Why does my eight-month-old baby have protruding ribs?

If your baby is already eight months old, he or she can basically walk, and sometimes he or she will understand what his or her father or mother means and can express his or her demands correctly. Don't slack off in taking care of your baby at this time, because this is also the period when your baby is laying the foundation. In addition to ensuring adequate nutrition, you must also protect your baby's physical health. So, why does the ribs of an eight-month-old baby protrude?

First, diseases caused by vitamin D deficiency

Some babies have very little vitamin D in their bodies due to congenital or acquired factors, which makes them prone to rickets and soft bones, which can easily cause rib valgus. When this happens, we can choose to feed the baby some foods containing more vitamin D so that the child can slowly recover. If the baby's disease cannot be cured for a long time, we should go to the hospital for diagnosis and treatment.

Second, diseases caused by loose chest muscles

This situation is more common in children with congenital weak constitutions. Due to the underdeveloped chest muscles, they are unable to restrain the extension of the ribs. In severe cases, symptoms of rib valgus will appear. To effectively treat this disease, it is necessary to properly improve the child's physical fitness. Generally speaking, as the child grows, this situation will gradually improve, so parents do not need to worry too much.

Baby's rib eversion:

Give your child calcium supplements in time. Children should pay attention to dietary supplements as much as possible for calcium supplementation. They should eat more foods high in calcium, such as bones, dried shrimps, bone soup, fresh fish, live shrimps, kelp, milk and soy products. Of course, they should also drink some cod liver oil and calcium tablets appropriately. Milk calcium is one of the best ways to supplement calcium. Milk calcium is easy to absorb and has good effects. You can try calcium supplements such as Bone Jianle. Pay more attention to sun exposure and supplement vitamin AD at the same time.

For bone changes such as rib valgus, also known as rickets, doctors often recommend a vitamin D injection of about 300,000 units for more serious cases. But in reality, parents cannot find it anywhere because the demand for this injection is low and it has been out of production for a long time, so it is impossible to find it. The only domestically produced vitamin D brand is Yingkangli from Shanghai, which is an oral solution with about 150,000 units per vial. (You can use "Yingkangli" in Google to search for details. If it is not available locally, you will have to ask friends and relatives to buy it for you at Shanghai Xinyi Pharmacy. It is also called Vitamin D emulsion.) In fact, if there is no gastrointestinal problem that cannot be absorbed, or the situation is extremely serious, oral administration is better than injection. You can also take 5000-10000 units of vitamin D orally every day depending on the severity of the condition, and change the preventive dose to around 500 after one month. Since there is no separate vitamin D in China, it is available in Europe and the United States, and you can ask someone to send it to you.

The above describes a more serious situation. However, for children nowadays, if they get enough sun exposure, have cod liver oil added to their breast milk (because breast milk is low in vitamin D), or have enough vitamin D in their milk powder (infants need 400-500 units of vitamin D per day), they will generally only suffer from a mild calcium deficiency at most, unless they have long-term chronic diarrhea and malabsorption, in which case the condition will be more serious.

The latest statement is that the treatment of rickets does not require such a high dose. For mild cases, 1000-2000 units per day, and for moderate cases, 2000-5000 units are enough (early statements were that the minimum therapeutic dose is 5000 units), and after one month, change to a preventive dose.