hi it is great to see you um it's january and it is the height of the viral illness season
here in the united states and we have been getting tons of questions from our friends
and families and followers um kind of about what to do about their sick kiddos um some from
covid and some from other viral illnesses yeah so with that we're gonna dive into
how do you take care of a sick baby what are some things you should expect
when do you treat a fever how do you help their bodies best fight off whatever virus they have
and then also some of those red flags signs and symptoms reasons to call the pediatrician right
away in case this is your first time meeting us i'm kurt i'm a board certified pediatrician
i'm sarah i'm a board-certified ob gyn and we are the doctors bjorkman
we need to start out this week by letting you know that at some point in time your baby is going to
get sick and that's okay um it's a natural part of life and they are strong little kiddos that
will get better yeah and so there are definitely some things you can do to limit the risk of your
baby getting sick these are like frequent hand washing for you or anyone who's going to hold baby
staying away from people who are sick trying to make sure that your nutrition and babies nutrition
are as good as possible and then keeping up with normal routine childhood vaccinations
no matter what though at some point your little baby is going to come into contact with a virus
and it will get them sick and this doesn't make you a bad parent um it just happens um
this week little cease had her first febrile illness and it was not a fun time we'll talk about
that yeah and so this week we're going to share some of those emotions that we felt as parents
of the sick baby but then also the things that i as a pediatrician want my patients parents to know
about how to help their babies get as better as fast as possible and also again
at the end we're going to go through all the red flags signs and symptoms to say hey you
need to call a pediatrician or bring your baby to the emergency department right away
you have taken care of lots of sick kiddos over the years what are things that parents should
expect when their baby gets sick yeah so as we all know being sick is no fun and just how you
feel kind of run down you can imagine your baby feels that same way and i'm more tired not wanting
to eat as much maybe wanting to sleep more and maybe just wanting to be cuddled a bit more too
but with it there's most certainly a difference between being sick with a cold and being truly
ill yeah so it's important right here to say that you as a parent know your baby better than
anyone else so if at any point you're saying something is seriously wrong my babies miss
multiple feeds in a row they're not doing their normal thing they're not responsive
and you feel like something's really wrong you need to call their doctor right away yeah and
then another thing we need to mention is that if your baby is in the first two months of life
and they have a fever this is also a reason to contact their medical provider right away
especially in the first month of life babies are at higher risk of serious bacterial illnesses
that could be potentially life-threatening if not treated soon enough so if you have a
young baby in the first one to two months of life and they have a fever call their doctor
okay so since you mentioned it what about fevers are they dangerous do you need to treat them yeah
so those are all great questions so first off the fever itself is rarely dangerous it's part of the
body's natural response and fighting infection but having said that fevers can kind of speed up that
dehydration process it often makes you feel extra crummy less likely one to eat or drink and can be
associated with some pretty heavy breathing so if your baby is has a fever but is otherwise happy
eating well drinking well no troubles breathing you don't have to treat that fever but if they're
having any of those other signs and symptoms that'd be enough to say why don't you treat it you
can help them feel a little bit better making sure they're going to stay hydrated through that fever
okay but how high does the fever need to be yeah so um a technical true fever is a core body
temperature of 38 degrees celsius or higher which is 100.4 degrees fahrenheit the best place to take
a temperature and a baby the most accurate is technically rectally you can also take it in the
mouth which is also very accurate if you've got like a forehead scanner or thermometer that works
under the armpit those are okay to use too they just aren't quite as accurate for getting a true
core body temperature so when we're talking about treating a fever the first things that you can do
are to make sure their room isn't too warm or that they're not over bundled if those things are fine
then it's okay to think about using medications yeah and the number one medication recommended
for treating a fever in infants is tylenol this is also called acetaminophen or paracetamol and
this is great for infants in treating those fevers there's weight dosing that should be on the box or
you can always talk to their medical provider about how much to give it's really important to
note that medications like ibuprofen or motrin should not be used for fever if your baby is in
