Baby care tips- Common baby sickness: Fever
No matter how much preparation has been done, when parents take care of the newborn baby at fist time, they still have lots of trouble, confusing and don’t know whether they have done correctly.
We will published five articles for the five Frequently Asked common baby sicknesses: fever, constipation, diarrhoea, common cold, flu and cough to provide parents as a reference information, so parents can tell whether they can take care this situation by themselves, or need to take baby for hospital treatment.
Fever
Baby fever does not necessarily represent the illness, but fever may be the clinical symptoms of a disease and needs attention or treatment. The fever could indicate the infection on your baby and parents should check any inflamed area on baby’s baby carefully. And also the external environment temperature is too hot, eat hot food, exercise, wear too many clothes or hot baths, etc, these may temporarily cause your baby’s body temperature slightly increased and after a period of time, body temperature will naturally drop down. However, if fever comes with cough, vomiting, diarrhoea and other symptoms could indicate respiratory or gastrointestinal related diseases. In short, the baby fever shows a lot of messages; parents need to judge the severity of the problem carefully.
Temperature measurement is the reference for the parents to determine severity of fever. Doctor recommends that for baby under 6 months old, parents should measure the axillary temperature, or rectal temperature. The measuring time required is at least 1 minute, hence result would be more accurate. The ear temperature measurement is more suitable for baby more than 6 months old, because newborn baby’s ear hole is too small, and not recommends putting measurement tool in it which may cause some infection.
Situation 1: The axillary temperature is 37.5 ℃ ~ 38.5 ℃ (ear temperature 38 ℃ ~ 39 ℃)
At this time, your baby’s body temperature is not too high, parents can do some things with:
1. To help your baby take a bath with warm water: to make baby’s skin pores open to release the heat, and also can make your baby’s muscles to relax, feel more comfortable.
2. Feeding water: This can help baby to sweat to adjust body temperature and also can refill the body’s water loss.
3. To reduce clothes: Cooling down the body temperature.
Situation 2: The axillary temperature is more than 38.5 ℃ (ear temperature 39 ℃), this indicate a high temperature, and parents can give your baby anti-fever medication.
After the above methods of treatment, parents can wait one hour and then measure the body temperature again. If they did not bring down a fever, parents need to observe baby’s vitality situation. If baby can eating, playing normally, parent can bring baby to the hospital next day for further checking, but if the baby’s physical and spiritual situation is bad, for example: Baby is unable to eat any more, and keep crying, parents should take baby to hospital ASAP.
Some parents are concerned about baby taking anti-fever medicine, which could affect the doctor’s diagnosis for the baby’s condition or causes of sickness. Actually the anti-fever medicine won’t affect Doctors’ diagnosis. Doctor recommends that if baby’s ear temperature is more than 39 ℃, parent should give baby anti-fever medicine, otherwise body temperature is too high and may cause spasm.
Other FAQs
Q1: When baby has fever, should we wiped baby’s body with warm water added with alcohol to help cooling it down?
A1: It should not do it. This will not only fail to reduce temperature, but also make your baby shaking and may lead to twitch.
Q2: When baby has fever, should we put more clothes on baby to help him sweat to reduce body temperature?
A2: It should not do it and this is also the common mistake from parents. In fact it will make harder to cool down the body’s temperature. Doctor said when baby has fever, if the baby has fear cold response such as: cold hands and feet, pale on face. In this situation parent can put more clothes on baby. This makes your baby feel more comfortable, and after that when baby’s body temperature increases and limbs getting warm, then parents should reduced some clothing to help cooling down the fever.
Article from Pinkietoes Baby care Blog - Sydney Baby care
Hello,
My 5 days male baby has 102 temperature, he is feeding well and crying as usual response is good but, doing motion 15 times in 14 hours. Doctors prescribed me to admit my baby.
Please suggest me what i have to do now.
hi,
Thanks for giving such a wonderful information it will really help me in my future. Thanks for sharing.
Very cool blog, but you must improve your template graphics.
What template do you use in your blog
Great care is to be taken at the time illness. And, in case of small baby this caring increases to some more level. Do your basic treatment and if it doesn’t work contact with your family doctor.
Well, your work is really appreciable. Thanks for this article.