Infant drools a lot: Drooling and Your Baby – HealthyChildren.org
The Practically Perfect Baby – Drowning in Drool?The Practically Perfect Baby
Are you drowning in your baby’s drool? Odds are the answer is an omg-yes! Why? Because he lacks developed mouth-muscle control, so when your baby begins teething, he’s going to begin to drool non-stop. The good news is you can help him acquire this skill faster and of course we’ve got a few tips for you to help your baby exercise his oral muscles now. That way he can gain a little bit of control over this very slobbery, two-year ordeal AND stay dry (or at least somewhat drier than he would otherwise).
PPB Drooling Survival 101:
1. Use a waterproof-lined bib all the time.
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You will find that you must permanently adorn a bib to your baby to catch the never-ending droolfest and waterproof-lined bibs are your very best option for this. Just try to remember to take it off for the occasional picture, otherwise you’ll never record all the cute outfits your baby was actually ever wearing underneath. And here’s a cute option for going out: coordinate his outfit with a very hip bandana bib.
Caution: remember to always take off any bib when your baby sleeps to prevent strangulation.
2. Reduce his pacifier time.
Pacifiers promote sucking but not really swallowing. So you don’t want to do away with his pacifier-use altogether– just use it when it’s absolutely necessary to calm him down or to help him fall asleep.
3. Use a children’s electric toothbrush.
This is a popular technique to engage children with oral sensations, in the hope that they will learn to swallow their spit sooner.
Tip: start slowly by touching it to the child’s lips and cheeks when it’s turned off; then move to the tongue, gums and teeth; then turn it on, etc…
4. Move from a sippy cup to a straw cup as fast as you can.
Each step to a different cup further promotes different muscles used in the mouth. Most children who use straws often solve their drooling issue when this skill is mastered, so the sooner you get to it, the better.
Tip: normally, we say to wait until your baby’s first birthday to switch to a sippy cup, but even if you do it earlier for the sake of helping control the drool… put those bottles AWAY, make the switch “cold turkey,” and don’t go back– it should only take a weekend to get your baby used to the idea that his bottle days are over.
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If your gut tells you that there may be a speech issue, you should contact a speech therapist to perform an assessment — after all, it’s always better to check and be wrong, than to let something go un-diagnosed.
But also know that it’s very normal for your baby to drool a LOT during his first year (and second year too!), so try not to worry about it too much. And of course, there’s always a silver lining, right? Here’s this one’s: your baby’s drool coats toys and other objects with disease-preventing proteins. Yay.
Related Posts: Our Favorite Teething Toys, How to Brush Your Baby’s Teeth!, Suckers! (Pacifiers), Pacifier Panic!
Disclaimer
Why Does My Child Drool When He/She Sleeps? – Wells Family Dental Group
In 2020, we expect to assist over 1000 patients that are attempting to sleep better. If your child drools excessively when he or she sleeps, read the information below and then contact us.
Have you ever woken up from a long, relaxing sleep only to find a puddle of drool on your pillow? Don’t panic because you’re not alone! Many people, especially children, find themselves having to wash their pillowcases often due to excessive drooling throughout the night.
Actually, drooling while sleeping is pretty common with very little risk factors to worry about.
Drooling is defined as the flow of saliva outside of the mouth. It can be caused by the excess production of saliva, the inability to retain saliva within the mouth, or problems swallowing excess saliva thus causing it to leak out.
Throughout the day, your body constantly produces saliva. This saliva is typically swallowed when you’re awake, but what happens when you’re asleep?
First, the body will naturally slow down the production of saliva. The saliva that isn’t swallowed then pools and builds up in the mouth. Because your facial muscles are relaxed while you are asleep, the saliva leaks out of the mouth depending on the sleeping position. If your child drools while he/she sleeps, there is probably little to no reason for concern other than an extra load of laundry now and then. However, if you notice that there’s an excess of drooling, try encouraging a different sleeping position.
Generally, sleeping or laying directly on the back minimizes drool as the saliva can drain to the throat. Positions such as the fetal position (on your side) or on the stomach prohibits draining through the throat pushing the saliva to the mouth.
