Newborn breathing fast, Normal? – Dr. V Prakash of Cloudnine Hospitals

Normally newborns have a respiratory rate of about 40 to 60 breaths per minute. As adults, we have 10 to 12 breaths per minute. As preterm it is about 50 to 60 or a term baby, babies above 37 weeks, anywhere between 40 to 50 is the normal respiratory rate. Anny baby who has a respiration more than 60 is considered as fast breather. We have various reasons for fast breathing. It could be transient tachypnea of the newborn, it could be respiratory distress syndrome or a meconium aspiration as well as congenital anomalies. Sometimes we can have a normal fast breathing also. Or term babies less than 37 weeks have something called as periodic breathing. In this periodic breathing, transiently they breathe fast and they hold the breath for sometime. So 10 to 15 seconds they breathe fast and 5 to 10 seconds they hold the breath or it is the slow breath. So apparently it looks like they are having fast breathing, but if you have a 1 minute count of the respiration, the counts of respiratory rate will be less than 60. So respiratory rate less than 60 doesn’t mean that baby has a respiratory distress. So the baby has to have other parameters like grunting, that is baby making some noise while breathing, as well as baby having recession, that is in drawing of your chest muscles. Two out of these three things should be present to say that baby has a breathing difficulty. Just respiratory rate more than 60 alone doesn’t fit into the criteria of or mandates the criteria of respiratory distress in newborn.