Newborn Care
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Newborn Care
Introduction
Babies tend to grow and develop at a high rate during their first year of life. Mothers can expect their child to grow physically, emotionally, psychologically, and socially. The baby’s parents need to know how to care for the baby to ensure they grow and develop properly. During their early years, infants are very delicate and need extra care and management to grow healthy. If babies fail to receive proper care, they may experience delays in their development and can even result in disabilities or illnesses. While it may seem like an easy task, caring for an infant can be a challenging task for new mothers. For this reason, the nurse should ensure they teach new mothers on the best techniques to care for the newborns. This essay seeks to discuss newborn care and how mothers can be taught to care for infants.
Body
Learning objectives
One of the crucial learning objectives for mothers is learning how to breastfeed a baby. While in the womb, babies get their food from the placenta attached to the mother and through the amniotic fluid. However, when the baby is born, it is no longer attached to the mother and therefore needs to be breastfed to continue growing. Breastfeeding is an essential activity for a baby’s developmental activities. Through breastfeeding a child can receive the essential nutrients required for growth. With breastfeeding the baby is protected against allergies, sickness, infections, and diseases. Breast milk has various antibodies, which help the babies to fight off bacteria and viruses. For newborns, milk is easily digestible, which makes it a good source of food. Nurses need to train new mothers on how to properly feed the newborns. Training includes how to properly hold their heads, how to position their bodies, and how to frequently feed the babies. It is essential for mothers to understand that overfeeding the baby breast milk can cause them to vomit or even chock, which can cause a lot of discomfort to the child or even cause death. For this reason, nurses need to train mothers on proper breastfeeding habits (Austin et al., 2014).
The second objective is umbilical cord care. When a baby is born, their umbilical cord which connects them with the mother is cut. The umbilical stump should dry and drop off within a week. During this time, the cord heals and becomes the tummy button. During the first one or two weeks, the mother needs to take extreme care of the stump to ensure it does not get pulled off or contaminated. The area should be kept dry at all times and ensure that it is not covered by a lot of clothes for air circulation and to allow for a quick healing process. When a baby’s umbilical stud gets infected and starts producing spurs, it can be dangerous to the child’s physical health. Mothers need to be taught how to care for the umbilical stump until it falls off on its own having healed.
Methodology
The teaching method that will be applied is an interactive or participative method of teaching. In this type of teaching, the mother is taught on a one-on-one basis, and she plays an active role in teaching. Rather than explaining to the mothers how to breastfeed or take care of the umbilical stud, showing them physically can significantly make them understand more. For new mothers, they may not have a clue on how to breastfeed or care for a child. Teaching them on a one-on-one basis will significantly boost their understanding, compared to theoretical (Ciobanu, 2018). The mother can be told to hold the baby, and the nurse can then correct or illustrate the best way to hold the baby when breastfeeding. This method involves the mother being shown how to care for the baby, while the mother is doing it simultaneously. This ensures that any mistakes made will be corrected instantly, which is beneficial to the mother.
The other method that will be applied for teaching is the learner-centred method. In this method, the learner is responsible for learning, while the nurse, who is the tutor, only facilitates the training. It is essential to note that the most successful deliveries do not require patients to stay long in hospitals. This means that most mothers will spend most of their time at home with the child. It is, therefore, essential to ensure that mothers learn to solve some of the minor problems on their own, and not to significantly depend on nurses for everything (Ahmed, 2013). Learning how to change diapers and put a baby to sleep can be different for different mothers. Therefore, teaching the mothers to find and discover what works for their child is essential for both the mother and child.
Conclusion
When dealing with many patients or mothers, it may be difficult to give personalized training to every single patient. For this reason, using teaching aids can significantly improve the learning process. For instance, the nurse can come with a dummy child and teach the mothers how to hold the baby in the correct position when breastfeeding. Also, the nurse can demonstrate through the dummy child how to care for the umbilical stump to ensure it does not get infected. Some of the resources that may be required for this teaching include a baby care book that explains newborn care, a dummy child for illustrations, pictures, and videos. These resources will greatly help in teaching newborn care.
References
Ahmed, A. K. (2013). Teacher-centered versus learner-centered teaching style. Journal of Global Business Management, 9(1), 22.
Austin, A., Langer, A., Salam, R. A., Lassi, Z. S., Das, J. K., & Bhutta, Z. A. (2014). Approaches to improve the quality of maternal and newborn health care: an overview of the evidence. Reproductive health, 11(S2), S1.
Ciobanu, N. R. (2018). Active and participatory teaching methods. European Journal of Education, 1(2), 69-72.