Appearances
Most babies, when delivered, don’t look like what you see in a magazine. Babies have been crammed up in a water-filled uterus for months. After the journey down the birth canal, sometimes their appearance can be affected.
Common features of newborns
- Acrocyanosis – bluish color on hands or feet
- Vernix caseosa – right after delivery, your baby will be covered with this protectant from the amniotic fluid
- Lanugo – fine hair on a newborn
- Head molding – an abnormal head shape that results from pressure on the baby’s head during childbirth
- Cephalohematoma – the unnecessary pooling of blood from damaged blood vessels that is between the skull and inner layers of skin
- Stork bite – a pink patch that can appear on a baby’s forehead, eyelids, nose, upper lip or back of the neck
- Milia – tiny white bumps on a baby’s nose, chin or cheeks
- Peeling skin – shedding the outer layer of their skin within one to three weeks
- Cross-eyed – eyes that wander or cross now and then as newborns learn to work their eyes together
- Swollen genitals – Due to the surge of female hormones from the placenta before birth, genitals (scrotum and labia) are often swollen, including their nipples