If your child changes his/her sleeping position and the problem persists, contact your primary doctor or dentist to discuss some of these medical conditions:
- Teething
- Allergies
- Sinus Infections
- Tonsillitis
- Acid Reflux
- Sleep/Night Terrors
- Medication Side Effects
- Sleep Apnea
- Neurological Disorder/Developmental Delay
Most of these medical conditions hold no reason for concern; however, they should be investigated further if the drooling problem persists. Your doctor or dentist may recommend therapy or another form of treatment to assist with the reduction of drooling. Treatment does exist! Drooling should not interfere with your child’s sleep schedule, and, as a concerned parent, you should rest easy knowing that your child is benefitting from a full, healthy sleep.
And, don’t forget to wash those pillows!
Ways to Treat and Prevent Drooling
There are certain things you may be able to do to help your child treat and prevent drooling. We recommend these drooling prevention tips.
Change Sleeping Positions
If your child tends to drool while they’re sleeping, encourage them to switch sleeping positions. They may find that sleeping on their back resolves the issues as gravity will prevent saliva from coming out of their mouth.
Treat Allergies and Sinus Problems
Take your child to an allergy doctor or orthodontist if you believe they are facing allergies and sinus problems. Many allergies lead to symptoms like increased saliva production and can be taken care of through medications, allergy shots, lifestyle changes, and other common allergy treatments.
Take Medication
If your child has a neurological condition, a doctor may be able to prescribe medication to eliminate it.
It often comes in a patch form and is placed behind your child’s ear.
Speech Therapy
Speech therapy may be an option if your child’s drooling is the result of jaw instability and tongue weakness. While this treatment may take some time, it can improve the way your child swallows while decreasing their drooling.
Oral Appliances
There are special oral appliances that are designed to aid with swallowing. They can help position the tongue and close the lips, enabling your child to swallow better so they are less likely to drool.
Surgery
While surgery is the last resort to prevent drooling, it may be necessary, especially if an underlying condition is the cause of your child’s drooling.
As you can see, there are many treatment options available to help your child resolve their drooling issue and any discomfort and embarrassment it may be causing. Since drooling can be a sign of or lead to complications, it’s important to resolve it as soon as possible.
Childhood diseases | Diseases in children
The first cry of a newborn
06/10/2022
If a baby is crying, it means that something is wrong. Every mother knows: either his diaper is wet, or, despite the dead of night, he is hungry again, or he is overcome by fears unknown to us, and therefore he calls his parents. But the very first cry that a newborn makes has, in addition to this, one more meaning – much more important than scientists have hitherto thought. As recent research by biologist Kathleen Wericke from the Institute of Anthropology at the Berlin clinic “Charite” and mathematician Werner Mende, already in the first weeks of life, the piercing cry of each infant differs from the cry of his other tiny peers.
Published in Pregnancy and Pregnancy Management, Pediatrics Premium Clinic
Your Baby’s Development: Week 5 . In these first weeks, baby crying is the best means of communication with adults. The question is – how do you know if he really needs you or just wants to meet his mother right now? And oddly enough, in fact, you will quickly learn to recognize the various nuances of the child’s behavior.
If your baby is crying and you still can’t figure out why, take a look at this list.
Published in Pediatrics Premium Clinic
Newborn baby: sight, hearing, taste
06/10/2022
Newborns do not have such good vision that they can see the room and people passing by in detail. Visual acuity will be achieved by about 1 year of age. The field of view is also limited. Most mothers intuitively lean towards the child and thereby give him the opportunity to see better. What is further than 1 meter, the child sees already blurred due to the immaturity of the neural pathways. The way this information is obtained is interesting. Because the newborn can’t tell you what he still sees and what he doesn’t, he quickly switches. Newborns prefer various more complex formulas to simple ones, as mentioned above.
Published in Pediatrics Premium Clinic
Expansion of the baby’s diet
10.06.2022
After the baby is 17 weeks old, but no later than 26 weeks, there comes a time when he ceases to be satisfied with milk.
Whether you are breastfeeding or formula feeding your baby, you should gradually start introducing new foods into your baby’s diet during this period. This will help the diet of the baby. The way the mother ate during pregnancy whether she is breastfeeding and expanding her baby’s diet correctly all have a real impact on her baby’s present and future health.
Published in Pediatrics, Nutrition and diet Premium Clinic
Reasons why the child worries parents
06/10/2022
The baby changes from week to week. However, sometimes new changes in a child’s behavior are worrisome, especially when the child is crying, snoring, or drooling heavily. Although they are rarely a precursor to symptoms, sometimes they cannot be ruled out. What to do if the baby cries, snores, screams in the bath, makes strange sounds , puts hands in mouth and drools a lot – what behavior can disturb the baby? These are the most common questions that concern young mothers.
