To my disappointment, Google image search produced lots of babes with their belly button, or mum's with belly button or belly hardened. There were few pictures with neonates' belly buttons! Fortunately I found one (from YouTube).
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| Baby's belly button, showing hardened and collapsed area. |
From the above picture, the region with depression isn't as obvious as my baby's when he cries. The following is my baby's belly button.
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| My baby's belly button and the region above the navel is collapsed (more obvious as shown above when he cries). |
I give up trying to figure if this is normal because at 3 weeks old, my baby's navel is healing and that area of collapse or cave-in could be a normal process to close the gap/channel. The peritoneal membrane, muscle or whatever tissues that's supposed to be closed could still be opened in my case (which will eventually closes as the healing process progresses). Well, fortunately, there is no protrusion of the belly button or navel, which would indicate umbilical hernia in babies (or neonates), which is quite common. For more information about umbilical hernia in babies, visit WebMD. Just for my reference, here is a photo showing a baby with somewhat common umbilical hernia (but I would send my baby to see a pediatrician nonetheless). For umbilical hernia, some parents indicated that this will go away in few months time (but have to look out for complications such as infection or irregular bowel movement).
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| Photo sent by parents from the community in BabyCenter (link is here). |
For now, I will try not to freak out considering that our pediatrician didn't suggest anything wrong with our baby's belly button. Hopefully the collapsed region will go away.
Updated: Our baby's hernia disappeared after 3.5 months.
My babies belly button looks exactly like your little ones and she is 7 weeks old
ReplyDeleteHi. Allow her to exercise her tummy often by lying down on her belly. It will take time for the hernia to disappear. Bests.
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