After your baby is born, he needs your close attention to his health. As well as careful, gentle care of every part of the body and every organ. Baby's eyes are no exception. Your day should begin with the fact that you wash the face of the child, including the eyes, with a cotton swab dipped in clean water. A separate swab is taken for each eye. Observing these simple rules, you thereby maintain the hygiene and cleanliness of your baby's eyes. But it so happens that even in the hospital you notice that the baby's eye is festering. Or this unpleasant symptom appeared in a baby under the age of one year. What to do and how to properly treat eyes? Let's consider this topic in more detail.
The reasons why the eyes of a newborn fester
There may be several reasons:
- Conjunctivitis;
- Dacryocystitis.
Conjunctivitis
The first reason why one or both eyes fester in a baby may be conjunctivitis. You will recognize it immediately: stuck together cilia, reddened eyeball, increased tearfulness. Conjunctivitis has several types:
- Adenoviral
- Allergic
- Herpetic
- Pneumococcal / Staphylococcal
- Gonococcal
- Diphtheria
The further development of events depends on the correct diagnosis of conjunctivitis. The doctor may prescribe treatment, or may even give a referral to take tests for concomitant infections, since some types of conjunctivitis are accompanied by the main source of the child's illness - infection.
Your task is to contact your local pediatrician as soon as possible. Haste is important here because if one of the baby's eyes is infected, then there is time to prevent the second from becoming infected. When both eyes are infected, the child's body weakens, the temperature rises, and the disease brings him great discomfort and takes a lot of strength.
If circumstances develop in such a way that you have to wait for a doctor for a long time, you can provide first aid to the child yourself.
Dacryocystitis
There is another reason when a baby's eyes fester. This disease is called dacryocystitis. It occurs when the child has mucus in the ducts of the lacrimal canal / canals, which enveloped the child while still in the womb.
Under normal circumstances, it should freely exit the canal at the time of the first breath and the baby's cry. If this does not happen, stagnation forms, a plug, and the canal becomes clogged. The child's eye is not washed with tear fluid, since it cannot penetrate through the stagnation, and the path is open for pathogenic bacteria.
With dacryocystitis, a canal cleaning procedure, or probing, is most often performed. This procedure is performed under local anesthesia and the improvement comes almost immediately. After that, either drops are prescribed to consolidate the result, or an ointment, or other medications that are right for your baby.
Treatment
If a newborn child has an eye festering, prepare an infusion of chamomile and rinse his eyes and eyelids. The infusion is made simply:
- Pour 1.5 tablespoons of chamomile into a 200 ml glass and pour boiling water to the top. Cover with a lid or saucer, leave for about an hour. Then dip a cotton swab in the infusion and wipe the entire eye towards the child's nose. If the baby is less than three months old, do this procedure with great care, as the skin of the eyelids is too thin and you can inadvertently provoke hemorrhage of small vessels.
- Tea brewing. If an infant's eye festers and it is conjunctivitis, then wipe his eyes with tea leaves. Make a strong infusion of tea, and gently wipe the child's eyes with a cotton pad.
All other medicines and various drops can be prescribed only by a specialist, and only in an individual age-specific dosage.
If you notice that the baby's eye begins to fester, approach the treatment seriously and conscientiously, and recovery will not take long.
- Newborn baby eye care
- Hygiene of newborns
