My 2 month old drools a lot: Your access to this site has been limited by the site owner

Опубликовано: September 6, 2023 в 10:50 am

Автор: alexxlab

Категории: Miscellaneous

When to Babies Stop Drooling? And Other Drool Questions Answered.

Babies usually start to drool around 2-3 months of age and stop drooling when they reach about 2 to three years old. Usually, toddlers stop drooling when they’re done with teething.

Moreover, there are several causes of drooling, and most of them are normal and are not a cause of alarm. However, this may cause drool rash, which is very typical for excessively salivating babies. Drool rash can be treated at home, but when it starts to cause severe discomfort or drool rash is not going away, you may want to visit a pediatrician for proper diagnosis and medication.

Drooling and Babies

Drooling is a normal occurrence for infants and toddlers. Infant saliva has essential functions in the development of your child, which includes:

Softens and moisten the food before swallowing and digestion,
Keeps your baby’s mouth moist,
Washes food residue and bacteria,
Protects teeth from cavities,
Converts starch into sugar and functions as an antacid
Functions as communications between breastfed baby and nursing mother.

Researchers also suggest that excessive drooling is connected to your baby’s digestive development.

So if you notice that you keep on changing bibs and shirts, it’s perfectly normal and is a sign that your baby is healthy.

When do babies start drooling?

You may notice your baby is starting to drool when they reach two to three months of age. That is the time when your baby becomes “oral-centric,” that is, when he put things into this mouth. This act stimulates the salivary gland, thus producing more drool.

What are the causes of excessive drooling?

Excessive Drooling

Drooling, including excessive drooling, is as normal as crawling or standing up – it is part of every child’s development.

Feeding

Your baby is used to drinking milk to get nourishment. They will start to eat solid baby food when they reach around six months. To compensate for this change of diet from liquid to solid, the salivary glands will produce more saliva to help soften the food for easier digestion.

Related Read: Healthy Snacks for Kindergarteners (Recipes + Ideas)

Teething

Teething is the most common reason for excessive drooling. When your baby is teething, several symptoms, including fever and excess saliva, are present. Your baby’s gums are irritated. In response, your baby’s salivary glands are working double-time to protect and soothe gums during this stage of your baby’s development.

Use of Pacifier

Using a pacifier can also cause your baby to drool a lot. Since babies who use a pacifier are used to sucking and swallowing their saliva, their bodies are triggered to produce more.

When the pacifier is not in their mouth, babies are not swallowing, which causes excess saliva to spill over their mouths.

Other causes

Excessive drooling is normal. However, if you notice that your baby is drooling more than usual and is accompanied by other symptoms such as having difficulty breathing or swallowing and has jerky movements, being fussy, or not sleeping well, then better to have your baby checked by the pediatrician.

Read: Sleep Aid for Kids: A Closer Look

When do babies stop drooling?

Babies stop drooling when their teeth are complete, which is when they are around 2-3 years old, but once the first few teeth are out, you will notice less drooling than before.

However, if your baby is still drooling long after he is done with teething, then it may be because of the following conditions:

Dental/Oral Structure Problems

Infection of the gums, cavities, and malformations of the mouth prevents the mouth from being closed properly or may interfere with swallowing.

Congestion

When your baby is congested, thus experiencing difficulty breathing, their nasal passageways are blocked, which leads them to breathe using their mouths. Since their mouth is open all the time, drooling will take place.

Hypotonia

Hypotonia is a condition where the muscle has low stretch or resistance, thus making your baby unable to close his mouth or what is called an open mouth posture.

Neurological or Genetic Disorder

Children with neurological or genetic disorders such as cerebral palsy and Down syndrome have low control over their facial muscles. This includes the mouth, which affects the child’s ability to swallow or close their mouth. This results in drooling.

Pediatric Dysphagia

This is a condition where a baby has difficulty swallowing. This includes difficulty in eating, drinking, and at times, even breathing.

Drool Rash – What it is and How to treat it at home

When you notice that the surroundings of your baby’s mouth, or his face, neck, and even chest, have rashes or are chapping, it can be because of excessive drooling, known as drool rash.

