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Tag: new born

  • Why Is This Creamy Substance So Important

    I would like to tell you about Vernix caseosa also known a vernix  , a waxy substance that coats the skin of newborn babies.

    Vernix begins to form on the unborn baby at about 27 weeks gestation. it helps protect baby’s skin from amniotic fluid, the creamy vernix itself contains about 80% water. About 61% of proteins can be found in this white substance, & can only be found in vernix.

    It protects the baby from bad bacteria and future flu and common colds when there older. It also helps manage the baby body temperature when first being born. This is the ORIGINAL VACCINE for your baby. It’s best to rub it in your babies skin and wait on giving your baby a bath. You can let it stay up to 24hrs or a week .

    Doctors usually are in a rush to wash this off . Because the Baby wouldn’t need medical vaccines if it were to stay on. They took it out of the medical practice because vaccinations wouldn’t stand a chance against this. The vaccination market would crash and make no money .

    1. It’s protection. When a baby’s skin in still developing in the womb, it’s covered with a thick, white, cheese-like layer called vernix caseosa. Its main jobs? To help protect delicate skin from the acidic quality of the amniotic fluid and to help keep infection at bay.

    2. It’s a moisturizer! Vernix is also your baby’s first beauty product. The thick substance acts as a sealant, shielding the baby’s skin from the drying effects of amniotic fluid. Without vernix, your precious newborn would look like a big ol’ wrinkled prune.

    3. It’s also a lube. That slippery slime does double duty as a lubricant, helping your baby slide out of the birth canal a bit easier.

    4. It’s a baby’s first blanket. The cheesy coating is also as a baby warmer, insulating her body and maintaining a proper—and comfortable—temperature in utero.

    5. It’s only human. People are the only animals whose newborns are coated in vernix.

    6. It muffles sound. Although your baby-to-be can start to hear your voice by about week 25, sound is pretty muffled because his ears are covered with sound-shielding vernix.

    7. Sometimes it’s not there. If your baby is overdue, the vernix may be scant or missing entirely. The reason: It was likely already absorbed in the amniotic fluid.

    8. You can leave it be. Don’t be so quick to wipe the goopy gunk off your newborn’s skin. Research shows that removing vernix is not necessary for hygienic reasons, and leaving it may even provide antibacterial promotion and wound healing. The World Health Organization advises delaying baby’s first bath for 24 hours.

    9. It’s not always white. If a newborn’s vernix is not the expected creamy white, but a yellowish brown or green tinge instead, that’s a good indicator that baby already passed meconium (aka the first poop). And it’s a good indicator that, yeah, perhaps you should wipe this type of vernix off.

    10. It lingers in folds. Don’t be surprised if you find this sticky substance hidden in baby’s under-diaper nooks and crannies. Vernix likes to hide in the folds of the vagina for several days or even weeks. Gently wipe it away or simply leave it.

  • Brutally Honest Post About Breastfeeding

    “This is mastitis.

    After hitting the 1 year breastfeeding mark last Sunday I felt compelled to share my story.

    Breastfeeding did NOT come easy for me. My milk came in after 5 days. I wasn’t aware that it could take that long, I didn’t even necessarily know what “milk coming in” meant. (Nobody ever taught me.) I was the only mother breastfeeding on my ward. One women did try to breastfeed, but switched to formula after 12 hours because she “had no milk” (nobody taught her either.)

    While the other babies slept with full bellies, my son screamed and cried attached to my breast through the night. (What was cluster feeding? Nobody told me) When I got home, problems started to arise-my nipple literally cracked in half. I have never felt such pain, I dreaded every feed, but persisted with tears in my eyes until I was healed. (Nobody taught me that breastfeeding could be painful, nobody taught me what a good latch looked like) When feeding my son out in public I would either go to the bathroom or pump at home and feed him with a bottle.

    Because I felt embarrassed and as though I would make others uncomfortable. This resulted in clogged ducts and engorgement. (I feed freely in public now, and have done for a long time. Fuck this backwards society!)

    Then came mastitis.

    I remember waking up at 3am shivering, putting on my dressing gown and extra blankets and trying to feed my son. The pain. It was excruciating. I was shaking and sweating but freezing to my bones. At 5 am I woke up my boyfriend and told him I thought I needed to go to the hospital. We got my stepdad, a doctor, he took my temperature and said it was slightly high, but to take a paracetamol and try to sleep. 7am comes, I’ve had no sleep, and now I’m vomiting, he takes my temp again. 40 c. I had developed sepsis overnight.

    This was because I was not able to recognise the more subtle signs of mastitis (as I had seen no redness that day) I was rushed to resus, given morphine, anti sickness and the strongest antibiotics they could give, and separated from my baby for two nights.

    I was Heartbroken.

    During my hospital stay, I repeatedly asked for a pump, because if I didn’t drain the breast my mastitis would get worse (and it did) The nurses response was “we’re having trouble finding one as we don’t get many breastfeeding mothers here”

    There’s a lot more to this story but my point is, the lack of support and education surrounding breastfeeding is just terrible. And I don’t mean in terms of relaying the benefits of breast milk and handing out lactation support leaflets. I mean general education, about the basics of breastfeeding, about cluster feeding, about the problems that can arise and what to do, how to spot them and how to remedy them. The peddling of formula in the 60’s/70’s has broken the vital cycle of passing knowledge from one generation to the next. (I know formula saves lives and serves a great purpose) but in the past we would have had our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts and friends, all giving their support, their wisdom and their knowledge.

    But many of our mothers and grandmothers don’t know, as they never breastfed.

    Women are not expected to give birth alone, but somehow today they are expected to breastfeed alone, and not share their experience with others, and this is why so many breastfeeding relationships end before they’ve even really started. The breastfeeding rates in the UK are shockingly low. The health system, and society in general is failing breastfeeding mothers. I see many professionals push breast is best almost aggressively in some cases, and yet there is no real support post baby. Breastfeeding is HARD, it needs to be taught and it needs to be learned. Just like walking, talking, reading and writing it may be natural, but it does not always come naturally.

    And this is what I should have known but didn’t, this is what I might have known if breastfeeding rates were higher, if this society didn’t objectify breasts. If new mothers knew just how difficult it can be at first, more would take themselves to prenatal breastfeeding classes, buy books, join forums, and ask more questions – But we don’t, we just assume that it will feel as natural as breathing. Because no one ever told us.”

    Credit: www.instagram.com/mamaclog/