Sunbathing for Strong Bones

Hubby and baby

It’s usual for us to see newborns sunbathing in the early morning sun. The scene is very picturesque indeed. Mother and child bathed in the soft light of the sun.Ok, it's Father and child. : )

I never really thought much about this. I actually took this for granted.

However, the last time we went to the pedia, she commented that my baby boy is looking yellowish. My boy was two weeks old then. The pedia took him from me and even went outside the her clinic to better see if my boy is indeed yellow. She said my baby is jaundiced.

This alarmed me of course. Jaundice, or the yellowish tint of the skin, results from an impaired liver. And my baby just had his Hepa B vaccine when he was born.

The pedia asked if we regularly sunbathe the child. To this I have to answer truthfully. We’ve been remiss during the past week. We live in a busy street and I still haven’t gotten much sleep. So I prefer to sleep in and rationalize that it was better than being exposed to all the pollution. Bad idea.

Babies, I was told, have a condition called physiological jaundice. I guess this means that they turn yellow easily. I researched this on Encarta and according to it “Newborns can also be jaundiced as a consequence of the condition known as hyperbilirubinemia. In these cases, there is a temporary defect in synthesis of the enzyme that breaks down bile to an excretable form.”

But although, it is medically proven that sunlight is good even for newborns, exposure to it should be kept at a minimum. The best time to sunbathe a newborn is between 7am and 8am, for not longer than 30 minutes. For us, we start sunbathing around 6:45 am until 7:30, when I find the sunlight already painful on the skin.

Two weeks after, my boys skin color, especially in his face, has significantly improved. The whites of his eyes have also cleared.

I think my boy likes sunbathing too. The warm sun on his skin makes him drowsy. He has never been awake during those times and is always peacefully at sleep.