New parents have more than enough stress: hardly any sleep, endless tears, and the gnawing insecurity all the time. Is the baby really well? Is it crying because of a little thing or is it really sick? And many other parents and grandparents make the whole thing worse with the well-intentioned advice not to panic immediately and not to run to the pediatrician for every little thing.
This is of course fundamentally correct – but in individual cases it can be life-threatening for the baby. Even a "normal" fever can be fatal for very small babies.
So it's best to remember this sentence:
Every baby under the age of three months must go to a hospital or doctor from a fever of 38 degrees.
No ruffling off, no excuses: with such young babies, a dangerous infection must be ruled out even at this temperature.
This report in the Huffington Post shows how important this sentence is:
A father describes how he once received this advice from a doctor – and remembers when his child gets a fever weeks later.
The family immediately drives to the emergency room, but is initially ignored and dismissed with the message "Isn't that bad".
It is only hours later that blood is taken in another clinic and the baby is diagnosed with life-threatening blood poisoning. A day of torture ensues, parents have to listen to their baby's cries of pain while doctors tell them not to hope too much for survival.
Finally, an antibiotic strikes and the child can completely recover after numerous other complications. "You were probably just in the last second," the doctors said.
Underestimated sepsis: 70,000 deaths annually
Such a bacterial infection is still not recognized in good time even by doctors – according to current studies, around 70,000 people in Germany alone die from the consequences of blood poisoning.
Therefore, especially for children of very small infants, the following applies: do not let them run away and request a blood test. And invoke this sentence again and again: Every baby under the age of three months must go to the hospital or to the pediatrician from a fever of 38 degrees. Better safe than sorry.