Published in Pediatrics Premium Clinic
First tests for the newborn
10.06.2022
Immediately after the birth of the newborn, the neonatologist carefully examines and evaluates whether the child is well adapted to life outside the mother’s abdomen. The first tests of the newborn after birth are carried out already in the delivery room. Neonatologist will carefully examine all the baby’s vital signs to identify and treat possible anomalies. So do not be afraid when the baby will cry or cough, because this is a natural and normal reflex that indicates his health.
Published in Pediatrics Premium Clinic
When should you take your child to a psychologist?
06/10/2022
The fact that a child needs to be taken to a psychologist does not necessarily have to be directly related to his parents, although it should be said that the family and social environment in which the child grew up strongly influence and explain most of the behavior which they have.
Children develop according to the environment in which they live. They observe the people around them and imitate them. When a child goes to school, their classmates and teachers also begin to influence them.
Published in Pediatrics, Psychotherapy Premium Clinic
How to take care of your child’s feet?
06/10/2022
Most babies have crooked legs. However, when they are distorted, and a large gap is visible between knees , clubfoot is most often diagnosed. Clubfoot often disappears by itself when the child is two years old. But if the child is overweight or has rickets, there is little chance that the defect will go away on its own. Clubfoot is noticeable already at birth, but only begins to bother the child when he begins to master the first steps. Prevents him from walking, the child often falls. Requires orthopedic control and exclusion of rickets or other growth cartilage diseases bones .
Published in Pediatrics Premium Clinic
Neonatal hypertonicity
06/10/2022
Many new parents are familiar with the term neonatal hypertonicity.
However, not everyone fully understands what it is. Is this a natural condition or a manifestation of a disease? Tone is an unconscious excitation of muscles that helps a person to move, change postures of his body, maintain the level of blood pressure in vessels . During pregnancy being in a tight mother’s belly , the baby was forced to take a compact pose. The arms are bent at the elbows, the legs are bent to the tummy, the palms are clenched into fists. The first months after birth, the baby is often in the position of the embryo familiar to him. This is how hypertonicity of newborns manifests itself.
Published in Pediatrics Premium Clinic
Baby skin care: how to protect your baby’s skin in winter?
10.06.2022
Protection of children’s skin – why is it necessary to protect children’s skin in winter? In newborns, the lipid barrier is not yet sufficiently developed.
What is a lipid barrier? It is a “coat” that protects a person’s skin from harmful factors (such as ultraviolet radiation, temperature fluctuations or wind) and prevents the skin from drying out, keeping it hydrated. Therefore, in winter, the skin of a small child requires special care. Children’s skin, due to its structure, dries very easily. This has very negative consequences. Dry skin cracks, flakes, and itches, which can cause your baby to scratch. As a result of scratching, quarrels are formed on the skin, that is, defects in the epidermis, which can be a gateway for viral, bacterial and fungal infections.
Published in Dermatology, Pediatrics Premium Clinic
“My baby was born the size of a milk bottle.” Mothers of premature babies on childbirth and feelings of guilt
“Dad called me to find out how things were going, and he himself began to sob into the phone. It made it even worse.” Women who give birth to premature babies become depressed, and instead of support they receive pity and condemnation.
They tell their stories.
Eggplant skin color, alien head
Natalia Rozengrin from Barnaul gave birth at 30 weeks, her son weighed 950 grams. It was the size of a milk bottle.
At the 16th week of pregnancy, Natalia had a car accident. She pinched her sciatic nerve. Sit down on the bed, walk at least to the toilet – all through hellish pain and with someone else’s help. The recovery took months, in which she completely forgot about her other problem – hypertension.
According to her, Natalia herself was not bothered by high blood pressure. She got used to it. But the obstetrician-gynecologist warned that complications are possible against the background of pressure, he prescribed pills for her. Before the accident, Natalya regularly drank them, and after that she “constantly forgot.” At the 30th week, she developed preeclampsia, a critical condition. Natalia was urgently caesarean.
Natalya’s son Mark spent six days in the intensive care unit of the maternity hospital.
Then nine – in the intensive care unit of the regional children’s hospital. In those days, Natalya “felt like a bomb with an incomprehensible fuse – it is not known when it will explode.”