the first six months of life as those medications can be tough on their young developing kidneys
every viral illness is a little bit different but in general
oftentimes you're seeing symptoms for about a week with the peak of symptoms usually around
day five of illness yeah i kind of like to think of it with a cold or virus that it's three days
coming three days staying and three days going and that also mentally helps me when i'm sick
all right you mentioned helping the baby's body fight off infection what do you mean by that yeah
and so for most viral illnesses though kind of two key things are easy breathing and adequate
hydration now controlling the fevers that we talked about can help with both of these
but there's some other important things to think about for easy breathing and adequate hydration
when it comes to hydration the best thing you can do is to keep giving your baby fluids and that the
best form is going to be breast milk or formula yeah and so it's okay if your baby doesn't want
to eat as much when they're sick just like you don't want to eat as much when you're sick the key
thing here is fluid so if your baby has already started eating solids you may notice that when
they're sick they don't want solids at all that's okay the key here is hydration and fluids in
if they don't want to take as much volume at once that's okay offering them foods more frequently
throughout the day to help them get kind of still that total volume throughout the day
is going to be what's key to help them getting the hydration they need yeah um and here's one
of those times when it's kind of neat uh to be breastfeeding um mom's body can actually
sense um the virus that baby has from the saliva and then proceeds to make antibodies to fight that
virus um and it's also likely mom may have the same bug as well and so you are making antibodies
that you are then passing to baby through the breast milk to help them fight that infection
of course it is totally fine if you're formula feeding this is just one of those benefits um
or neat perks of breastfeeding and so when it comes to knowing is your baby getting enough
you can know your baby is getting enough food in by how much pee they're making
so you may notice that when they're sick their diapers aren't quite as heavy or they
aren't being quite as often but they're peeing enough generally if they're making a wet diaper
at least every eight to ten hours if you're starting to notice that it's
getting that long or longer between peeing um that's a reason to call your pediatrician
is there any time when you would use other fluids yeah so as we mentioned the best fluids for a baby
is to be formula or breast milk if you're getting to the point where they're refusing these fluids
and not taking fluids in it's a good time to be talking to your baby's pediatricians there are
times where you could think about using pedialyte or watered down juices but do generally recommend
not giving just pure water to young infants less than six months of age as again sometimes their
young developing kidneys have trouble processing water without the other electrolytes in it
so we've talked about the hydration part what about the easy breathing part yeah so
every virus is a little bit different how it affects the airways of a young baby but some
key things if your baby is having just difficulty breathing or they're having really noisy breathing
in or breathing out call their doctor again this is a good time to say if you are concerned
just call it is much better to check in with your baby's doctor too frequently
than not checking in and you being really nervous or not sure what to do at home with a sick baby
yeah some other things you may notice kind of when your baby has a viral illness is that they
may just have a little bit of increased worker breathing and some of that is expected you may
see a little bit of their nose flaring a little bit more maybe the skin is kind of
pulling in between the ribs or kind of up underneath the ribs as they're using
extra muscles to breathe a little bit of that is okay if you're saying man they're really doing
that a lot they're breathing fast 60 breaths a minute or more and really kind of pulling for
more than a half hour without a fever it's another reason to reach out to their doctor
what about people that have home oxygen monitors for their baby yeah so as long as your baby is
healthy without other medical conditions and maybe you have a home owlette or something similar
it would be good to let their doctor know if you're noticing that their oxygen saturation
is kind of persistently dropping below that 92 percent level for most medical providers
a number of 90 percent or less is indication to start some sort of respiratory support
for a baby who is sick like this for most viral illnesses however your baby won't need help
breathing but there are some things that you can do to help them feel better at home yeah so
it's amazing how much like some mucus or a little booger can do to limit the amount of air getting
into your baby's lungs and so if they're having trouble breathing and you notice gosh there's a
lot of mucus in there it's a good idea to try to clean that out to help them breathe yes so there
