Tocolysis refers to the administration of drugs to stop labor. The birth may be postponed for 24 to 48 hours by the drugs. Although delaying labor may not enhance infant outcomes in and of itself, it may enable the delivery of betamethasone for fetal surfactant induction or enable the woman to be sent to a tertiary care institution.
Newborns who have deposits of unconjugated bilirubin may develop jaundice. This skin pigmentation is really vividly yellow or orange. Jaundice can occur to some extent in up to 60% of healthy term infants.
The thermal neutral zone is the constrained range of environmental temperatures where an infant's metabolic rate is at its lowest and normal body temperature is maintained. Infants who are thermally neutral control their body temperature only by controlling their vasomotor tone, with no alterations to how their metabolism produces heat.
The healthy newborn may fixate and follow objects visually when they are at term. Numerous studies have revealed that stripes or patterns are strongly preferred by newborns. Newborns develop a preference for patterns with shapes that mimic the human face throughout the first month of life.
Williams syndrome is a rare genetic condition that develops when a small portion of a person's chromosome #7 is deleted. About 28 genes are present among the missing material, with elastin—the Williams syndrome flag gene—standing out. The microdeletion happens on its own. There is currently neither a treatment for the disorder nor a strategy to avoid it through vaccines, and it is not hereditary.
Pneumothorax can appear in neonates who are being treated with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) or who are using a ventilator and who have lung conditions including respiratory distress syndrome or meconium aspiration syndrome. The air in the chest cavity must be quickly removed using a needle and syringe if a newborn's breathing is laborious, the level of oxygen in the blood drops, and especially if the circulation of blood is compromised.
