November
30

Everyone just loves babies; generally we are not aware of the risk we’re passing on babies just by simply kissing and touching them. Now that swine flu is widespread, you need to protect your children especially your babies from the danger of having swine flu.

Doing your best in protecting your child is not enough anymore; you need to make a rigid research on what you can do to keep them out of danger from infant swine flu. Children are more prone to infection than older ones like you. Although you are also at risk if you will be exposed, you should worry more about your kids because their immunity is not that strong.

Infant Swine flu is not just an ordinary flu although it is also comprises of the same manifestations. This type of flu often contains secondary complications that mostly cause death among patients. There are numerous ways to protect your infant from the harmful hazards of swine flu today through the following:

1. Don’t allow anyone to touch and kiss your baby other than you and your husband. You can simply say to anyone who wants to touch and kiss your baby about your concern regarding swine flu. For sure they will understand your concern since they are also scared to have it.

2. Family and friends who comes to your home should have their hands sanitized before they can hold your baby. This way you will be able to lessen the risk of having it passed to your baby. As a parent, you should also do this concern if you like to secure the health of your child.

3. Sanitizing your hand is also very important. You need to make sure that your hands are clean and your face as well. This is very important to secure the safety of your baby. You can also wear mask especially if you just came home from work this way, your baby will not get any virus from outside. You can also play games so that your baby won’t be scared.

4. You need to avoid taking your baby to crowded places like malls and parks. You need to do this until the swine flu scare subsides. Crowded places contain lots of sick people. You need to refrain from taking your child to these places to ensure they are safe until the issue is hot.

5. You can let your baby wear surgical mask when you need to take him/her out of your home. There are surgical masks intended for babies so you can buy one for a particular occasion only.

6. You need to stop letting other kids play with your baby for awhile. Toys from others may contain viruses and bacteria that can spread diseases such as swine flu in infants. Don’t be guilty for over protecting your child, you are just making sure that he/she is safe from any unwanted circumstance that may affect his/her health. You can talk to your doctor if you want to know other precautionary measure you can provide your kids.

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November
24

Baby Lotion Warmer

Posted In: baby care by Infant Care

Many times many parents have regretted that there is a warmer for everything but why not for lotion. Now all their wishes have come true. This is a boon to many people who are all living in extreme cold and hot countries. In cold countries already the temperature will be in negative so you need to be fully supported by the lotions to protect your skin from cracks. If the lotion are extreme cold think what will be the result. Definitely the result will be bad. If this is going to be the result in adults then in babies? So the baby lotion warmer is a boon to many babies in cold countries. All you need to do is keep the lotions you need to use on your babies inside them and switch it ON. After two minutes it is done. You can keep any of your baby’s lotions inside.

The important thing is all the baby lotion warmer comes with automatic cut off so you need not worry about the lotions overheating. If you are thinking to buy one you can also refer to many reviews available in web. Mostly many have given only positive feed backs. This can be a wonderful gift for a new born.

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November
4

Baby Eye Care or Infant Vision

Posted In: baby care by Infant Care

At birth the pigment color-making iris cells aren’t fully developed. For this reason, a baby’s eyes are lightest at birth and gradually darken during the first 12 months as the iris thickens and takes on its genetically determined color.

The clarity of a new born baby’s vision corresponds to about 20/400 on the Snellen acuity chart, or is about 7-8 lines less accurate than that of an adult with good vision. During the first two months of life a baby can only focus on objects more than 10 inches or 25 cm from her face. A newborn baby seeks bold, large patterns, generally in black, red, and white, when she looks at objects around her and is able to perceive motion. By approximately 5 months the baby should have developed color vision.

Eye-hand coordination as early as 5-6 weeks, when a baby starts tracking objects in his near milieu and attempts to reach them with his hands, is a vital stimulator of vision development. At about 2 months, babies begin to focus their eyes on the faces of people around them, preferentially a parent. However, the infant’s eyes are not yet well-coordinated when he views objects distant or near and may sometimes give a cross-eyed appearance. Strabismus or inability of the visual pathways in the brain and the eye muscles to coordinate the simultaneous use of the eyes is normal in infants until about 3 months of age.

If signs of strabismus or cross-eyed looking are still present at this age, there is an increased risk for refractive asymmetry in later years. Basic motor skills such as hand-eye coordination at this stage of development and crawling as well as walking later in the first year of life can be affected by squint or strabismus. A visit to an optometrist or orthoptic specialist should be scheduled to assess the child’s binocular vision capacity if difficulty in coordinating eye movement still exists beyond the third month.

When children become more physically active and start to roll and lift their upper bodies, binocular vision and the ability to focus start developing more rapidly. The baby’s attempts to grab objects and move them to his mouth aids both the ocular muscles and visual pathways in strengthening visual acuity, resulting in vision as sharp as 20/40 at six months.

At this age, depth perception begins to evolve rapidly as the child’s ability to judge distances improves and general visual perceptual skills are refined. However, if the child has a squint during the first year of life, depth perception will not develop fully, even if the child’s motor ability progresses normally during the transition from crawling to walking. As many as 4% of children under the age of 6 have problems with eye misalignment, a problem that is not self-correcting.

Vision testing of infants is carried out by means of a preferential looking test in which a picture containing an object made up of black and white stripes and another image that is solid gray are shown to an infant. As the striped pattern is gradually made narrower, the baby’s tendency to favor one picture or the other is observed until a preference is no longer shown for either the solid object or the striped object.

Many pediatricians recommend that parents take photographs of children under the age of 6 without the red-eye correcting function to see that the child’s eyes reflect light equally. Dilated eye exams are carried out in some cases in babies younger than 2 months to check for any serious refractive problems. Another relatively common eye care problem in children is tear duct obstruction; congenital in approximately 12% of children, this condition is self-correcting in the majority of cases. Amblyopia or “lazy eye” is reduced vision in one eye that results from the brain’s inability to process visual information from one of the eyes. Strabismus and other visual anomalies that can give rise to amblyopia can be detected by means of any of the baby eye examinations described above.

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