Newborn babies are a source of not only boundless joy, but also anxiety. They do not yet know how to speak, so young parents are afraid to misunderstand the reasons for crying or not notice serious health problems. Often, anxiety is caused by the child's body temperature - the mother always thinks that it is higher than it should be normal.
Baby and thermometer
Normal baby body temperature
Babies, due to the peculiarities of the course of metabolic processes, have a body temperature slightly higher than the average for a healthy adult at 36.6˚C. For different ages, there are upper limits of the norm:
- newborn - 36.8˚C;
- from 1 to 5 months - 37.5˚C;
- 6-9 months - 37.7˚C;
- 9-12 months - 37.5˚C.
Attention! The data presented reflects the values obtained when measuring body temperature in the armpit.
Measuring a baby's temperature with a familiar mercury thermometer is not an easy task. The kid refuses to lie still with the handle pressed to the body, a cold object makes him unpleasant, children 11-12 months old are frightened by their appearance, because it resembles a syringe. Therefore, in order to maintain children's peace of mind and facilitate mother's work, electronic and infrared thermometers were invented, which allow you to find out the baby's body temperature, bypassing the difficult task of holding the device in the armpit.
An electronic thermometer in the form of a nipple is a real salvation, the baby sucks on a pacifier, on the screen of which information is displayed. Readings obtained from the oral cavity are 0.6C higher than those obtained in the same time period from the armpit. Therefore, a dummy thermometer can read 37.2˚C in a newborn, this will be the norm.
Infrared thermometers are considered the most accurate, besides, they are the most convenient, because they give the result in 2 seconds. As a rule, the device has two tips: for measurements in the ear canal and on the temporal artery. It is enough to press the measurement button, holding it for 2 seconds, after which the result will appear on the screen. However, it is not suitable for measuring the temperature in children under 3 months of age, since the indicators will be unreliable due to the peculiarities of metabolism.
Infrared thermometer
Additional Information. Measurements taken from the ear cavity will differ by 1˚C upwards from the temperature that a mercury or electronic thermometer would show at a given time in the armpit. Therefore, for a six-month-old baby, 38˚C in the ear cavity may be the absolute norm.
Reasons for fever in children
Before deciding how to bring down the temperature of a baby, you need to understand the reasons for its increase. A rare baby is sick with ARVI, because most children under one year old do not visit public places, which means that the possibility of infection is practically excluded, and is carefully wrapped up by parents on walks, so they cannot get sick from hypothermia.
Therefore, a vigilant mother must establish the reason for the rise in temperature, which may be:
- Reaction to vaccination. This is especially true for the DPT vaccine. The thermometer can show quite large values, up to 39˚C during the day after vaccination. This is an absolutely normal reaction of the body, with the help of which it forms immunity.
- Teething. In this case, the mark on the thermometer rarely rises above 37.8˚C. The problem is most often relevant for children from 6 months of age and older, accompanied by a noticeable swelling of the gums and excessive salivation.
- Overheating during sleep. Wrapping the baby in swaddling clothes and blankets, putting on a cap while sleeping in the room, warm air in the room are the reasons why the baby overheats to 37.5˚C.
Interesting. Parents of children between 6 months and 2 years of age experience strange symptoms that are later mistaken for an allergic reaction to an antipyretic. The reason for this is sudden exanthema (roseola), which is one of the varieties of the herpes virus. It manifests itself in the first 3-5 days only by an increase in temperature not higher than 38˚C. On the day when the hyperthermia disappears, the body becomes covered with a red rash. The appearance of a rash indicates the victory of immunity over the virus. But due to the fact that all 3-5 days they tried to bring down the temperature with the usual antipyretic, the rash is mistaken for an allergic reaction to the medicine.
Rules for measuring temperature in babies
When using a mercury or electronic thermometer to take measurements in the armpit, it is important to ensure that the child holds the handle tightly against the body for five minutes before meeting the thermometer, so that the temperature of the armpit skin is equal to the values of the internal organs. After that, you can put the thermometer for 5 minutes.
Important! The skin in the armpit must be dry before the measurement, so it should be wiped off with a tissue.
A child who knows how to sit and listen to a fairy tale or watch a cartoon can be put on her lap by mom to sit together for 10 minutes: the first 5 minutes without a thermometer, the next 5 minutes with a measuring device.
