Head Injury

Once your child turns 6 month to 5 years of age you need to be very careful about minor head injuries. Babies' heads are a little bit big compared to their bodies so basically they are top heavy. Their coordination is not very good but they are very brave and go were no adult would boldly go because they do not know better. Most minor head injury in infants and young children are preventable and close adult supervision can not replace any state-of-the-art childproofing equipment that you might use.

What are the signs and symptoms of a mild head injury?

• child crying but consolable
• minor scalp swelling
• minor cut or laceration of the scalp
• mild headaches
• vomiting 2 to 3 times

What are signs and symptoms of a potential serious injury?

• crying non-stop and inconsolable
• on feeling the scalp area you might feel a cracking sound there might be a fracture
• blood or clear fluid coming from the nose or ears
• obvious serious wound i.e. a big laceration or swelling
• seizures
• loss of consciousness
• vomiting more than 2-3 times after the injury
• changes in behavior such as increased sleepiness, agitation, confusion or sluggishness
• headaches are getting worse

Call you doctor or 911 if you see any of the signs and symptoms of a potential serious injury.

Prevention is the Key:

• avoid letting your baby sleep on the bed (they tend to roll over and fall), I can not but emphasize this so many times but still a lot of the parents are letting toddlers/infants sleep with them.
• do not use walkers (they become a little more mobile than what their development can handle so they tend to pull on things resulting in furniture falling on them), they tend to fall on steps (it is actually a good thing here in Arizona that we mostly have 1 story houses with no basements)
• childproof the house
• can not emphasize more the need for close adult supervision ( the most important tool is prevention) but sometimes those babies are pretty quick just a few seconds that you do not look at them, accidents happen.