Baby bathing: rules and instructions

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Unfortunately, after the birth of a child, parents are not given detailed instructions for it. Therefore, getting home and staying with him alone, parents ask a lot of questions and experience many doubts about caring for him. Especially regarding hygiene. However, bathing your baby is often more difficult than washing your baby.

Benefits of bathing

The fact that the child needs to be kept clean, parents do not need to be reminded - they already know this very well. But bathing a newborn is more than just washing. Firstly, it takes much longer, and secondly, water procedures are of tremendous benefit to the baby.

Benefits of baby bathing:

• Stress relief. The baby spends nine months surrounded by amniotic fluid. Therefore, once in the world, he experiences great stress due to a sharp change in the situation. Getting into a warm bath, the baby finds himself in a familiar environment and calms down.
• Physical activity. Movement in the water requiresless effort than on land. But at the same time, due to water pressure, the load on the muscles is much greater.
• Developing new skills. Bathing takes about 20-30 minutes. During this time, the baby experiences close contact with parents, learns new emotions and is surprised by unfamiliar tactile sensations.
• Improve appetite. As already mentioned, bathing for a baby is a physical activity, after which you always want to replenish the supply of energy expended.
• Hardening. If you approach the issue of bathing correctly, it can be turned into a hardening procedure.

In addition, water procedures are one of the best ways to prevent SARS. Therefore, bathing your baby should be an integral part of the daily schedule.

General instructions

For those parents who have their first child in the family, bathing raises a lot of questions and concerns. After all, to create the most comfortable conditions for the baby, you want to do everything right. To do this, here is an instruction with which parents can prepare everything necessary for bathing their baby in the bathroom.

Instruction:

1. 2-3 hours before bathing, it is necessary to boil the water so that it has time to cool to the desired temperature.
2. Prepare bathroom supplies (towel, cotton swabs, umbilical cord cleaner).
3. Begin bathing before meals. If the baby is bottle-fed, formula should be prepared.
4. Prepare a weak solution of potassium permanganate for the bath (5-6 crystals per 1 glass of water). You have to rememberthat in order to avoid a chemical burn, the solution must be filtered through gauze.
5. Make sure that the room where the bath is located has a comfortable temperature (+22-24 °С).

Newborn's first bath: recommendations

Usually, parents bathe their baby for the first time directly on the day of discharge from the hospital. From the outside, this procedure looks both cute and clumsy. Therefore, parents begin to prepare more thoroughly for the second bath of the baby.

Recommendations for washing a newborn (0-1 month old):

• Until the umbilical wound has healed, water should be boiled and cooled to a temperature of 36-37 °C.
• To disinfect water, you can add a weak solution of potassium permanganate to it. This is necessary so that the infection does not penetrate into the umbilical wound.
• Baby bathing in the first month of life is best done without special detergents (soaps, bathing gels, etc.).

To measure the water temperature, you should purchase a special thermometer. The fact is that newborns are very sensitive to even the slightest fluctuations in ambient temperature, and a thermometer will guarantee that the baby will feel comfortable in the bath.

Recommendations for bathing one month old babies

Special requirements for bathing children of the first month of life are associated with the healing of the umbilical wound and initial adaptation to the outside world. However, after the baby gets a little older,the ground rules are loosened up a bit and parents have more freedom to make their baby's bath more fun.

Main recommendations:

• If there is a large bath at home, you can think about sending the child to free swimming. Children under three months of age have an innate reflex - they are excellent swimmers. Moreover, freely moving in the water, they experience great pleasure. Therefore, the child can be safely let go for a swim, putting on him a circle for swimming babies for safety.
• It is no longer necessary to boil water to fill the baby bath. But at the same time, it must be clean, without obvious impurities of chlorine. If the quality of the water leaves much to be desired, it is better to purchase special filters to purify it.
• If the child is capricious, various herbal infusions, such as chamomile or string, can be added to the water. Coniferous extract, which can be purchased at a pharmacy, is especially popular among parents. It does not need to be cooked, just add a small amount directly to the baby's bath.
• Baby bath products are still not worth overdoing. Soaps, foams and gels are best used no more than once a week.

When bathing a child, do not be afraid that water will get into the auricle and cause otitis media. These warnings come from the older generation, but, frankly, they are unfounded. Since the structure of the auricle is such that water cannot penetrate deep enough to cause inflammation.

When should I bathe my baby?

In the daily schedule, bathing should be attributed to the evening, just before feeding. Water procedures, and especially swimming, take away a lot of strength from the baby, which needs to be restored. Therefore, a snack will be most welcome.

Usually, immediately after feeding, the baby falls asleep. But if a newborn can still disturb parents during the night, then children from 4 months and older after bathing can fall asleep until the very morning. Therefore, the time of water procedures must be calculated so that the baby has time to eat and safely go to sleep.

Bathing accessories

Preparing for the appearance of the child in the house, parents try to get everything necessary for the child in advance. However, sometimes some things are completely useless. Therefore, consider the devices that may be needed for bathing a child:

• The first and most necessary thing is a bath. These devices come in different types and modifications, but the best is an ordinary bathtub without slides and other built-in parts. They can be bought separately, but the stand will be very useful for moms who experience back pain after childbirth.
• Baby bath chair. The high chair is intended for children over the age of 6 months. Therefore, it is unlikely to be useful immediately. But when the child grows up and learns to sit, a high chair for bathing the baby in the bathroom will be needed in the home arsenal.
• Slide or sun lounger. These devices are just designed for newborns,unlike the baby bath seat. The choice of one of them depends on individual preferences. However, judging by the reviews, a deckchair for newborns is more convenient than a plastic slide.

Bath Additives

The most common and effective bath additive is a string infusion. It has a relaxing and anti-inflammatory effect. Therefore, it can easily replace the recommended potassium permanganate solution.

In addition to the sequence, infusions of chamomile, oak, valerian, etc. are used as an additive. Special herbal preparations are also on sale, which are designed specifically for adding to a baby bath. However, as pediatricians note, there is no particular benefit from such fees after the child reaches 2-3 months.

Conclusion

Water treatments are an integral part of a he althy lifestyle. Therefore, for a child, they will be useful not only in terms of hygiene, but also in terms of physical and emotional unloading.

In fact, this process does not require special skills and devices. A child can safely do without a baby bath seat in the bath, but without a good mood - certainly nowhere.