When using electronic thermometers, it is important to remember that the sound signal is not a reason to take readings and stop measuring. A squeak is a signal that the device gives not when it has finished taking readings, but when the values begin to change more slowly. In other words, when the device is just installed in the armpit, the values rapidly rise from 30˚C to 36˚C -37˚C, after which the increase in values becomes slow, and the device emits a sound, but after that you need to continue holding it for at least 2 minutes , then the readings will be reliable.
To correctly establish the dynamics of hyperthermia, the readings should be measured in the same place, with the same device. You cannot compare the readings obtained with a mercury thermometer installed in the armpit with what an electronic nipple thermometer will show in an hour.
Thermometer-nipple
How to bring a baby's temperature down to 6 months
With the development of hyperthermia in infants up to 6 months of age, it is especially important to ensure the correct parameters of the air they breathe. Children from 1 to 6 months of age have very poorly developed sweat glands, which is why the body cannot sweat on its own to lose heat and cool down.
Attention! The difficulty of providing care at a temperature to a child from 0 to 2 months is that not a single antipyretic drug is approved for home use. Therefore, you need to know the basic principles by which an infant can lose heat.
How to bring down the temperature from 1-6 month old babies:
- Provide the necessary indoor climate. To do this, you should regularly ventilate the room if it is cooler outside than at home. The room should not be warmer than 18˚C. Air humidity indicators should be kept in the range from 55% to 70%. The baby loses heat, warming the air for the lungs with the nose, so inhaling cool and moist air, he spends a large amount of his heat, normalizing body temperature.
- It is strictly forbidden to apply cool cloth to the baby's skin. This provokes a spasm of blood vessels through which the child gives off heat. During a vasospasm, the skin really becomes cool, and it seems to adults that they have helped, but in fact, the temperature of the internal organs rises sharply, threatening the baby's life.
- Wipe the baby's body with warm water, simulating sweating. You can make a baking soda solution to soften delicate skin. This procedure promotes effective heat exchange between the body and water.
- Drink abundantly. It is imperative to take into account the temperature of the drink - it should be equal to the body temperature, this will ensure rapid absorption. With a sufficient amount of fluid entering the body, the blood will not thicken, which means that a life-threatening situation will not arise.
Raspberry tea
Attention! You can give children a decoction of raspberries only after 6 months of age, when the sweat glands begin to perform their functions. Raspberry with its peculiarity to increase sweating cannot be compared with any special drug that activates the work of sweat glands. Therefore, if the child is more than 6 months old, you can give him raspberry tea so that he sweats well, but before that it is important to give something else to drink so that the body has something to do with sweating and prevent dehydration.
The folk method of knocking down the temperature by wiping children of any age with vinegar or vinegar solution, especially alcohol tinctures, is strictly prohibited. The skin of a child with a high temperature is filled with dilated vessels, which instantly absorb substances from the surface. Trying to bring down the temperature in this way, parents add alcohol poisoning or acid intoxication to the suffering baby.
When is a doctor urgently needed?
Hyperthermia is dangerous for infants if it is accompanied by neurological abnormalities. Some kids carefree play with a body temperature of 38.5˚C, others - at 37.2,2 lie in a layer. Parents need to know the peculiarities of the nervous system of their child, and, if any, do not postpone calling an ambulance.
Providing medical care
A small percentage of children, even with a slight increase in body temperature, may suffer from seizures, this is also a condition in which you should not delay calling a specialist.
The danger of hyperthermia for a child lies not only in the fact that overheating of internal organs is likely. A much more serious problem is dehydration, which is threatened by high temperatures. You always need to start helping the baby by offering him a mug of warm compote or any other drink every hour. Therefore, if the parents are not able to drink, no pill will work. The worst thing is that the blood will begin to thicken, losing its vital functions.
Important! If the child does not drink, or the drunk with vomiting leaves the body without delay, a doctor is urgently needed.
When a child easily tolerates hyperthermia, you should not try to immediately lower the temperature, because without it, immunity will not begin to develop to fight the pathogen. In cases where the baby's body temperature exceeds 39 degrees, a doctor is needed, even if the baby calmly tolerates this heat load and drinks well. The harm from excessive hyperthermia is greater than the benefits for the production of interferon.
There is no need to be afraid to go out with a baby if he has a fever. A sick child needs fresh air ten times more than a healthy one. Children lying in a stroller, warmly dressed, feel much better on the street than in a stuffy room. With older kids who have already grown out of a stroller, you can safely sit on a park bench and read books, excluding running around the playgrounds.
