Toddlers Vomiting– No Reason To Panic

baby vom­it­ing

Tod­dlers vom­it­ing can dis­tress par­ents a lot, espe­cially inex­pe­ri­enced par­ents as they tend to panic at the sight of their child throw­ing up. But, tod­dler vomit is extremely com­mon in infancy and child­hood and usu­ally there is no cause to panic. It is as com­mon as teething diar­rhea.

Most babies tend to throw up sev­eral times dur­ing their infancy and it is almost always due to gas­troin­testi­nal infec­tions. Infant vomit is a fairly com­mon sight and par­ents need to worry only if the vom­it­ing is fre­quent or if there is fever or dehydration.

There can be var­i­ous causes for vom­it­ing in infants espe­cially in the age group of 0–6 months and the most com­mon ones of them are milk intol­er­ance or food aller­gies or may be baby food con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Gas­troen­teri­tis which is an infec­tion of the diges­tive tract also leads to vom­it­ing together with diarrhea.

Bottle-fed babies are also prone to infant vom­it­ing as the hole in the nip­ple of the bot­tle may be of the wrong size lead­ing to over­feed­ing or wrong feed­ing baby habits of the mother. Pyloric steno­sis is a con­gen­i­tal prob­lem which means that there is an obstruc­tion in the out­let of the stom­ach. This causes infant vom­it­ing in an oth­er­wise healthy infant after each feeding.

Infec­tion accom­pa­nied by fever or a runny nose are some of the more mun­dane causes of tod­dlers vom­it­ing. Intesti­nal obstruc­tion can lead to fre­quent vom­it­ing, cry­ing and scream­ing in pain and par­ents get wor­ried when they see this. They also tend to ascribe nor­mal bouts of vom­it­ing to this cause but in most of the cases the vom­it­ing turns out to be because of a sim­ple stom­ach virus.

Babies vom­it­ing can also occur because of an inborn meta­bolic error. Inges­tion of poi­son or drugs by acci­dent may be a rare cause of vom­it­ing and if there is any sus­pi­cion in this regard, the child has to receive med­ical atten­tion urgently.

Another fre­quent cause for vom­it­ing in babies is when they start tak­ing solid food for the first time. Babies tend to spit out more than they can swal­low and this is inter­preted by pan­icky par­ents as vom­it­ing. But, this soon set­tles down by itself once the babies get used to the taste of solid food.

Dehy­dra­tion is undoubt­edly a major worry in fre­quent vom­it­ing but par­ents tend to give more than the desired amount of flu­ids to infants in their bid to con­trol the dehy­dra­tion. Experts advise that babies should be given a few tea­spoons of liq­uid at a time in the begin­ning and the amount should be grad­u­ally increased instead of giv­ing sev­eral ounces together which actu­ally wors­ens the situation.

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, tod­dlers vom­it­ing are not a cause for seri­ous con­cern unless accom­pa­nied by other symp­toms in which case imme­di­ate med­ical atten­tion is advisable.