You are pregnant (or your wife is), there is little left for the baby to arrive and you are not very clear how it will be. You have seen babies before, from your friends, from your co-workers and even on TV. The problem is that those who go out in the movies and those you see on the street are already a few days old, if not weeks, and the appearance is very different from what a baby has in the first hours or days.
So that on the day of delivery you are clear about what the baby will be like, or how it could be, we are going to talk below about the appearance of the baby at birth , so that if you want to do the same exercise that we will do, observing a baby from top down, that is, from head to toe, to explain what its characteristics are, what you can find and what to do in case of doubts.
The baby has already been born
It has already been born and they have put it on your chest. Dad has already taken a photo that has been shared by WhattsApp for a while and you have hardly been able to look at him, being so close. You want to see him whole, you want to touch him, but it is still early. Now you have to give him your heat and you have to leave him on you, because that way he will want to get closer to your chest to take the first take. It is incredible the energy with which he was born, how awake he is and how he opens his eyes. Incredible, but normal. Babies are born like this, precisely to get to know you well and to be able to start eating . When you are done, when you have taken your first feed, you will sleep for a few hours and will not be awake that long again for a few weeks.
Taking a look into her eyes
Let’s say that a few hours have passed and that you are already calm with the baby. You will then want to know him more. When you open your eyes you will see the color and you will wonder if it is already the final color because you will see them blue, or perhaps gray, or perhaps much darker. The reality is that no, it is not usually the final color, because over the months it changes.
You may have a red spot on the white of one of your two eyes, blood. This is normal, because the pressure going through the birth canal can be so high that it causes bleeding in the eye and even swelling in the face. As the days go by it will disappear.
Time to look at your head
Observing its head you will see, if it was born vaginally, that it has a slightly elongated shape. Perhaps there is some swollen and soft area. It is what is known as a cephalohematoma , a hematoma under the skin, but above the skull. It is also a consequence of childbirth and is due to the rupture of some blood vessels. It is not dangerous (because it is on top of the skull and not in the brain space) but it can take several weeks to disappear.
The baby will have hair, very soft hair that will not last long. There are babies with more hair, others with less, but most begin to fall out within a few weeks, leaving the baby bald like a grandfather. As the weeks go by, new hair will appear, which may be different from baby hair both in texture (it is stronger hair) and in color.
You will notice, if you touch its head with your fingers, as if guessing its shape, two holes in the upper part. They are the fontanelles, which are the holes left by the bones of the skull as they grow and join each other . The largest fontanel is the anterior one, which is above the forehead. The smallest is further back, below the crown. They can be touched without fear, although delicately. There are many parents who take a lot of fluff to touch them, but they are not as fragile as they may seem, because they are covered with a thick and resistant membrane that protects the interior while there is no bone.
Baby’s skin
They are born with a bluish color that is quite scary, but immediately it takes on the pink color that we expected to find. Some arrive covered in vernix caseosa, a layer that protects the skin inside the uterus and that from a time to this part is removed less and less.
The skin will be soft, but you will soon see, as the days go by, that it begins to peel and, literally, that the baby begins to peel . You don’t have to do anything special beyond putting on moisturizer and understanding that it is as if your skin is changing. After a few days your skin will be great again.
It is possible that there are birthmarks, the most common being flat hemangiomas or simple nevus (the angel’s kiss and the stork’s peck are well known), which are red spots due to superficial vascular formations, which disappear with the passage of the months (normally). In some cases, the hemangioma is more bulky, as a result of the dilation of blood vessels in the most superficial part of the skin. In the first months it can increase a little in size, but as a general rule they tend to disappear on their own with the passage of time. We can also find the Mongolian spot, very common in babies with brown skin and which is also benign.
Perhaps not at birth, but after a few days the baby could have so-called miliary acne . They are pimples that appear mainly on the nose and chin. The sebaceous glands of the skin begin to secrete sebum (fat) but in many cases they find a pore of the skin that is still closed. This causes the pimples that, days or weeks later, go away by themselves without doing anything. If it spreads a lot all over the face, it would be necessary to assess the possibility that something could be causing an allergy (fabric softener, something that the mother eats and passes through the milk, etc.).
The shoulders, back and thorax
When you undress him, you may notice that your baby has hair . Come on, you look very hairy. It’s normal, it’s the lanugo. It grows towards the end of pregnancy and usually falls off before birth or a few days later. If the baby is born a little early, it is more likely that he will have it and that it will take a little longer to lose it.
When we look at her chest we can see that the breasts are, perhaps, a little lumpy. This is as a consequence of the transfer of hormones during pregnancy and lactation, which can even cause milk to be secreted. It is normal, it lasts for a while, but it disappears the moment these hormones stop arriving. Do not touch or squeeze them, because the milk expression reflex would be generated and the baby could suffer a mastitis (I have seen with amazement mothers squeezing to cause the milk ejection, thinking that when they remove all the milk, the swelling will disappear ).
The abdomen and navel
We reach the abdomen, which will be bulky and at the navel we will see the rest of the cord, white in color, which will dry out over the days. As we have told you on several occasions, the navel cure is not essential, although we do have to ensure that it is clean and dry so that it falls off within three weeks.
Genitalia
In the case of girls, we can see that they secrete a transparent, white discharge or with traces of blood, motivated by the mother’s hormones during pregnancy, which is normal. Boys, on the other hand, have the skin that covers the glans attached to it (phimosis, which is normal) and the testicles that, although they can retract and sometimes not be in the bag, it is normal if most of the time they are in the scrotum. It may be that there is hydrocele (fluid in the scrotum), which comes from the abdomen due to a communication. Normally, the liquid is absorbed over time, but sometimes an increase in the liquid can be observed when the child cries, which will be a sign of an inguinal hernia and should be evaluated by the pediatrician.
In reference to the care of the baby’s penis, you can read about it here, and about the care of the vulva of girls, here.
Legs and feet
You will see that their legs are bowed and that they are very small and thin , as if unable to support their weight standing up. This is because they simply do not have the strength or the ability to do so. It is true that if you hold a baby upright and he notices a surface under his feet, he makes the gesture of walking, but it is only a reflection and, obviously, it is still very far from being a reality.
Their feet are tiny and surely you will see yourself counting to confirm that there are 5 and no more, no less, the toes you see. You will notice that the nails are like sunk in the finger, impossible to cut if they grow. You can be calm because they take a while to start to grow and, in that time, they stop being so “buried”.
Photos | Thinkstock
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