stuff um i thankfully have a pediatrician on hand whocan help but there's a learning curve for everybody and there's going to be a learning curve when we bring this little baby home and so much of this is learning as you go um you know like what kindof bottle should you use if you have a breastfed baby like i learned this week you're supposed to boil these suckers for five minutes before you actually use them um so you're not alone we are here to helpyou um there's tons of great educational content coming for you so just stay tuned um and so important things about a car seat is to make sure that it is not expired um they do have a life span
or after so much time they are considered too old to be guaranteed safe for baby um and then to make sure it's secured in the car correctly okay the biggest thing is that this car seat needs to befacing backwards for a newborn infant okay and then make sure to look at the manual that comes with the car seat to make sure that it's installed properly if you have questions about this at all you can alwaysask at the hospital and they can come down and check your car seat to make sure that it's installed properly because everyone wants your baby to be safe other quick pointers and tips that we're going to probably tryto talk about in a future episode is just to make sure that the shoulders are at the lowest setting the shoulder straps um you shouldn't be able to pinch the strap they should be tight enough to where you
can't pinch and fold the straps down on themselves okay that's how you know it baby's snug enough other good things is that baby should just be kind of in one layer um if it's cold out blankets or snowsuits should be outside of the straps of clothes yeah okay um and the big thing there is that if babies got a lot of clothing on and then you strap them in if they were to get an accidentthat clothing or that bedding or whatever can compress and baby could potentially slip out so just kind of one layer of clothing then strap them in if they need extra things to stay warm in the car put itover the top of their straps and keep their little faces out and exposed got it so car seats are that one thing that maybe a hand-me-down isn't going to work for because they expire and it's that one thing
we really need to get
This chapter covers infection prevention, vaccines, when to call the pediatrician for fever or dehydration, and how parents can protect their own mental health after birth.
another question we get asked about all the time is how do you keep baby healthy and when do i need to call a pediatrician and so the best things that you can do for a baby is to keepeveryone around them healthy okay their immune systems are still young still developing so it's really important lots of hand washing for anyone who's going to be around the baby holding the baby definitely in the era of covid thischanges things a little bit it doesn't mean everyone's got a mask around and so if you have people coming in to see baby and you want to say hey could you wear a mask around baby that is okayfor you as parents to ask you know again that's something that you can weigh the benefits of we say to try to avoid large crowds but if there's a bunch of people that want to come see baby and
you want to say hey can you please wear a mask around my baby you as parents can absolutely say that i wouldn't say you have to say that but just something that is an extra thing that we havein 2021 that we didn't have easily available to us pre-covert era yeah it used to be just if you want to hold the baby you need to wash your hands but now it's kind of if you want tohold the baby you need to wash your hands have you gotten the vaccine will you wear a mask it's just another layer of things to think about and then the other part of that is we talk about cocooningbaby with vaccines so making sure that everyone who's going to be around the baby is up to date with their pertussis vaccine so this is the whooping cough whooping cough for you and me could be kind of just
an annoying cough that lasts a couple weeks for babies it could mean life or death and so this means making sure dad is up to date making sure grandma and grandpa and anyone else who's going to be upto date has had that tdap vaccine that p letter p and tdap is pertussis and making sure that baby is safe from that standpoint moms get vaccinated um usually in the third trimester so they pass some immunity onto baby and moms do that in each pregnancy everybody else in the family just needs to make sure you are up to date which is usually five to ten years every five to ten you need a booster
and so the other part of that is like gosh when is baby sick when do i need to call and so you absolutely 100 do not need to regularly check your baby's temperature but if you say hey youknow my baby seems off they've missed two feeds they're extra sleepy they feel really warm to me those are good times to check baby's temperature and i would say anytime their temperature is greater than 100 degrees fahrenheit togive your pediatrician a call so it's a nice easy number to remember and this usually glass for the first two months of life where we're extra cautious with young babies and fevers just as their immune system is stilldeveloping the best way and most accurate place to check a baby's temperature is actually rectally um if you are for whatever reason uncomfortable with that that's okay um the second best place that we like to recommend is under
the arm okay yes okay another good reason to call the pediatrician would be if um babies wet diapers have really dropped off so again we said they should have at least three wet diapers a day peeing at leastthree times a day if they're having less than that that would be a sign that hey maybe they're not getting enough to eat they're dehydrated something else might be going on so it's another nice rule of thumb tokeep in mind for that okaythe final thing that i like to talk to all new families about new parents is just about kind of mental well-being you guys are going to take home a new human being mom has just given birth and donean amazing thing but it's really hard it's really hard physically challenging and exhausting and this newborn period can be really tough and so a couple of things is it is normal to feel like your mood is a little
off um but if there are big changes if you say gosh i'm having trouble connecting with my baby i feel really sad i have thoughts of harming myself or baby please do not hesitate pick up the phone callyour pediatrician call your ob gyn yeah and let us know there's definitely a difference between uh baby blues and postpartum depression and either of those us as pediatricians or as obgyns we want to help young families young mothersget through this and the other thing is that babies can be really demanding and they can cry for what seems like an unending amount of time they're so needy and so if you are ever in a spot whereyou say gosh i am so fed up with my baby it is okay to swaddle them up put them in their bassinet or their crib um on their back with nothing else in it and take five minutes for
yourself you can leave baby to cry for five minutes while you go take a mental moment for you um to just regroup and then come back and love that baby with a fresh mind and fresh spirit um andstart all over when everything else seems to be going haywire so i mean i one of my attendings talks about how with that first new baby crying kind of losing her mind she said you know i understand howshaken baby happens and she's a physician an ob gyn and just thought she was gonna lose it um and so it's better to just put your baby down in a safe place walk away for five minutes take adeep breath um and come back ready to be a mom or dad that's it for us this week guys thank you so much for tuning in uh please let us know if you have any questions in the comments
below also know that your pediatricians your family care doctors your primary care physicians and providers love to hear from you when you have questions write them down bring them to your next visit with baby and we have lotsof great things coming up for you to answer some of those last questions to get ready for this baby you know breast in bottle feeding what to expect in the hospital with that new baby what to expect andlabor and delivery for mom different things we'll talk about epidurals and pain control and c-sections and great things coming up for you guys in the coming weeks so like you said make sure you're subscribed so you don't missany of it um we love having you all here thanks for joining us guys bye
we're doctors but not your doctors anything we've said in this video is for education or entertainment purposes only it is not medical advice any specific medical questions you have should be directed to your provider