Reasons for a baby's big belly

When many babies are born, parents will find that the baby's belly is getting bigger and bigger, and when the baby is about nine months old, the belly is still particularly big. I believe many parents are very confused about this phenomenon. Let us understand why babies have big bellies.

Because newborns mainly breathe abdominally, their digestive tract produces more gas, and their intestinal smooth muscles and abdominal wall striated muscles are weakly developed. Therefore, normal newborns have a physiological distended abdomen, which presents a slight "frog-shaped belly". Because of this, parents generally believe that it is normal for a newborn to have a big belly. So how do you tell if your baby’s big belly is normal? First of all, you should understand whether your baby's feeding, sleeping, urination and defecation, mental state, growth and development, etc. are normal. If not, it means that your baby may be in a disease state and you should take your baby to the hospital as soon as possible.

Secondly, you should pay attention to whether your baby has symptoms such as fever, cough, diarrhea, etc., because whether it is a digestive tract infection or a respiratory tract infection, it can cause the baby's belly to be larger than usual. In addition, if your baby often spit up milk, is constipated, especially if your baby's belly has many blue stripes (medically called abdominal wall veins), then you should be especially careful: your baby may have a relatively common disease - congenital megacolon. Hirschsprung's disease is a common developmental malformation of the digestive tract, with an incidence of 5/10,000 in my country. The cause of the disease is a decrease or absence of ganglion cells in the intestinal wall.

Early detection of this disease is very important. In the early stages, you can perform repeated bowel washes and use dilators to dilate the spasmodic and narrow intestines, and then choose to undergo surgery at an appropriate time. If not discovered and treated promptly, life-threatening complications such as intestinal perforation and enterocolitis may occur.

Therefore, if you find that your baby has a big belly, it is best to go to the hospital for examination as soon as possible to avoid missing the best time for treatment of your baby.

Above we have learned some of the main reasons why babies have big bellies. What we need to pay attention to in life is that a big belly is very normal. Most of the time it is caused by poor development of the child's abdomen, and it will get better as the child grows up.