– I walked around the maternity hospital and howled softly in the corners. A nurse approached me and said that stop holding tight, you need to cry normally and it will become easier. I was afraid, Natalya admits. “I thought that if I started crying out loud, I would be completely carried away, and I would go crazy.
Since 2012, children in Russia have been nursed after the 24th week of pregnancy and weighing more than 500 grams. According to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, about 100 thousand premature babies are born in the country every year, of which about 97% can be saved.
After 15 days, Mark was transferred to the intensive care unit, Natalia was allowed to stay with him. It was necessary to rejoice, but Natalya looked at her son and “prepared herself for the worst.
” She believed that she was doing the right thing: she tuned in to any trials, to the fact that she would accept the child, no matter how he grew up. But due to stress, Natalya “overprepared” herself so much that she stopped adequately assessing what was happening. The perception of the world was distorted utterly.
– Nine hundred and fifty grams! Natalya recalls. – There is no fat layer yet, so the skin color is eggplant. The bones of the skull are not fully formed – the head is like that of an alien. Ears and nose are transparent. You know, my husband works as a lifeguard. He saw so much. Carried burnt bodies out of fires. But when I told him about Mark, he was afraid to look at the child. I myself was wildly frightened, sentenced us to eternal life in hospitals and transferred my fear to him.
Natalya is the only one out of 15 women in the NICU who has improved lactation — usually these mothers either don’t get milk at all or disappear quickly due to stress. And she was ashamed of that too.
— I was “ashamed” in front of the girls who were roommates. They don’t have four milk, and I sit like a maniac, every three hours I milk and milk. You can’t go anywhere, there were no separate rooms for pumping then, Natalya recalls. “Then my mother scared me. She fed her children up to two or three months, and her milk disappeared. She told me without thinking, “So what? You will be discharged, and like me, your milk will be gone by then.” I panicked.
Mark
At first, the baby needed nine to fifteen milliliters per feeding, but I have fifty from each breast. I pumped my milk to the last drop and froze it. During the month and a half that we spent in the hospital, I stuffed them with freezers at home with my husband, my parents and my husband’s parents, my uncle, my sister! It’s good that it was winter and the meat could be stored on the balcony. Six months later, the family yelled: “Natasha, we need freezers!” Naturally, I resisted throwing away the milk: what if it all the same disappears, and I will not finish feeding my son.
Natalia’s milk was not lost. Her son “hung on her chest” for up to a year and two months, until he himself refused.
“Is he disabled?”
At discharge, Mark weighed 2 kilograms 200 grams. According to WHO, normal birth weight for boys is 2.9-3.9 kilograms. The local pediatrician was afraid to touch Mark.
— For three months she told me: “Excuse me, I’m scared. You yourself show the child to me, ”Natalya is already laughing. – From the doctors, although they helped me a lot, I heard a lot of things. For example, they ask at the initial appointment: “What was your birth weight?” I told them: “Nine hundred and fifty grams.” And lamentations begin: “Oh, what good fellows, they learned to nurse! What, he’s not disabled? I answer: “No, not disabled.”
What can we say about doctors, if Natalia herself didn’t realize that her son is developing well, that the problems associated with prematurity are gone. She was hurt by any remark allegedly related to Mark’s “inferiority”.
She waited: just about some kind of problem would fire.
– Once on the playground they asked me: “Is he a dwarf?” At two years old, he runs, talks, and is almost a head shorter than other children. One aunt said “small”. I hate this word, – Natalia says in her hearts. – And I stopped going with him to where other children are. Only to relatives, at home, or to nature.
According to Elena Baibarina, Director of the Department of Medical Assistance to Children and the Obstetrics Service of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, there is no scientific evidence that premature babies become disabled more often. “80% are ordinary healthy babies,” Baibarina reported.
Searching the Internet for real stories of premature babies, Natalya came across a lot of negativity: the child is necessarily disabled, the family collects money for treatment. She realized belatedly: mothers simply do not talk about healthy children. Because they want to forget everything like a bad dream; because they are afraid to jinx it and hide children from others; because gradually the problem loses relevance for them (the child returns to normal) and they leave it behind.