Drool rash is an allergy caused by excessive moisture. When the skin is left wet for longer periods, it becomes irritated, and rashes appear. When left untreated, it can cause severe discomfort for your baby.

Related Read: Cradle Cap vs. Dry Skin: Which condition does your baby have?

How to prevent drool rash

The good news is drool rash is a common occurrence and can be avoided entirely. The key is to keep your baby’s skin clean and dry.

Here are some of the tips to prevent drool rash:

Always have a burp cloth (or any soft, non-abrasive cloth) to wipe your baby’s drool. This is to keep your baby’s skin dry as much as possible. Don’t rub, but use light patting motions.
Replace your baby’s clothes as often as possible to prevent the skin from being damp. If necessary, try using a waterproof bib.
Clean your baby’s face after feeding.
Use petroleum jelly. This acts as a barrier between the moisture and the skin.

How to treat drool rash

It is always a stressful experience when our little one is uncomfortable. Drool rash is not only uncomfortable to your baby, but it can also develop into a more severe skin condition. This is why treating it as early as possible is important. You know what they say, a happy baby is a happy mommy.

The treatment for drool rashes is similar to how we treat diaper rash. Here are some of the things we can do to treat drool rash of your baby:

Wash the affected area with warm water twice a day and dry with a soft, non-abrasive towel or cloth, and pat dry. Never rub as this may exacerbate the problem and increase the skin’s sensitivity.
Apply a thin coat of ointment or petroleum jelly to soothe the irritation. In addition, petroleum jelly acts as a barrier between the skin and the drool.
When washing clothes, use mild, fragrance-free detergents. Fragrance and other chemicals can cause more irritation to your child’s already sensitive skin.
When bathing, use mild, unscented soap.
Try to limit its use when you see that your baby’s pacifier worsens the rashes.

When after a week, you don’t see any improvement in your baby’s skin condition, consult your pediatrician so they can properly diagnose any other factors that cause the rashes, and they can give stronger ointments as treatment.

If your baby’s rashes is accompanied by fever, you need to consult your pediatrician as it may be a symptom to a more severe disease.

Key Takeaway:

Drooling should not cause you any alarm, especially if your baby is in the early stage of development. As a matter of fact, drooling during infancy is a sign of healthy digestive and cognitive development.

Drooling helps your baby in so many ways, such as soothing the gums during teething, breaking down solid food for easier swallowing and digestion, and sending a signal to a breastfeeding mom, which changes the composition of breastfeeding milk.

It is miraculous and astonishing.

Go ahead, let your little drooling monster make a mess! As long as you are there, there is nothing to worry about.

Why Does My Baby Drool Too Much?

It’s no secret that infants drool. While adults’ drooling is typically regarded as odd and uncivilized, infant drool is adorable and reassuring. Few people ponder about why their lovely newborns are drooling, but most just let it happen without question. It’s just one of those unattractive things that come with infancy, like spit-up, filled diapers, and snot.

By the time your child is two months old, you may have accumulated an increasing number of damp blankets, drool rags, and onesies. Sure, constant drooling might be a nuisance, but it isn’t simply a slick, slippery annoyance—infant saliva performs several crucial functions in your child’s growth. Here are some of the most often asked questions regarding drool, along with their simple, ahem, answers:

Is Babies’ Drooling Common?

If your kid has started drooling, you should anticipate it to last until he is 18 to 24 months old. Drooling is frequent throughout the teething stage, so plan on changing your baby’s clothing 5-6 times each day. Drooling is extremely frequent in babies. However, if a youngster drools after the age of four, it is not normal.

Should I Be Worried About My Baby Excessively Drooling?

Excessive drooling does exist, but it can be difficult to determine if your baby’s drool is abnormal or not. Excessive drool, on the other hand, isn’t something you should be too concerned about because it’s probably benefiting your kid more than hurting him.

Saliva is generated in order to clean the gums and teeth of food and bacteria. More germs are wiped away when a newborn drools heavily. Saliva also aids in the breakdown of specific molecules in the meals your kid consumes, thus creating too much will benefit his stomach.

