Walt Disney is taking the extraordinary step of offering refunds for its Baby Einstein videos bought between June 2004 and September, in what consumer advocates say is an admission that the videos don't teach babies anything.
The videos also have long conflicted with a recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics that kids under 2 watch no television (including videos) at all.
Will you be seeking a refund?
Are you about to have a second, third, or-so-on baby? If you're delivering at a hospital in Maryland, chances are that your new bundle's older siblings won't be able to visit you and the newborn in the hospital.
As Kelly Brewington and Meredith Cohn report today, it's because of swine flu. (Isn't everything?) Hospitals want to protect their patients and the public at large, and even children who appear healthy are known spreaders of flu.
On the other side of things are moms like Kimberly Franklin, shown in the picture on the left, who would love for her 3-year-old to be by her side right after she has a scheduled C-section at St. Joseph Medical Center next week to welcome his new brother.
I would have been very sad if my daughter, then 2, hadn't been allowed into my room to see her new brother the day after he was born. I still remember how she charged into the room, newly confident in her role as big sister, and proclaimed: "I wanna pick him up."
Then again, I wouldn't have wanted to expose a vulnerable new baby to the flu.
(Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor)
Just when you thought you'd heard it all comes the story of an Arkansas woman who conceived a baby...after she was already pregnant with another. No, they're not twins, but separate pregnancies 2 1/2 weeks apart.
Fortunately, as a Greater Baltimore Medical Center fertility expert tells ABC News here, it's a rare case.
Lord knows that on this blog, we're familiar with how people can't stand to have noisy kids in public places like restaurants. Sometimes parents are at fault, but other times, noisy kids are just a fact of life. And there's a right way and a wrong way to deal with them.
Witness, first, this woman dragging a child on a leash through a Verizon store in Georgia last month. Now comes word that a shopper at a Georgia Wal Mart (what is going on there?) slapped a 2-year-old after telling her mother: "If you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you."
Some moms around the country are pretty exercised about that, as I would be.
In both cases, criminal charges have been filed against the adults.
New parents are often shocked at how often complete strangers feel free to come right up and touch a tiny baby, without asking if it's OK to do so.
Even the common cold can turn dangerous for a new baby, much less swine flu. That means all the touching can drive a germ-phobic parent right up the wall.
One, a mom named Tara Williamson, decided to make the sign you see on the right, which you can hook right on to a stroller. And now she's selling them, for $7.95 apiece. (There's even one in Spanish.)
Of course, you could make one yourself for free. Or just summon your courage and tell the stranger (or, let's be honest, overly touchy acquaintance/relative/friend) to wash up first.
But something about the official-looking nature of this sign may be the ticket. It's passive-aggressive messaging at its finest, isn't it? Because after reading it, even with clean hands, who would dare to approach the baby?
MomofBeans asked: "How do you break a toddler of a biting habit, when she isn't doing it at home, but is doing it at daycare when other children get in her personal space or attempt to take a toy from her?"
I called Margo Sipes, executive director of Downtown Baltimore Child Care, who previously advised us on easing transitions from house to day care. Here's what she recommended:
--First, remember that biting, though distressing, is common among toddlers. "Toddlers are still very oral," she said. "They learn and solve problems through their mouths."
--Don't be surprised if biting happens in a center rather than at home, because the center is where peers are -- and where conflict naturally arises as young kids interact. "Oftentimes the biting happens because there is a conflict over toys or the teacher's lap or one square foot of space in the classroom."
--Have the child shadowed. The best way to solve the problem, Sipes said, is for an adult at the center to be in charge of "shadowing" the toddler -- being close by him as much as possible -- to gently intervene when a bite is about to happen. "Someone right there who can put their hand and redirect (the child) to a more socially acceptable response." It's important for the adult to validate the child's feelings, by saying something like, "I can see you want that toy. Tell him you want it. Say, 'Turn please?' Or, 'Play with this while you’re waiting.'"
--Don't punish. If you do, the child will learn only that he's "bad," but not how to be good, Sipes says. Instead, the center should work on validating feelings and teaching him better ways to express needs. Also, be low-key about the biting. A big reaction may prompt the child to see if he can get the same reaction by biting again.
