Newborn care

The routine care a baby gets after birth and in the first days: keeping warm, feeding, skin-to-skin contact, screening tests and a vitamin K shot. This page links to the page about each one.

Care topic 0 claims Evidence checked not recorded

Tests that every newborn is offered before going home: a few drops of blood from the heel, a hearing test and a skin test of blood oxygen. They look for serious conditions that can be treated early...

Care topic 2 claims Evidence checked not recorded

Keeping a newborn warm and preventing a low body temperature.

Care topic 0 claims Evidence checked not recorded

Brain injury in a newborn after a period of low oxygen around birth. Babies with moderate or severe HIE are the babies in the cooling trials recorded here.

Condition 0 claims Evidence checked not recorded

Low blood sugar in a baby soon after birth. In the Sugar Babies trial, babies at risk were enrolled and 242 of 514 (47%) went on to have low blood sugar. The trial authors call it common and a...

Condition 0 claims Evidence checked not recorded

Yellow skin and yellow whites of the eyes in a newborn, caused by too much bilirubin. Many healthy babies have some jaundice in the first week of life, and it usually goes away. It can also be a sign...

Condition 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

Pages about how care is organised: visit schedules, guidelines, campaigns, networks and the checks after leaving hospital.

Front Evidence checked not recorded

Pages about medicines and vaccines given in pregnancy, at birth, after birth or to the baby. Each page says who receives it, the mother or the baby.

Front Evidence checked not recorded

Pages about helping a newborn stay warm, breathe and feed, from help with the first breaths to breastfeeding.

Front Evidence checked not recorded

Pages about hands-on care around birth, such as starting labour, caesarean birth, clamping the cord and devices that help control bleeding.

Front Evidence checked not recorded

Pages about the blood, urine, questionnaire and newborn tests that look for a problem before or soon after it shows. Each page says who is tested and what the test looks for.

Front Evidence checked not recorded

Cooling a baby's body to about 33.5 degrees C for 72 hours after birth to protect the brain. The 2005 US trial found fewer babies died or had disability. A 2021 trial in India, Sri Lanka and...

Intervention 3 claims Evidence checked not recorded

Waiting before clamping and cutting the umbilical cord after birth. In the large trial recorded here, which enrolled babies expected to be born before 30 weeks, waiting at least 60 seconds did not...

Intervention 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

A sugar gel (40% dextrose) given to babies with low blood sugar. In the Sugar Babies trial in New Zealand, treatment failed less often with the gel than with a placebo gel. A follow-up at 9 to 10...

Intervention 2 claims Evidence checked not recorded

A hearing test that measures the baby's response to sound, offered to newborns before they leave hospital.

Intervention 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

Help for a baby who does not start or keep breathing at birth. WHO says birth asphyxia, the failure to start and keep breathing at birth, causes about one quarter of neonatal deaths worldwide and...

Intervention 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

A treatment for high bilirubin in newborn jaundice. A 2021 review describes phototherapy as the treatment of first choice for jaundice in newborns, and also says some studies link it to harms. When...

Intervention 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

A skin test that measures the level of oxygen in a newborn's blood and can tell whether the baby has a congenital heart defect. MedlinePlus lists it among the screening tests a newborn has before...

Intervention 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

A shot of vitamin K that newborns usually get soon after they are born. Vitamin K helps the blood to clot, newborns have very little of it, and too little can lead to too much bleeding.

Intervention 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

A skin meter that gives a digital reading of yellowness in a newborn, to help clinicians monitor jaundice. In the United States it is cleared as a prescription device for hospitals, clinics and...

Product 1 claim Evidence checked not recorded

Bilirubin is a yellow chemical that builds up when the body cannot clear it, and too much of it causes jaundice. A baby's level can be measured with a blood test or estimated through the skin with a...

Biomarker 0 claims Evidence checked not recorded

A clinical practice guideline revision on managing high bilirubin in newborn infants of 35 or more weeks of gestation, published in Pediatrics in 2022. This atlas lists it as a reference only and...

Guideline Evidence checked not recorded

A 2008 US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement on screening newborns for hearing loss. The Task Force now lists the topic as inactive. This atlas lists the statement as a reference...

Guideline Evidence checked not recorded

Whether a baby who was born alive died in the first 28 days of life.

Outcome 0 claims Evidence checked not recorded

The main report of the Sugar Babies trial of dextrose gel for newborn babies with low blood sugar, published in The Lancet in 2013.

Publication Evidence checked not recorded

The main report of the NICHD whole-body cooling trial, published in October 2005.

Publication Evidence checked not recorded

A trial in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh that compared cooling with usual care in babies with brain injury after birth. Cooling did not reduce death or disability, and more babies died with cooling.

Study Evidence checked not recorded

A trial in US hospitals of the NICHD Neonatal Research Network that compared cooling with usual care in term babies with brain injury after birth asphyxia.

Study Evidence checked not recorded

A nonprofit organization in the United States. Its guidance and the journal articles it publishes are listed as references only, because AAP terms bar use by AI systems.

Organization Evidence checked not recorded

A private foundation that funds global health research.

Organization Evidence checked not recorded

A US network of neonatal intensive care units that studies newborn care, especially for extremely preterm and very low birth weight babies. It was formed in 1986 and runs both observational studies...

Organization 1 claim Evidence checked 2026-10-15

The United Nations agency for international public health.

Organization Evidence checked not recorded

First author of the 2005 report of a trial of whole-body cooling for newborns with brain injury after birth asphyxia and a principal investigator named on its trial registry record.

Person Evidence checked not recorded

A newborn resuscitation training programme. Two studies of stillbirth and newborn deaths before and after the training, in Tanzania and in India, were published in Pediatrics in 2013. This atlas...

Resource 0 claims Evidence checked not recorded

A suggested order for reading this atlas, from before pregnancy through birth to a baby’s first months. Each step points to one page and says in plain words what that page covers. It is a reading...

Reading path Evidence checked not recorded

A 2014 plan led by WHO and UNICEF to end preventable newborn deaths and stillbirths by 2035. It sets targets for 2035 and milestones on the way, and 194 Member States endorsed it at the World Health...

Roadmap 1 claim Evidence checked 2026-10-15