How to tell that your baby has Jaundice?
A simple test conducted by you at home can determine whether your baby has jaundice or not. If you are suspecting your baby might be suffering from one, just apply a pit of pressure with your finger on the chest of the baby in a brightly lit room. Now if the skin leaves a yellow tinge once you have removed your finger then you can certain that your baby has jaundice. But you don’t need to worry as except from severe cases jaundice among new born babies is very common and in most cases it is temporary.
These are the few home remedies you can try, besides consulting your doctor, in order to help your baby recover:
Expose to Sunlight: You should keep your baby exposed to direct sunlight everyday for about fifteen minutes for at least 4 times per day. Make sure that your baby’s skin is exposed and the sunlight is filtered by closing the glass window. One has to keep in mind that exposing to sunlight can help the child recover only in case of mild jaundices.
Lamp Therapy: If the level of bilirubin is abnormally high then it is advised to keep the baby exposed under special sun lamp as an alternative of taking the child to a hospital. This special lamp does the same job as the sunlight and it helps the bilirubin in the skin to get dissolved and excreted through urine.
Biliblanket: Biliblanket is a kind of portable phototherapy device for treatment of jaundice in infants. They offer the possibility of treating jaundice to some extent at home. This new type of treatment allows you to wrap your child in the biliblanket in order to reduce the mild increase of bilirubin in the skin. This option is also considered as one of the easy ways to treat jaundice in new born babies at home.
Feed Frequently: Frequently feeding your child helps you in two ways. Firstly it flushes out the excess bilirubin and helps you keep the new born hydrated and secondly it will also help you to increase the milk production from your breast. It is advised that under such circumstances the baby should be fed at an interval of 2 to 3 hours and whenever he/she wakes up at night. In some cases if the doctor says that the breast milk is inadequate then formula supplements should be provided to the child to keep him/her hydrated.
Feeding of Wheat Grass Juice: Wheat grass juice has the fantastic quality of increasing enzymatic action of the liver. In other words it enhances the ability of the liver to remove the excess bilirunbin from the body. Feeding the child with 20 drops of wheat grass juice mixed well with the formula can help the child. Alternatively, if the baby is only dependent on breast milk then you as a mother can drink 2 ounces of the juice everyday as same will be passed to your child through breast milk.
Providing Herbal Supplements to the Mom: Natural detoxifiers like dandelion tea, comfrey leaf, and catnip along with agrimony helps in the process of flushing out excess bilirubin from the body. So in many cases the mother is advised to take on these natural detoxifying supplements themselves and so can pass on to the baby through the breast milk.
Temporary Stoppage of Breast Feeding: If the doctor confirms that jaundice in your new born has happened to the breast milk then you must have to stop feeding him/her the same for a while. During the period that you have to stop feeding breast milk to your child, to continue the flow of milk, you can pump your breast everyday so that you can resume immediately once the doctor gives permission.
Final Word of Advice
The suggested home remedies for jaundice in new born babies should be applied only after through consultation with the doctor as the extent of jaundice in your child can only be determined by a professional.
