How many days should I stop breastfeeding for neonatal jaundice?

Neonatal jaundice is a relatively common disease with many causes. For example, breast milk may also cause jaundice in newborns. This is a special pathological jaundice. It takes 1 to 2 months for infant jaundice to gradually subside due to problems with breast milk. During this period, you must pay attention to good conditioning and you can get some sun exposure. If the condition is more serious, you can consider medication.

How many days should I stop breastfeeding for neonatal jaundice?

If a newborn baby is breastfed and develops jaundice, breastfeeding can be stopped for a week. Taking the baby out to bask in the sun more often can relieve the symptoms of jaundice.

Breast milk jaundice is a relatively special type of pathological jaundice. Many experts do not have a unified explanation for the cause of the disease, but the prognosis of breast milk jaundice is good and it does not have any serious impact on the baby. The only problem is that the course of the disease is relatively long. So the mother was extremely anxious when she looked at the "little yellow man" in front of her. How can breast milk jaundice go away quickly? How long will it take for breast milk jaundice to go away after stopping breastfeeding?

How long does it take for breast milk jaundice to subside after stopping breastfeeding?

Breast milk jaundice usually takes 1-2 months to disappear, but for some babies it may take 3 months or even more than 3 months to disappear.

From this point of view, the question of how long it will take for breast milk jaundice to disappear depends on the specific situation. If the recovery is good, it may disappear in about a month, but if the recovery is not good and it recurs, it may last for 3 or 4 months or even longer.

Breast milk jaundice can be divided into early-onset and late-onset. The cause of the disease is that the content of β-glucuronidase in this type of breast milk is high and its activity is high, which increases the reabsorption of bilirubin in the intestine of the infant and causes jaundice. When newborns are slow to start feeding, have insufficient intake, and have reduced intestinal motility, β-glucuronidase breaks down conjugated bilirubin in the intestines and reduces it to unconjugated bilirubin, which is easily reabsorbed by the small intestine into the blood circulation, aggravating jaundice.

Breast milk jaundice lasts longer than general physiological jaundice, sometimes as long as 2 to 3 months. However, whether it is early-onset or late-onset breast milk jaundice, once breastfeeding is stopped for 3 to 5 days, the serum bilirubin level of the newborn can be found to be significantly lower. Therefore, this method of exclusion is often used in clinical practice to make auxiliary judgments.

What to do if breast milk jaundice persists

First of all, you can bask in the blue light without stopping breastfeeding. For full-term infants who have been diagnosed with breast milk jaundice, if the serum bilirubin is too high, exceeding the absolute peak of 220 μmol/l, phototherapy can be used to lower the peak first. Studies have found that blue light with a wavelength of 425 to 475 nm can reduce serum bilirubin. After exposure to this light, bilirubin is converted and excreted from the body through urine and bile. It should be noted that the child should be placed in front of the light box with a black eye mask (gauze wrapped in black paper) covering both eyes, and the body position should be changed once an hour to increase the light area. Attention should be paid to replenishing water for the child to prevent dehydration. Generally, the treatment should be continued for 24 hours, or at intervals of 10 hours, with a break of half a day before continuing. The course of treatment is 2-3 days. For children whose symptoms are not too serious, jaundice can be reduced by exposing them to more sunlight every day, because sunlight also contains blue light. However, children should not be exposed to the sun through glass. If the temperature exceeds 30℃, you can consider letting them sunbathe naked so that their skin can be fully exposed to the blue light in the sunlight, but be sure to cover their eyes.

Second, drug treatment. You can take Mian Yinchen Decoction to help reduce jaundice. Yinzhihuang injection is often used clinically to reduce jaundice symptoms in children. However, a newborn died recently due to Yinzhihuang injection produced by a company in Shanxi. Therefore, some hospitals, for the sake of caution, recommend that children take Yinzhihuang oral liquid, Yinzhihuang granules or boiled Mian Yinchen Decoction instead. However, experts believe that Yinzhihuang Injection is an old medicine that has been used for more than 30 years and its efficacy is recognized. The accident was caused by problems with the quality of the medicine, and the formula should be correct.