Video Channels
Read the Transcript
Hi I'm Elisa All with Babies Today. I'm here with Dr. Anita Chandra a pediatrician and I've got baby Ben here and we're going to talk about giving newborn babies their first bath. Hi Anita. Hi. I am so glad we've got little Ben here and he looks ready to take his first bath. Absolutely ready. Hopefully this will be a nice soothing experience for him and a fun one for you. Step on I guess is to put the baby in the tub? Yeah we first one to make sure that the room temperature is appropriate because when you take him out of the bathtub he is going to be cold and wet so you want to make sure the room is actually warmer than we would want for ourselves. Ok. You also want to make sure that you have all of your supplies ready. We have a baby bathtub situated here it happens to work well in this sink. You want to make sure you have a nice big counter space to use. For safety, you want to make sure you never leave your baby alone unattended in the bathtub with water or on a high counter space. Right. We're ready to put him in. We've already adjusted the water temperature and you really want to keep the water temperate between 90 and 95 degrees. Never any higher than a hundred degrees. For safety. Really just a lukewarm bath. Since this is his first bath, while you are getting him situation, I'll tell you the things you need. One will be a washcloth because you will be sponge bathing him. We're going to have our towel ready for afterwards. Cotton balls to wash his eyes and a mild baby soap. OK, wonderful. So are we going to get the soap on the towel first? Sure. OK. There we go. And you want to start from head to toe really just to keep the cleanest areas going first. Ok. I remember the little fold of the neck and how to get in there. All of the drool and crime collects in there from feeding. Nice sour breast milk. Exactly. Ok wonderful. Then moving on. When you get close to the umbilical cord you go around the cord just because you don't want to get that wet at this point. Make sure to open up his hands too because they get sweaty. Exactly. Babies may fuss a little bit but overall it is a soothing experience for them. You want to make sure you've kept his head higher up there. Ok. Get his toes. Ok. Head to toe baby. Alright, so I've avoided the umbilical cord, like you said. I've kind of gotten down to the toes. Right. Alright how about the face? Is there any thing special to do? Well you can take a cotton ball and actually moisten that as well with some clean water. And then you're going to want to wipe from inside where his nose is, out. And that will just help to pull anything out. There we go. And so you want to wrap him a blanket. A nice hooded towel is a good towel to have for him. He smells so fresh. And hopefully he'll sleep well tonight. Thank you so much for showing his how to bathe Ben. We'll see you next time on Babies Today.