Illnesses & Concerns: Keeping Your Child Healthy

Straining, turning red and grunting for several minutes before passing a soft stool usually means a baby is still learning to push and relax at the same time, not that anything is stuck. Going days without a bowel movement can be normal too, especially for a breastfed baby past the newborn weeks. What the stool looks like when it finally arrives, and how the baby behaves in between, tells you more than the calendar does.

Most of the everyday worries work the same way. Head shaking side to side, arching the back during a feed, chapped lips on a newborn: each usually has an ordinary explanation, and each has a short list of signs that move it out of ordinary. Blood or mucus in stool, a fever in a baby under three months, ear pain with a fever, refusing feeds, fewer wet diapers, or anything that keeps getting worse instead of settling means calling your pediatrician rather than waiting it out.

Care at home is mostly small skills done properly: taking a temperature the way your doctor will ask for it, using saline drops before a feed so a stuffy nose does not ruin it, and treating dry lips without products a newborn should not have. Whether an oral rehydration drink is right for your baby is a question for your provider first, since age and cause both change the answer.