If your newborn baby on the second or third day skin and / or eye proteins have a yellowish color, then you are dealing with a fairly common phenomenon, which is called the jaundice of newborns.
What does the jelly appear from?
The immediate cause of the jaundice in a newborn is an elevated bilirubin content in the blood. Bilirubin is a substance formed by the destruction of red blood cells - red blood cells. Erythrocytes contain hemoglobin, which participates in the saturation of tissues and organs with oxygen. When a baby is born into the light, it begins to receive oxygen not from the mother, but directly from the air during breathing. Special, embryonic, hemoglobin becomes unnecessary for the body of the crumbs, and the "redundant" erythrocytes containing it begin to disintegrate, secreting bilirubin, which has a yellow or orange color.
By processing and excretion of the body bilirubin "manages" the liver. If it is sufficiently developed in a newborn, bilirubin is excreted from the body of the child with meconium (feces of the newborn) and urine. But often even in healthy children in the first days of life immaturity of enzyme systems of the liver is observed - in this case, bilirubin is not excreted from the body, but is carried by blood throughout the body. It is he who colors the tissues: skin and mucous - in yellow. As a result, we observe what is commonly called the jaundice of newborns.
How to get rid of jelly?
First of all, you need to understand, with the help of doctors, with what kind of jelly you are dealing with. In most cases (60-70% of newborns, more often - in weak and premature), the so-called physiological jaundice is observed. This is not a disease, and as a rule, it is not necessary to treat it. The best medicine for physiological jaundice is early and frequent application to the breast. If a child receives breast milk, the physiological jaundice usually passes by itself in 2-3 weeks. Children who are on artificial feeding, recommended with a physiological jaundice, dopaivat water with broth rose hips.
Artificial animals, weak and premature babies, as a rule, are still undergoing phototherapy treatment in the maternity hospital - irradiation with a special lamp from the jelly. Under the influence of light, "unnecessary" bilirubin breaks down into non-toxic derivatives that are excreted from the body with feces and urine.
If the jaundice does not last longer than 3 weeks - this is an occasion to ponder why. A prolonged change in the color of the skin and mucous membranes may indicate the presence of a pathological icterus. Also cause for concern are:
- drowsiness of the child, sluggish sucking;
- greenish skin tone;
- discolored or, conversely, too dark color of stool and urine;
- discrepancy with the norm of the content in the blood of bilirubin, hemoglobin, erythrocytes, reticulocytes.
Pathological icterus in newborns requires immediate treatment, which the doctor will appoint in accordance with the cause of the disease. On the treatment of such a jelly at home is out of the question. Depending on the causes, several types of pathological jaundice of newborns are distinguished:
- Hemolytic. It occurs when the mother and fetus are incompatible with the blood group and (or) the Rh factor, which leads to massive destruction of red blood cells in the blood of the child.
- Conjugation. Violation of the processes of processing bilirubin, caused by hereditary diseases.
- Hepatic. Caused by liver damage - infectious or toxic (eg, hepatitis).
- Mechanical. It is caused by a mechanical disturbance of the outflow of bile due to anatomical features or cysts of the bile ducts.
Untreated long jaundice can lead to bilirubin encephalopathy, or nuclear jaundice, in which toxic damage of bilirubin to gray matter of the brain develops. This leads to drowsiness, lethargy, changes in reflexes, in extreme cases - paralysis, deafness, mental retardation.