Excessive drooling is nothing to be alarmed about as long as your kid is making normal developmental growth in other areas, and you should only be concerned if the drool is creating other difficulties.

Is Excessive Drooling an Autism Symptom?

Along with developmental delays, one of the symptoms that children diagnosed with autism typically face is trouble with muscular control and sensitivity. Drooling is a pretty typical sign in children with autism because they have difficulties regulating their facial muscles.

Drooling therapy methods for autistic children must be individually adapted to the child.

What Should I Do If Drool Irritates Baby?

Sometimes drool can lead to a rash around the baby’s mouth, owing to irritation that arises from excess moisture.

If this occurs with your infant, attempt to gently wipe away the drool so it does not remain on the baby’s face for too long. You should also consider applying ointment to the afflicted area at night.

Finally, there is nothing you can do to stop your infant from drooling. It is, after all, a normal and healthy aspect of a baby’s growth!

julio 12, 2021

0 Comments

Lactose insufficiency – articles from the specialists of the clinic “Mother and Child”

what it is
The main food of babies is milk (breast or formula). It contains many different nutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates), which, with the help of special digestive enzymes, are broken down into simple components and digested. But in young children, the gastrointestinal tract is still immature, there are few enzymes in it, others are not at all or they are not yet working at full capacity. When the baby grows up, there will be more enzymes, the digestive system will mature, but for now there may be various problems with it.

All milk (women’s, cow’s, goat’s, artificial mixtures) and dairy products contain the carbohydrate lactose, also called “milk sugar”. In order for lactose to be absorbed, the lactase enzyme must break it down, but if the child has little or no lactase enzyme, then lactose is not broken down and remains in the intestine. As a result, there is always a large amount of milk sugar in the intestines, which begins to ferment, and where there is fermentation, conditionally pathogenic flora actively reproduces. What we feel during fermentation: intestinal motility increases (it rumbles), plus gas formation increases (the stomach swells). But in an adult, this is usually a one-time situation due to some inaccuracies in nutrition, and it quickly passes. But in babies, everything is different, especially since they lack the enzyme not once, but constantly. What it looks like: The milk sugar lactose retains water, hence loose stools. In the child’s stomach, “rumbles and boils”, colic begins, the stool becomes frothy, greens, mucus and even blood may appear in it. If at first the stool was liquid, then constipation appears, and all this changes in a circle: yesterday there was diarrhea, today and tomorrow there is no stool at all, the day after tomorrow it is liquid again. And the most unpleasant thing is endless colic and endless crying, there is no rest for both the parents themselves and the baby. Mom at some point notices that the baby is crying just after feeding, and then a variety of advice falls upon her. “Your milk is bad, better give the mixture,” says the beloved mother-in-law. “Only breasts and nothing else!” – advise breastfeeding gurus. As a result, the mother tries one thing or the other, but neither breast milk nor artificial mixture gives relief to the child. Colic, crying and problems with the stomach and stool continue. The parents are in a panic because they don’t understand what is going on. In fact, this is a typical picture of bright lactase deficiency (LN), or insufficient production of the lactase enzyme.

various reasons

There are several types of lactase deficiency, and it is with them that confusion arises.

Congenital lactase deficiency is a genetic and very rare disease (one case in several thousand newborns), it is difficult to confuse it with something, since it is very difficult. The diagnosis is made in the maternity hospital or in the first days after birth, the child does not have lactase at all, he quickly loses weight, he is immediately started to be fed intravenously or through a tube. Some experts (but not doctors) on breastfeeding read once that congenital lactase deficiency is an extremely rare disease, and that’s all – they further began to assure young mothers: “In fact, LN is extremely rare, you don’t have it, you don’t need to listen to doctors “, etc. Yes, congenital LN is a rare disease, but the key word here is “congenital”, and there are other types of lactase deficiency.

