7 ‘Scary’ Baby Symptoms That Are Actually Completely Normal

Many perfectly normal baby symptoms seem scary or worrisome at first. Symptoms like twitching in their sleep, which may indicate a serious medical condition in an adult, are often perfectly normal in a newborn. That’s because an infant’s physical immaturity and rapidly changing hormones make their body react in unique ways.

To help put your mind at ease, here are some of the most common scary yet normal baby symptoms pediatricians see. Read on to learn what’s normal and when it’s a good idea to consult a health care provider.

Twitching During Sleep

If your baby twitches in their sleep, it’s understandable to be worried. But rest assured, sleep twitching is often a harmless display of your baby’s developing nervous system at work. Many babies experience a harmless phenomenon called benign sleep myoclonus. It’s no more dangerous than another form of myoclonus: hiccups!

“Babies have an immature nervous system, and their movements are even more uncoordinated during sleep than when they’re awake,” says Michael Zimbric, MD, a pediatric neurologist at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “These jerking movements are not unlike those that we adults have as we drift off to sleep.”

Doctors aren’t certain why benign sleep myoclonus occurs. A loud noise or touch can bring it on. Studies have shown that these movements are harmless.

Erratic Breathing

Have you ever seen a sleeping baby appear to stop breathing for a moment? Although intermittent breathing can look alarming, this “periodic breathing” is common in newborns. Babies breathe faster than older children because their lungs are small relative to the size of their bodies.

Researchers suspect that the reason for irregular breathing is that the chemical sensors that detect carbon dioxide aren’t fully developed in newborns. This means that babies sometimes just don’t know they need to breathe, and they pause until carbon dioxide levels become high enough to trigger these sensors.

Nasal Congestion

It’s common for a baby to experience a stuffy nose that impacts their breathing. While babies are susceptible to colds, nasal congestion in newborns is sometimes the result of hormonal changes. In newborns, stuffiness is often caused by the hormone estrogen, which stimulates the nasal passages. Estrogen is passed to the baby in utero and while breastfeeding or chestfeeding. (You may have felt similarly stuffed up while pregnant.)

This condition generally subsides within two months, whether your baby is breastfed or formula-fed. By about 6 months old, when a baby’s nasal passages have doubled in size, this hormone-induced stuffiness is hardly noticeable, if it’s there at all.

Chest Lumps

Newborns can develop lumps on their chest around the nipples. Here, too, hormones are often the cause. As maternal estrogen levels fall in a baby’s system in the days following birth, the milk-producing hormone prolactin temporarily increases and can cause breast growth in both male and female newborns.

At least 50% of healthy newborns experience this, often on just one side, and 5% of newborn boys will even produce a milk-like substance known as “witch’s milk.” The enlargement usually goes away within the first month, but it can last for three months or longer.

Bloody Spit-Up

Bloody spit-up is seldom worrisome in a baby who is otherwise acting normally. It’s usually from trace blood swallowed from a breastfeeding or chestfeeding parent’s sore nipples, or due to a small tear in the esophagus caused by forcefully spitting up. Neither condition is anything to worry about—even a small esophageal tear will heal easily.

Orange-Hued Skin

Orange-hued skin is a very common phenomenon called “carotenemia,” caused by eating a lot of vegetables that are rich in beta-carotene. Babies often prefer the sweet taste of carotene-rich foods like sweet potatoes and carrots, and many first foods that aren’t orange are high in beta-carotene, too. (You just can’t see it in veggies like spinach and broccoli because the green chlorophyll pigment covers it up.)

Carotenemia, which typically doesn’t affect adults, occurs because of the manufacturing process of baby food. The extensive cooking, mashing, and pureeing of vegetables break open plant fibers in a way that our teeth can’t, making more carotene available for your baby’s intestines to absorb.

When a baby has eaten more carotene than they need, the extra is released with sweat and stains the skin. The first place you’ll see the orange color is where babies have the most sweat glands: the nose, the palms, and the soles of the feet.

Constipation

Does your newborn strain, grunt, and turn red in the face, only to have a bit of soft poop come out? It can be quite jarring to see your newborn struggle to poop, but remember that they’re lying down, which makes it harder to get the stool out.

“Young babies don’t yet know how to control and coordinate their anal sphincter, the muscle that holds stool in the rectum,” says Rebecca Preziosi, MD, a pediatrician at Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Center in San Diego. “They have to push and grunt to get the stool past this muscle.”

It’s OK for a young baby to poop as infrequently as once a week, as long as they are maintaining a healthy weight and don’t show signs of constipation, such as hard, dry stool and extreme fussiness.