Marble skin in a child

The skin of a healthy baby, born on time, is particularly soft and resilient. If you put it in a fold, it immediately takes on its former form. Tenderness of the skin is explained by the fact that the skin of the child in the mother's womb is covered with a special thick grease that prevents the softening of the skin from prolonged interaction with the amniotic fluid. The color of the skin of the newborn can be cyanotic or even gray, which is due to the still insufficient activity of the vessels. But already in the first day the vessels adapt to the extrauterine life and the skin takes on a pinkish hue.

But there are also possible options, such as, for example, marble skin in a child. This is a fairly common phenomenon that occurs as a consequence of a variety of reasons. Most often, the marbled skin of a newborn can be observed during dressing, when there is a sharp temperature drop. Thermoregulation in infants is still imperfect, body temperature directly depends on the temperature of the environment, and the body reacts to contrast by the appearance of a marble, mottled pattern of skin.

Marbled skin in babies - causes

1. The most common cause is overload of blood vessels with excess blood. Due to an insufficient fat layer or its absence, a characteristic net appears on the skin of the baby, which becomes more pronounced in the cold and pale at high temperature. This is a variant of the norm, you just need to wait until the vessels adapt to the load.
2. Some experts associate the overload of blood vessels, due to which they lose the elasticity of their walls and begin to shine through the skin, with prolonged breastfeeding. That is, if a mother has a lot of milk and a baby often and with an appetite is applied to the chest, it can also cause the overload of blood vessels with an abundance of blood and, as a consequence, the marbled skin of the baby.
3. Violation of the vascular tone as a result of autonomic dysfunction. If childbirth lasted a long time, the head and cervical section were subjected to high loads. The result of this overstrain may be some degree of autonomic dysfunction of blood vessels.
4. Marble skin color can be a consequence of anemia or fetal hypoxia. Health problems during pregnancy can adversely affect the health of the baby, so with a history of heaviness, doctors, seeing the marble color of the skin in newborns, check in parallel and the heart.
5. An innate feature. Sometimes the marbled skin of a child is its normal feature, most often it is characteristic of children living in a cold climate. This should cause fears only in the event that such color of the skin is accompanied by an uncaused crying and irritability of the child. In this case, you should consult a neurologist.

What if the child has marbled skin?

Often, nothing to do, because in 94% of cases after 3 months of marbling goes by itself. This is explained by the fact that as the baby grows, its blood system also develops, the vessels come back to normal. In rare cases, the marble shade persists to 10 years, and even for life.

But at the same time, parents are required to follow elementary recommendations. So, the child is important to ensure a healthy lifestyle: disease prevention, hardening, nutrition, physical activity, age-appropriate, outdoor exercise, massage with a specialist.

Extremely rarely the marble color of the baby's skin indicates a violation of the functioning of the brain: increased intracranial pressure, dropsy or cyst. But in this case this symptom is accompanied by others, for example, capriciousness and poor appetite.