– And then I prayed: “Well, someone, show me a healthy premature baby!” No one showed it to me, and I was waiting for a dirty trick. Only at the age of 3.5 did I first think that everything was really good with us. Many thanks to the teacher of the kindergarten, in which I took my son. When I meet her from time to time: “You, please, take a closer look. He was born to me at 950 grams. And somehow she: “Mom! What are you doing with your child like that? He is healthy! Look, they are sick all around, two or three children go to the group, and one of them is yours.
“Read about depression”
According to Natalia, she would have “woke up” much earlier if it had not been for the protracted postpartum depression. Her symptoms: apathy, avoidance of contact with people, tearfulness, poor sleep and loss of appetite – Natalya left without attention for a long time. Although for two years she stopped communicating with friends.
— When Mark was about nine months old, a psychologist friend told me cautiously: “Read about depression.
” However, it is difficult to assess the situation from inside it. For a moment I surfaced, realizing that something was wrong with me. And then again she let everything take its course and switched to her son, Natalya says with annoyance. – In order to see the problem, a person must spend energy on thinking. This is work, there must be resources for it. You need strength to formulate questions if you decide to turn to a psychologist. Apparently I missed them.
Natalia didn’t even have enough strength to mourn: soon after, her father died suddenly due to an aortic aneurysm. At the funeral, she did not shed a tear and did not feel anything at all.
– Now I’m crying, thinking about my dad. Then it was like I was frozen. Probably couldn’t go any deeper. Otherwise, there would be a clinic, and the body defended itself in such a way.
The first glimpses of her life appeared in the second year of her son’s life. Natalya began to look for a suitable psychologist and did not find it.
It turned out that the specialists she met had little understanding of how to work with her situation: the birth of a premature baby is neither a loss nor a disease, some too specific condition that they did not know from which side to approach. Since Natalia is fluent in German, she found information about the problems of mothers of premature babies on a German resource. And also – the results of a pilot study by British scientists that women whose children were born with very low birth weight (less than 1,500 grams) are more likely than mothers of full-term babies to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the second and third years. child’s life.
“We mothers reassured doctors”
In her third year, Natalia learned about the international club “28 loops” (so many loops are needed to start knitting socks for a premature baby), and he also helped her in recovery.
28 Loops is a community of people who knit woolen clothes for premature babies.
For example, babies need rugs and socks so that the wool irritates their skin and the children do not fall asleep deeply. Then they are less likely to stop breathing during sleep due to the immaturity of the respiratory center. Octopus toys – so that children have something to grab onto with their hands (in the womb they grab the umbilical cord) and they don’t tear off medical tubes.
As a rule, there is not enough woolen clothes in maternity hospitals. Neither mothers nor their friends are able to quickly provide the baby with the same socks. Club “28 loops” solves this problem.
Mark
Natalia has been fond of knitting since her childhood, so when she learned about the club, she rushed to knit for the Altai Regional Children’s Hospital. The woman united around herself those who have a desire to help. Each transfer of things to the department for premature babies took place in a solemn atmosphere with the participation of mothers. Three times a year: July 8 on the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, November 17 on the International Day of Premature Babies and New Year’s Eve.
“Returns” to the regional hospital turned into psychotherapy sessions for Natalia. And, it turned out, it was not her alone who felt better at heart.
— I noticed with what interest the girls, after handing over things, come up to me and ask different questions. Especially those whose children are less than a kilogram, says Natalia. – I remembered how much I wanted to see a healthy child, and therefore I began to take Mark to events. He is their main focus! The girls are watching him intently: how he walks (what if he has cerebral palsy?), how he looks (does his eyes squint?), how he behaves (is everything all right with intelligence?). I believe and see that it helps them morally.
In 2017, on the International Day of Premature Babies, Natalia arranged the first meeting of doctors from the regional children’s hospital with their former patients.
Her goal was to help mothers get rid of old fears and give doctors the opportunity to get to know their “graduates”, to see the fruits of their labor.
— Before that, doctors saw children with serious health problems. They returned to them for some advice. And for 20 years that there was a department of premature babies in the regional hospital, they never crossed paths with their healthy graduates, – says Natalia. The meeting didn’t go as I had imagined. I thought that mothers would cry, but in reality the doctors sobbed. We mothers comforted them.
Since then, such campaigns have been held annually.
Mark with his mom and dad
As a result, Natalia’s experience formed the basis of the Right to a Miracle Foundation’s project. Since September 2021, in nine regions of Russia, volunteers, the so-called peer consultants, began to work in departments of hospitals for premature babies. These are women who themselves once gave birth long before 40 weeks (the normal gestation period). They know how current mothers feel and can provide moral support.
