Child's health: Inoculation

Hardening is a system of procedures that increase the body's resistance to adverse environmental influences. The physiological basis of hardening is that a person constantly and systematically develops conditioned reflexes that provide more advanced thermoregulation - maintaining a constant body temperature.

An organism that is not prepared for sudden changes in temperature responds to them with a reaction like an unconditional reflex. For example, in response to cooling, the superficial vessels of the body expand in order to warm it up due to a greater influx of blood to the skin. But this also sharply increases heat transfer, which cools the body even more. A hardened organism, in response to a signal about cooling received from thermoreceptors, immediately increases heat production. The vessels of the skin, however, expand only for a short time, increasing the influx of warm blood to the superficial layers of the body, and then this heat is retained due to a sharp decrease in heat transfer - the vessels contract sharply.

Hardening not only trains the body's thermoadaptation systems, it also activates the immune system. Thanks to these two factors, hardening allows you to avoid many diseases.

What is needed for this? First of all, create an influx of fresh air into the room where the baby lives. To do this, you need to open the window more often in winter and ventilate the room. In summer, it is better to keep the windows open so that not only fresh air but also sunlight penetrates the room, under the influence of which the child's body produces anti-rachitic vitamin D. In addition, sunlight kills pathogens. Moderate air temperature is no less important - it should not be higher than 22 ° C for full-term babies. Walks, air baths that the baby takes when changing diapers, changing clothes, preparing for bathing, washing and hygienic baths with a final dousing with cool water - all these are the first hardening procedures in the child's life that are simply necessary for newborns.

But is such hardening enough to really increase the child's resistance to adverse effects, others ask. Is a newborn really so defenseless against them? After all, the capabilities of its adaptation mechanisms are unusually high. It cannot be otherwise. Without it, it would have died immediately after birth, like a fish thrown out of water: the child spent nine months of intrauterine life in completely different conditions.

The speed of adaptation reactions in newborns is also extremely high. The restructuring of their body begins almost instantly - with the first cry, the first breath. That is why in the old days a child could be born in a reindeer harness at 30-40 °C below zero, in a Finnish or Russian bathhouse at 50 °C heat, without harm to health, he could endure bathing in an ice-cold font and rubbing with snow.

These customs are based on folk experience, according to which a short-term but strong enough effect of low temperatures on a newborn has a beneficial effect on him - it kind of gives a boost to the body's defenses, after which the child develops well. Here is what the famous doctor V. N. Zhuk wrote in the past: "Both a weak and a strong child, baptized in winter in water straight from a well (plus 8 degrees Reaumur, plus 10 degrees Celsius), develops very quickly and almost immediately takes on a special, pleasant, cheerful, strong appearance... A quick immersion in cold water definitely intensifies all metabolic processes. The skin turns red and is pleasant to look at: the child looks fuller, rosier, rounder, sucks harder and greedily, falls asleep quickly, does not cry after baptism, lies quietly and watches. After 4-6 weeks, a weak child is unrecognizable." Parents often asked to baptize a child in warm water. The results of baptism were completely different: "The children were compared after six weeks, when they were brought for prayer. Literally all the priests declared the advantage of cold water over warm; only the immersion must be complete and very quick." "Of the 22 children baptized in warm water, nine died (40.6%). Of the 42 children baptized in cold water, one died (2.4%). In one case there were twins: the stronger child, baptized in warm water, died, and the weaker one, baptized in cold water, remained healthy." It was established that high rates of adaptation are maintained in a child throughout the neonatal period, since at this time the baby adapts to new living conditions. And then, if the adaptation mechanisms are not trained, their capabilities quickly decrease due to uselessness, since the baby is in comfortable conditions. Parents protect him from adverse environmental influences with warm clothing, which helps for a time, because the weakening and reduction of the body's adaptive systems to a low level of activity makes the child defenseless even against a slight draft and cooling.

The authors of a number of child care manuals emphasize that it is advisable to develop certain systems of the child's body only as they mature - become ready to function (it turns out that at the time when the child's adaptation systems work most effectively, he is practically not hardened) and recommend starting careful hardening after the speed of his adaptive processes has begun to decline, when the body's capabilities have already been largely lost and need to be restored.

Let us name two more disadvantages of this system of "careful" hardening of children. Firstly, the temperature differences during such hardening are significantly less than those that a child encounters in everyday life, and at least for this reason alone they cannot provide a hardening effect. Even when a child's diapers are changed, the temperature difference is 10-12 °C, while the manuals recommend reducing the water temperature during hardening by 0.5-1 °C over three to six days. Secondly, the hardening effect of this system is short-term and incomparable with the duration of the effect of comfortable conditions on the body.

According to Yu. N. Chausov, the author of several books on hardening, for a good effect it is not enough to just systematically and gradually carry out hardening procedures - such effects must be sufficiently intense and long-lasting. Supporters of another point of view on hardening believe that in order to increase the resistance of the child's body, it is necessary to use those unique opportunities that nature gave him during the neonatal period, and to take as a basis not hardening procedures, but such a way of life of the child that would ensure the constant work of the adaptive systems of his body.

How does this look in practice? Here is what Nikitin writes: "The child is naked or in one romper all the time until he sleeps or when his mother feeds him. He moves his arms and legs freely, and we are not afraid if his heels turn blue." Ilya Arkadyevich Arshavsky says that this is the baby's first thermoadaptive reaction to the cold. Be glad, parents, that it works for him - cold legs give off less heat, the body's thermal balance is restored.

During the first two or three days, the baby may hiccup occasionally, but this is also a process of getting used to the new thermal regime. Hiccups pass on their own and stop when the baby is wrapped in one or two diapers for sleep in the room.

It is better for him to fall asleep with warm feet. To do this, the mother needs to take the feet in her hands or even breathe on them.

Try to maintain a temperature of 17-19 °C in the room. If the baby is naked in it, then:

• his muscle tone is increased, i.e. they are tense in order to produce more heat (apparently, this is the main way of warming up), and the muscles develop at the same time;
• coolness always invigorates and makes movements especially pleasant;
• diapers and clothes do not restrict movement;
• the body's thermoregulators are activated and switch the body's entire defense system to a different mode.

It is only important to remember: if the baby has stopped moving and relaxed, then it is necessary to dress him and wrap him in a diaper to warm him up.

Thus, the duration of the hardening procedure in this case is determined by the child himself, or rather, his parents - based on the change in the baby's condition. At first, this procedure may take only 5-10 seconds for a physiologically immature baby, and sometimes 60 seconds for a mature baby. As the child gets used to it, the duration of the air bath increases, and soon the baby spends the entire period of wakefulness either naked or in one vest. Such children are practically not susceptible to colds.

Such a lifestyle of the child is extremely useful for his psychomotor development. The baby masters various movements faster, starts to sit up earlier, stand up in the crib, crawl... It also has a beneficial effect on the condition of the baby's skin, which is especially important for immature children with a tendency to allergic diseases, in particular to diathesis: the baby's skin in such conditions does not need either frequent washing or daily bathing and without any lubrication or powders remains clean, healthy and velvety to the touch. Diaper rash, rash, redness, which he got in the maternity hospital, disappeared literally in a few days and did not appear again. A good hardening effect is given by washing the baby with cold water from the tap (water is collected in the palm of the hand).

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