Host: A very common question to pediatricians, they get a brand new little baby girl and they see blood coming from the girl's vagina, does that mean that girl is going to have a period?
Speaker: This phenomena on of a little bit of bleeding from a new born's vagina is quite common and really has to do with a withdrawal of estrogen or female hormone that the baby is exposed to while in the mother's uterus. That uterus is a rich environment filled with circulating hormones and when babies are abruptly withdrawn from the mother's environment. The exposure to estrogen is also abruptly withdrawn. And there maybe a build up, a little bit inside the baby's uterus which is ultimately shed when there is that bleeding that occurs shortly after birth.
Host: We also sometimes see in a baby boy or girl that there's a little bit of formation of the breast, little budding and sometimes there is a little whitish discharge, quite common?
Speaker: Quite commonly in about 65-80% of new born girls in particular, there will be the development of breast tissue between the ages of 6 months and approximately 2 and a half years. We typically see about two to three children per week who come in with that same complaint. It's important that families are reassured and the absence of any real changes in the body or in the nipple consistent with true estrogen action on the body as we would see in early puberty. This represents a little mini puberty that normally girls go through, that if you will primes and tests the system out, for later on in the years, when the child will in fact go through true puberty.
We observe these children, we rarely get laboratory testing, we'll see a child back in three to four months and if there is no significant change typically this tissue will regress. If not completely, mostly and parents will be reassured of the same.
Host: Thank you very much.
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