“I heard “Poof!” — and the waters began to recede»
Mariam Pogobesyan’s pregnancy from Voronezh proceeded smoothly, without complications.
And suddenly, at 31 weeks, her water broke.
It was Sunday. My husband and I went to get a dog. We return from the veterinary clinic, and I feel severe pain in my stomach, recalls Mariam. – At home, I heard some kind of sound like “Poof!”, And the waters began to break. My husband loaded me into the car. We rushed to the nearest maternity hospital.
The doctors hoped to stop the contractions and gave Mariam a special drug. Until one in the morning she was languishing in pain: her lower abdomen ached, her legs were taken away. Realizing that the limit had come, Mariam went to the midwife on duty and asked her to examine her. It turned out that Mariam is giving birth. Nellie was born half an hour later. She was immediately taken to the emergency room.
The doctors asked my mother not to worry. The girl’s weight is decent – 1,950 grams. She screamed, her lungs opened. According to the Apgar scale, 7 points out of 10. Mariam willingly believed the doctors and calmed down.
And the next day she was told that her daughter was on artificial lung ventilation.
Nelly
What happened to Nelly is a mystery to Mariam. A day later, the baby was transferred to the regional children’s hospital. Mariam waited two weeks to be placed with her daughter. The ground was slipping from under my feet.
– Either there are no places, or something else. I don’t remember those days well. Anxiety. Tears. Thoughts: how is a child without me? She ate by force and went to the maternity hospital to express her milk. I went to the hospital and my heart skipped a beat. Alive, not alive? Any deterioration? Mariam says. – I was told that the child’s condition is stable and serious. What does “stably heavy” mean, I did not understand. For me it was the end. But it turns out that in the medical vocabulary “stable” is already good, and you can rejoice. All premature babies are stably heavy at first.
“I am neither a woman nor a mother”
Like any premature baby, Nelly was carefully examined.
She had a massive hemorrhage in her brain. Doctors did not tell my mother about the possible consequences. Mariam was afraid to question them and herself led herself to this conclusion: brain damage – intellect – mental retardation.
“I couldn’t think that it could only affect motor activity, so I drew a picture of a child sitting in a wheelchair and drooling,” Mariam scolds herself. — I sobbed. The nurses comforted me. They said that they saw many children with hemorrhages and everything ended happily. But I didn’t hear them, I imagined the worst option possible. And when my daughter told me for six months that she had a mild degree of hemiparesis (weakening of muscle strength on one side of the body), I exhaled straight. Motor disturbances were definitely easier for me to accept than mental ones.
Mariam is grateful to her relatives: they, unlike her, did not fall into despair and never reproached her. Moreover, Mariam herself managed to shoot arrows of accusations at her relatives.
— I am such a person that I eat myself from the inside. I don’t need help with this. Perhaps the relatives understood this and were afraid to say too much to me, she suggests. – And, thank God, I quickly passed the stage of self-flagellation: “Here, I’m so bad, I didn’t inform. I am not a woman and not a mother. My focus was on others, and it was easier for me that way. I blamed both my husband and my mother. Allegedly, they treated me badly: my husband didn’t give me a lift somewhere, and the like.
In reality, Mariam had a ruptured vein due to varicose veins in her umbilical cord. The oxygen supply to the child was disrupted, he began to suffocate, labor began. Mariam read that varicose veins are not visible on ultrasound. And who to blame?
More difficult with hemorrhage. Until now, Mariam sometimes thinks about his reasons. The most unbearable for her, if the reason lay in the oversight of the doctors: the child was connected to a ventilator for reinsurance, they gave too much oxygen flow, and the vessels broke.
Now Mariam is driving this version away from herself. And before that, she looked for similar cases, compared, blamed the doctors, in other words, drove herself into a corner.
“I don’t understand why he doesn’t speak”
Mariam and Nelly spent a month and a half in the hospital. In a year, Nelly physically caught up with the Normics. However, her speech development was delayed. Nellie didn’t even babble. Mariam tensed.
– He doesn’t speak in a year – okay. At one and a half he doesn’t say – well, wait, the premature baby. After one and a half, I took her to the specialists. We went to Moscow twice. Doctors look at her – psychologists, neuropsychologists, speech therapists – and shrug. Nelly’s speech apparatus is in order, her passive vocabulary is rich (fulfills requests, shows colors in a book), and it is not clear why she does not speak.
