Without a doubt, baby's first month of life is very special. The birth of a child completely changes the life of the parents. Now the newborn is among you and you will have a tremendous adaptation ahead.
The first days with the baby are peculiar. The enormous happiness of having him finally in his arms coexists with the discomforts of postpartum, fatigue and worries about his care.
But the baby also lives great changes. He has been in the womb for nine months and suddenly finds himself in a new environment full of stimuli. Therefore, it must be treated so that your life was as similar to what it was inside the uterus. A cozy, warm, soft and soft atmosphere.
That newborns come without an instruction manual is true, thankfully. Because each baby has its own needs and because there is nothing more wonderful than discovering it.
We see the main characteristics of the first month of life of babies:
Feeding
The best food for the newborn is breast milk. Ideally, place it to the chest as soon as it is born, within two hours after birth. It is when the baby has the instinct more to the surface and favors the bond of attachment with the mother.
It is essential for successful breastfeeding that the baby properly clings to the breast. There are several possible postures, but the baby should always cover a good portion of the areola of the chest with his mouth, as you can see in this video.
Breastfeeding should be on demand, that is, breastfeeding whenever the child wishes, without stress or schedule, or frequencies, both day and night.
During the first month, while the mother and the baby adapt, breastfeeding takes time. It is more than likely that the baby falls asleep during the intake or needs to flush and in a short time, start over.
Breastfeeding is ideal for the newborn, however there are mothers who for medical or social reasons do not want or cannot feed it with their own milk.
Artificial breastfeeding consists of formulas of starting milks that must be carefully prepared. The bottle must be previously sterilized, it must be prepared at the time of taking and you can not reuse the milk you have not taken. During the first month the shots are taken every three hours.
The moment to give the bottle must be a pleasant moment. You must be calm in a comfortable posture and the baby a little incorporated with its head on your arm so that it is not attractive.
When you start feeding out of the belly, you will start making blackish stools called meconium during the first few days, which will later turn into liquid yellowish colored pockets. Diaper changes will be very frequent, between 6 and 8 daily changes.
Dream
A newborn needs to sleep for many hours. We must not interfere in the time that the baby sleeps, it is a physiological need as is hunger or the need for affection.
The one-month-old baby does not have a sleep rhythm yet and needs to wake up several times to feed.
Throughout the day he moves between wakefulness and sleep, without differentiating day from night. Little by little he will associate sleep time with night and waking time with day if we introduce certain habits. For example, darken the room at night (with a dim light to attend to it) to associate darkness and silence with the night and light and noise with the day.
A newborn's sleep pattern has two phases: deep sleep and the REM phase. Its order is irregular due to the lack of rhythm of melatonin, a hormone responsible for regulating the sleep-wake cycles, which normalizes around 4-6 months. Breast milk, containing melatonin, favors the regulation of the baby's biological rhythms.
Although it causes great fatigue in the parents, it is healthy for the baby to wake up at night. The baby needs to wake up to eat to avoid hypoglycemia, and night shots promote increased breast milk production.
Because of the baby's need to feed so often during the night and because of his need to be in contact with the mother, the ideal is for the baby to sleep in the same room as his parents, and those who wish so in the same bed, provided that certain guidelines for the safety of the child are met.
Sudden death is a ghost that persecutes many parents. To avoid it we must take into account some very important indications such as not covering the baby too much to sleep and lying down to sleep always on his back.
Increase
The term baby is born with a weight around 3 kilos and 3 and a half kilos on average. On the days after birth there is a physiological weight loss of about 10% of its weight. It is completely normal and is due to the loss of fluids that occur after delivery.
You will quickly recover those lost grams by gaining weight around 180-200 grams per week.
The average length of a newborn is 50 cm, somewhat less in the case of girls while the cranial perimeter is around 34 cm. In the first check-ups, the weight-height-cranial perimeter parameters will be measured to control their growth.
It is not good to become obsessed with the weight gain of the newborn. As long as you take the shots frequently and change your diaper about 6-8 times a day, there is no need to worry. It is important to clarify that babies fed with formula milk gain more weight than those fed with breast milk.
Developing
Babies in their first month of life are able to:
- Direct the gaze towards a specific point and follow a face with the gaze
- Search the mother's voice
- See at a short distance of 30-40 cm
- It startles at a loud noise
- Make silly faces
- Raise your head slightly when facing down
- Flex all four limbs
- It retains some primary reflexes such as the Moro reflex and the grip reflex
Sociability
During the first month the figure of the mother is essential for the child's life. The relationship with others begins with the mother and then it will be extended to other people.
Towards the end of the first month of life something wonderful happens: the baby gives us his first sornisa. The angelic smile, a reflection of the baby at birth, becomes a conscious smile in response to a social stimulus such as talking or smiling.
The newborn's way of communicating is through crying. That is why it is so important to always attend to your crying that you will gradually begin to interpret. You will know when he cries because of hunger, fatigue, because he wants arms or pain because around the third week of life he may begin to suffer the famous colic of the infant.
Skin-to-skin contact, smiles, soft words, picking up arms, caresses and massages are the way to communicate with the baby. It is absolutely recommended and necessary for him to be touched. It favors its development as well as being relaxing and pleasant for both parents and the baby.
