We have already verified that there are a number of prenatal and perinatal risk factors that can compromise the proper development of our child.
Today we will see that there may also be situations that after childbirth can influence this development; they are called postnatal risk factors. These can be environmental or biological.
Let's look carefully at each of these factors that occur after the birth of the baby.
Environmental factors
Between the environmental risk factors we find those cases where the quality of attachment between parents and children. This is a very important factor since the most important relationship in a child's life is the one he has with his parents (especially with the mother).
The socioeconomic status of the family is also something that can have an impact on the evolution of the child, since they are more likely to generate some type of heart disease or some mental and / or physical illness. It is believed to be due to stress and the shortcomings that may come from this type of situation.
We are also within the environmental risk factors the adequacy of the family support network, especially in those cases of teenage pregnancies because, despite becoming wonderful mothers, they need great family and social support to take care of their children , both economically and emotionally.
Biological factors
We can meet with biological type factors They affect your growth. Either due to prematurity at birth or having some type of disability, there may be problems when it comes to proper nutrition.
We can observe lack of growth in children who, for different reasons, do not reach the expected weight or height for their chronological age. We can differentiate two types of interruption: the organic one (that is, the one that can be identified for a medical reason, such as the poor coordination of the organs responsible for carrying out swallowing, that is: lips, tongue ..., or gastroesophageal reflux) or non-organic (where we can find maternal deprivation and / or environmental abandonment).
Seizures are another type of biological factors that can affect the proper development of the child. These crises are muscular contractions that occur as a result of abnormal electric shocks in brain neurons. The origin of the seizures is very varied, with epilepsy being the most frequent.
Within the seizures that can occur in the child, we can differentiate:
- Absence crisis: also called bad petit, since it is not accompanied by any type of seizure. It occurs suddenly and causes a loss of consciousness in the child between 5 and 15 seconds. It can be accompanied by movements of the eyelids or muscles of the face, pupil dilation and change in the color of the face.
- Tonic-clonic crisis: Generalized seizures occur in 4% -10% of all cases of epilepsy, with this crisis lasting several minutes. In the first place there is a loss of consciousness and stiffness of the whole body (tonic phase); then there is a phase where there are body movements in the form of rhythmic shaking (clonic phase) to end in a deep sleep.
- Feverish convulsions: These types of seizures are usually associated with respiratory diseases of high fever, ear infections, influenza and the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine.
- Neonatal crisis: in newborns, these crises are usually spasms that are limited to a single arm or leg, rapid shaking in a group of muscles or a tonic deviation of the trunk or eyes, so that they are not easy to diagnose.
- Infantile spasms: These types of seizures are also known as West Syndrome. It gives a series of rapid movements of extension and flexion in which the body repeatedly moves forward and can occur at intervals of 10 minutes.
Other serious illnesses such as meningitis, accident and injury injuries (for example, childhood aphasia) or non-accidental injuries (such as child abuse or abuse) are also risk factors that can occur after pregnancy.
Conclusion
We have seen during these days some of the main Prenatal, perinatal and postnatal risk factors to which children are exposed to carry out a correct development. Mainly these difficulties focus on the problems that arise from the most known biological risk condition: prematurity.
