What to do if your baby is underweight

If your baby is underweight, it may be related to the fact that the baby was not born at full term. Premature babies are prone to being underweight. If your baby is underweight, it will often affect the child's growth and development, and make the child's immunity relatively poor. In this case, you should pay attention to diet adjustment, supplement protein, amino acids, vitamins and inorganic salts. Let's take a look at what to do if your baby is underweight?

What to do if your baby is underweight

An underweight baby has higher calorie requirements than a healthy, full-term baby. An underweight baby needs 110-150 calories per kilogram of body weight per day, while a healthy baby only needs 50 calories per kilogram of body weight per day. The amount of lung breathing exercise of underweight babies is greater than that of full-term babies, but their absorption capacity is lower than that of full-term babies. Therefore, it is better to start with a slightly lower supply of heat energy for underweight babies, and then gradually increase it depending on the baby's development. Low birth weight babies need four important nutrients:

1. Protein: The protein that full-term babies consume from breast milk accounts for 6-7% of the total calories. Babies with low body weight need a lot of protein, and the protein they consume accounts for 10.2% of the total calories.

2. Amino acids: Healthy babies need 9 essential amino acids, while low-weight babies need 11. This is because they lack the relevant conversion enzymes and cannot convert methionine into cystine and phenylalanine into tyrosine. Therefore, cystine and tyrosine become essential amino acids and must be obtained from food. If necessary, additional supplements should be sought from a doctor.

3. Inorganic salts: Babies with low birth weight need more inorganic salts than healthy full-term babies, because the late pregnancy is an important stage for the fetus to absorb inorganic salts supplied by the mother, and some premature babies miss this opportunity, resulting in low levels of inorganic salts in the body. Some important inorganic salts such as calcium, phosphorus and iron need to be increased.

4. Vitamins: Premature babies lack vitamin E and are prone to hemolytic anemia. In addition, low-weight babies absorb fat less than healthy babies and may lack fat-soluble vitamins and other nutrients.

Causes of low body weight

There are many reasons for a baby's low birth weight, such as the mother having multiple babies during pregnancy, abnormal development of the placenta or umbilical cord, pregnancy-induced hypertension, etc., all of which can cause the baby to be congenitally low birth weight. In addition, some human factors, such as low family income and education level, ignorance of the importance of absorbing nutrition during pregnancy or not paying attention to pregnancy resulting in insufficient nutrition absorption by the fetus, or the mother having bad habits such as smoking and drinking, can cause abnormal fetal development and low weight.

Compared with healthy full-term babies, low-birth-weight babies have immature organs, low vitality, and poor adaptability and resistance. Low-birth-weight babies are difficult to feed because their sucking and swallowing functions are imperfect, their stomach capacity is small, they lack digestive enzymes, and their absorption and digestion abilities are poor. They are prone to choking and spitting up milk when feeding, and there is a risk of suffocation if they are not carefully cared for. In addition, low-birth-weight babies have less glycogen reserves in their bodies and are in a high metabolic state. They are more likely to suffer from hypoglycemia, fail to gain weight, have lower resistance, and even die than normal newborns.