are those classic bulb suction devices you can use for that or also the nose frida can also be even
more helpful for helping get those out yeah the bulb suction devices honestly aren't that great
um another really good trick is to bring your baby into the bathroom close the door
turn the shower on hot hot to make steam and then while keeping your baby out of the shower
just letting them breathe some of that hot steam to kind of break up some of that mucus
or you can have a vaporizer kind of in their room that you can hold them by yeah so as we mentioned
uh our little baby girl cease just got sick this past weekend kind of her first illness with the
fever um that as it turns out was something that i brought home from work despite like washing my
hands often and working really hard not to bring illnesses home i picked up a bug and then pass
it to my own baby every parent's worst neighbor nightmare is that they get their own baby sick
poor baby cease so she was pretty sad and pathetic for a couple of days um and we did you know
kind of what kurt said was make sure she was breathing okay and was really well hydrated
it was so funny he's like she'd pee and have a wet diaper or something and he's like oh i
i love this my pediatrician self like loves that she's having all these wet diapers
um so kind of just put her to the boob whenever she wanted um like our schedules kind of went out
the window he said hey she's fussy like let's let her give her something to drink and she
didn't want to eat her solids much at all but like she drank a lot which was fortunate unfortunately
didn't have any issues with difficulty breathing with this particular illness despite having lots
of nasal congestion and boogers and snot wasn't a major respiratory issue yes um she slept a
lot she snapped longer naps than ever than she ever took slept long like 14 hours one night um
so you could tell she was just kind of punk um we need to get i wanted to get one of those temporal
thermometer scanners all we had was this frida baby one that worked fine um and does give you the
more accurate readings of allowing you to either do an oral temperature or a rectal temperature
um neither of us felt really comfortable doing a rectal temperature which like you
think like oh we're both physicians like of course like if we had to we could but she's
been so mad yeah so mad at least that was our and so like we actually dipped the end in sugar
oral attempts um which worked out well for us the other little hack that's worked out really well
for us is this little device from frida baby it's just a pacifier that allows you to put a syringe
in the back end to then give the medications into the mouth this worked really well when she was an
infant she doesn't use a pacifier for us now now that she's doing more oral feeds we're actually
just syringing the the tylenol directly into the mouth but this is just one of those little
gadgets that we have that has been really helpful for us and you could tell she felt really crummy
when she was febrile um she was really fussy she was really cuddly she didn't want to play and then
we'd give her some tylenol and her fever would come down and she'd get a little of her energy
back and she'd want to play so she'd want to drink too much the other thing yep and so we really felt
like keeping treating her fever helped her be a lot more comfortable through the whole thing
to wrap up this episode we want to talk about some of the red flag signs and symptoms that
are reasons for you to call your baby's doctor or take them to the nearest emergency room yeah so if
your baby is less than two months of age and they have a fever that's a temperature of greater than
100.4 degrees fahrenheit or 38 degrees celsius call their pediatrician if they are not responsive
they are not waking or they've slept through two feeds in a row
if they're having difficulty breathing so this is just trouble getting air in or getting air out
or if they're having that prolonged fast breathing greater than 60 breaths a minute for more than
30 minutes without a fever yes if they have some blueness in their chest or inside of their mouth
or if they have a less than 92 percent oxygen saturation on a home o2 monitor
call right away um if you're they aren't making wet diapers to the point where they've gone more
than eight to ten hours without a wet diaper this is also a reason to call yeah or if you
have any other concerns that just something isn't right or something's off with your kiddo
you know them best call your doctor yeah so that's gonna be it for us this week hopefully all
this information helps you feel a little bit more reassured when your baby's sick to say hey they're
sick we're going to work through this we're going to keep them hydrated they're breathing easily
but then also knowing wait these things have changed i'm a bit more concerned these are when
i need to call and that can just help you have that reassurance and taking care of your sick baby
at home yeah so stay healthy we will see you next week okay bye guys
we're doctors but not your doctors anything we've said in this video
is for education or entertainment purposes only it is not medical
advice any specific medical questions you have should be directed to your provider