Mariam and Nelly
Doctors advise: “Wait”. And this period of waiting, in which I can do nothing, was terrible.
I was so overwhelmed that I ended up at the reception of a psychotherapist.
During the most acute periods, Mariam’s grandmother and mother took care of the child, and she herself lay “in a horizontal position, all in tears and with a look into the void.”
As a rule, complete oblivion overtook Mariam after reading horror stories on the Internet.
– I had strong conflicts with my husband over the phone. As soon as my husband saw me with the phone, he started to shake, and he took away my mobile phone. Although I could not read about childhood illnesses, says Mariam. “My family saw very well that I needed help. But how can you help if the person is against it? Having matured, I myself told my husband: “Sasha, take me to the doctor! I can’t take it anymore, I want to live normally!” I still had fragments of my mind, and I admitted to myself that it was time to be treated.
Mariam spent three weeks under the close attention of a psychotherapist, she was prescribed medication.
It was in the spring, and in the summer Nellie spoke, and almost immediately with sentences. For another year and a half, Mariam continued to work with the doctor, taking antidepressants.
Nelly with mom and dad
— It seems that she managed to overcome depression. Cleared up in my head. And my family was able to return to normal life – to work, relax, enjoy communication with each other. At the family council and with the participation of the attending physician, it was decided that it was necessary to change the scenery and try to go to work.
At the age of two and a half Nelli went to kindergarten, and Mariam became an equal consultant.
“My daughter lies like a transparent petal”
The first pregnancy of Victoria Mordanova from Krasnoyarsk was ectopic. The second ended in a miscarriage at the 19th week – the cervix is too short, it does not hold the fetus in the womb. In the third pregnancy, the doctors played it safe and sewed up the cervix at the 12th week.
At 21 weeks, the stitches parted. It was not possible to re-impose them – the walls of the neck were torn during the operation. From the 21st week to the 28th, Victoria lay in the hospital without getting out of bed. It was the only way to prevent preterm labor.
Olya
Viktoria “did not make it to the end of the due date” because an intrauterine infection was discovered – the child developed sepsis. She was called into labor. The baby did not breathe on his own for the first week, his weight was 1,350 grams.
— Mothers who have regular births have so-called happy moments. They put the baby on their chest, they feed him … We don’t have this, ”says Victoria. It was difficult for me to accept the situation. It is difficult for the first time to approach your daughter and see her. She lies like a transparent petal. And wild fear, and misunderstanding of what lies ahead of us.
It is difficult to talk to the attending physician because every day is a new diagnosis.
And you don’t know where to put yourself after these conversations.
“The worst thing we had was a ventricular hemorrhage in the brain on both sides, in one of the most severe degrees,” continues Victoria. – There are four of them. We had a three-four degree. They said that the chances of survival are 80% and that this is not treated in any way. It’s just being watched.
“Dad called and sobbed into the phone”
Victoria’s daughter, she was named Olya, got out of a critical condition rather quickly. On June 7, there was a birth, in mid-August – an extract. But Victoria left the hospital with a great sense of anxiety. Olya was threatened with a deep disability.
— I understood that I had a gigantic responsibility. My daughter has a lot of problems to solve. And I need not only to find good specialists, but also to come to them on time, without missing a moment. I didn’t know how to do it,” Victoria explains.
Victoria with newborn Olya
In order not to become limp, Victoria communicated only with her husband (he supported her as much as possible and helped her in making decisions) and “partially with her mother”.
— Why couldn’t she be with others? Because they started to regret. And from their pity it became even worse, just sick, – Victoria admits. – Even my dad tried to call me and find out how I was doing, and started sobbing into the phone. I asked him: “Why are you calling me? Support me or cry with me? In addition, I didn’t want to retell the diagnoses to everyone, answer their questions: “Why did this happen? And how will you go on?” How do I know? I wanted calm communication, not compassionate little voices on the phone. From them even more I want to hide somewhere, fail, run away.
When her daughter was four months old, Victoria learned about the Right to a Miracle Foundation and met mothers who struggled with similar problems. Their advice helped her a lot. And Victoria and Olya, fortunately, everything worked out.
In a year and a half Olya caught up with her usual peers. Now the girl is two years and four months old, she goes to kindergarten. Her resilient mother is on the “rescue team”.