Transient lactase deficiency in infants . And this is exactly the condition that occurs very often. The baby was born, and so far he still has little lactase enzyme, plus little normal intestinal microflora. Hence the colic, and loose stools, and mucus, and greenery, and crying, and the nerves of the parents. After a while, the child’s digestive system will fully mature, all enzymes will begin to work actively, the intestines will be populated with what is needed, and “lactase deficiency” will disappear. Therefore, such a LN is called “transient”, that is, temporary, or passing. It passes for someone a month after birth, for someone longer – after six to seven months, and there are children in whom lactase deficiency completely disappears only by the year.

Secondary lactase deficiency. This condition appears if a person has had some kind of intestinal infection, and it does not matter whether it is an adult or a baby. For some time after the illness, the child does not tolerate milk (any), and then with proper nutrition and sometimes even without treatment, everything quickly passes.

Lactase deficiency in adults. There are people in whom the lactase enzyme begins to be lacking only in adulthood, this happens for various reasons: for some, lactase ceases to be produced in the right amount after some kind of illness, for other people, the activity of this enzyme simply fades over time by itself. yourself. As a result, at some age, a person begins to tolerate milk and dairy products poorly, although before that everything was fine. The symptoms are the same as in babies: he drank milk and after that the stomach rumbles, boils, and the stool is liquid. Sooner or later, a person realizes that milk is not his product, and simply stops drinking it in its pure form.

what to do

If there is transient lactase deficiency, then what to do with it? First you need to understand if it exists at all. Why does the child have problems with the stomach, stool, why does he cry all the time? Is it neurology, common colic, errors in the mother’s diet, an inappropriate mixture (if the baby is bottle-fed), improper breastfeeding technique, lactase deficiency, or a reaction to the weather? It can be difficult to figure it out right away, but if the tests show that there is lactase deficiency, then it is most likely in it. Now what to do next – treat it, wait for the enzymes to mature, or something else? Firstly, everything here will depend on how much the enzyme is lacking and, therefore, on how much LN worries the child and parents. Some children lack the enzyme quite a bit, so their colic is mild and children cry quite normally. Plus, the violation of the stool is also not very bright: there are a couple of times a slightly liquefied stool, but that’s all. In other children, the lack of lactase is more pronounced, the child does not cry, but simply yells after each feeding, if at first he gained weight well, then after two months the increase is minimal, problems with stools begin in parallel (day – constipation, day – diarrhea), stool sometimes green, sometimes with mucus. Atopic dermatitis appears on the skin (the skin is the first to react to problems with the gastrointestinal tract). Parents have no rest day or night: the baby cries – he is fed – he cries again, they try to calm him down in other ways. But nothing helps. Mom and dad are in a panic, and no one has the strength anymore.

If parents see that the child may have signs of lactase deficiency, that he needs help, first of all, you need to look for a good doctor. Only an experienced pediatrician will be able to figure out why the baby has colic or green stools, what the numbers in the tests say, and what is the norm for one baby and the pathology for another. And of course, it is not necessary to cancel breastfeeding and immediately prescribe lactose-free or low-lactose artificial mixtures (even as a supplement). By itself, milk sugar lactose is very necessary for a child, when lactose is broken down, its components (glucose and galactose) go to the development of the brain, retina, for the life of normal intestinal microflora. So do not completely eliminate this sugar, you need to help it break down. With a strongly pronounced LN, the missing enzyme is given before each feeding (it has long been learned to produce and it is sold in pharmacies), with a dim clinic, its dose can be reduced. And it is also possible that there is lactase deficiency (even according to tests), but it does not need to be treated, there are almost no symptoms.

But what cannot be done is to listen to non-specialists who deny either lactase deficiency itself or its treatment. They see the cause of all problems with the child’s stomach and stool either in the wrong technique of breastfeeding, or partially admit that there is immaturity of the enzyme, but this is natural and will pass by itself. Yes, for some, LN is expressed easily and will pass quickly, but what about those parents whose child yells day and night, covered with a crust from atopic dermatitis and stopped gaining weight? Wait for the time to come and the enzymes to mature? Alas, with pronounced lactase deficiency (even if transient), enterocytes (intestinal cells) often suffer, so it is simply necessary to help such a child.

If you see that your baby has signs of lactase deficiency, look for a doctor who is committed to maintaining breastfeeding and has extensive experience. He will definitely help to find out why the baby is crying, why he has a stomach ache or has problems with stool. And then the life of the parents and the child will return to normal.

“Transient” (temporary) lactase deficiency in someone passes a month after birth, in someone longer – after six to seven months, and there are children in whom lactase deficiency completely disappears only by the age of one

If the tests show that there is a lactase deficiency, then the matter is most likely in it.

Milk sugar lactose is very necessary for a child: when lactose is broken down, its components (glucose and galactose) go to the development of the brain, retina, for the life of normal intestinal microflora

Parent’s note

1. In infants, transient (temporary) lactase deficiency is most common.

2. Symptoms of lactase deficiency usually appear some time after birth. These are colic, frequent crying, increased gas formation, stool – either constipation or diarrhea (over time it becomes frothy, greens, mucus and even blood may appear in it).

3. The simplest study that can reveal lactase deficiency is the analysis of feces for carbohydrates.

4. It is usually not necessary to cancel breastfeeding or partially replace it with lactose-free or low-lactose formulas. You can give the missing enzyme from the outside.

Epilepsy in children

Epilepsy is a chronic disease of the central nervous system that occurs due to excessive electrical activity in the brain and is expressed in convulsive and non-convulsive seizures, loss of consciousness, impaired sensory, motor, mental functions of the body and other manifestations of an epileptic seizure.

Epilepsy most commonly occurs in childhood and its manifestations and causes differ significantly from those in adults. For example, not all convulsions and seizures in children are associated with epilepsy and need to be treated with antiepileptic drugs. Often epilepsy is accompanied by other diseases and pathologies associated with hereditary diseases in children, metabolic disorders, chromosomal, neurological diseases, etc.

Causes of epilepsy in children:

complicated pregnancy, hypoxia, birth trauma, etc.;
intrauterine infections of the nervous system, brain;
the presence of epilepsy in parents or close relatives;
viral infectious diseases (encephalitis, meningitis, etc.), colds accompanied by very high fever;
chromosomal diseases;
tumors, cysts of the brain;
brain injury.

The most common types of epilepsy in children are primary and secondary forms of the disease.

The primary form of epilepsy may occur spontaneously in a child, regardless of provoking factors, and until the causes of such attacks are clearly established in medicine;
Secondary epilepsy in children may occur due to brain injuries, infections, tumors, etc.

First of all, parents should notice alarming symptoms and manifestations of the disease in a child.

Main symptoms of epilepsy in children:

short-term loss of consciousness;
high temperature;
convulsions lasting 1 to 20 minutes;
temporary cessation of breathing;
severe muscle tension;
bluing of the skin;
foam at the mouth.

If your child has these signs, you should contact a pediatric specialist who will make an accurate diagnosis and prescribe treatment. Some forms of epilepsy, despite the frightening symptoms and manifestations, are successfully treated, and the sooner the disease is detected, the more likely it is that the disease will pass without leaving serious consequences. With many types of epilepsy, the child can attend regular preschool and school facilities and lead a normal life with some restrictions on sports activities.

In addition to the typical form of epilepsy, children can be diagnosed with absence epilepsy (minor epilepsy), which is not always noticeable to others. Most often, it occurs at the age of 5-7 years, mainly in girls and is expressed in a sudden fading of the child, a temporary lack of reaction to actions around, a gaze at one point. At the same time, convulsions and fainting are not observed, but when the child comes to himself, he does not remember what happened. Absence epilepsy may resolve by adolescence, but may develop into other forms of the disease.

A child’s psychiatrist or neurologist can diagnose epilepsy in a child based on general symptoms, as well as using EEG, MRI , CT , to determine the form and type of epilepsy. After confirming the diagnosis, the pediatric specialist will prescribe treatment and give recommendations to parents on caring for and assisting the child during seizures.

Treatment of epilepsy in children, as a rule, is carried out with medication, neurosurgical and psychotherapeutic methods, depending on the age of the child, his individual characteristics, the form and severity of epilepsy.