--Be patient. Breaking the biting habit could take a while -- maybe 4 to 6 weeks, Sipes says.
Here's a rejoinder to Joeprah's more-sex post, courtesy of the new book Momnesia, by Shannon Payette Seip and Adrienne Hedger.
It's called "Mommy Brain Haiku":
Movie date night fun
But seat more comfortable
For snoozing sans child
I'm taking submissions for your haiku take on Joeprah. Leave 'em in the comments.
Salma Hayek got lots of support for breastfeeding a child that wasn't hers. But have you read Hanna Rosin's piece in the upcoming Atlantic magazine, on "the case against breastfeeding"? It's in the April issue of the magazine, but the controversy is already rolling along.
In the piece, Rosin, who breast-fed her three children, questions the notion that breastfeeding delivers all the benefits that popular science and lore say it does -- and whether it's become a modern shackle of domesticity for women, something like the vacuum cleaner once was.
The backlash has started already. Here's the case against the case against breastfeeding at Strollerderby.
And here's Rosin on the Today show:
Here's my perspective: I breast-fed both my kids for their first year. After I went back to work as a reporter, after about seven months each time, I pumped during the day. Toward the end of the year I gradually tapered off pumping and supplemented with formula, breastfeeding in the morning and the evening.
It wasn't as hard for me to accomplish as Rosin portrays, but I was lucky enough to have access to a room with a lock, blinds and a phone. With a hands-free pump with a quiet motor, I could actually interview people on the phone while I was pumping. And fortunately I was never caught out at a news event when I really needed to pump.
The thing that's sad, I think, is the mother-to-mother judginess that's crept into our modern thinking about every element of parenting, from how many activities your kid should have to whether they can eat candy before dinner. Breastfeeding has become a lightning rod for that kind of judginess, and a mom can feel it from the moment she becomes a mom.
Today's Guest Dad is Tony Chen, who writes in Chicago for the web site/community Savvy Daddy. He has some observations on how life has changed now that his family includes two children.
Here's Tony:
Continue reading "Father's Day Friday: Reflections on having baby #2" »
Even though breastfeeding is the recommended way to feed your baby, women still get heat in some places for doing it in public. That's become something of a hot topic again, since Salma Hayek was shown recently on Nightline breastfeeding a hungry baby while on a goodwill trip to Sierra Leone.
Then this post from breastfeeding123.com caught my eye; it's a pretend rant/campaign against public bottle-feeding. Tongue-in-cheek, obviously, but it makes its point. (Example: "Bottlefeeding Parents might try to argue that BIP is done for the baby who needs to eat, but that baby doesn’t need to eat! Bottlefeeding Parents are just doing it for the attention!")
I'd love to know what those of you who've fed babies either way have to say about it, and about Salma Hayek's nursing of a baby that wasn't hers.
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Your infant has been crying -- a lot. That's what babies do. But how do you know if your baby actually has colic? I asked Dr. Charles Shubin, director of pediatrics at Mercy FamilyCare, a division of Family Health Centers of Baltimore, to provide today's Consult.
Colic, Shubin explained, is not a defined medical disease but a diagnosis that's made when doctors and parents have ruled out other reasons for a baby's discomfort. But here are some of the signs he said might lead you to talk to your pediatrician about colic: Your baby is 1 to 4 months of age; she cries for long periods at a time, after you've tried feeding her, burping her and changing her to help; and the extended crying has something of a daytime pattern that often occurs in the late afternoon and early evening. "They cry continuously or a lot, or they're not well consolable," Shubin said.
What can you do if the doctor can't find a physical cause of discomfort and says your child does have colic? Shubin says some parents have had success swaddling the baby -- wrapping her tightly in a blanket like a burrito, which you might have done when she was first born. Vibrating baby chairs and swings might also calm the baby, but Shubin cautions that you shouldn't prop the infant on top of a clothes dryer -- the vibrations might be soothing, but the baby could fall off.
The good news is that time is on a parent's side. Most babies stop extended crying at about the time they learn to sleep through the night, around 4 months, Shubin said. If yours is still crying for hours every day much beyond that, it's time to talk to your doctor again.
Barack Obama has been president-elect only a couple of days, but already babies are being named after him and his family.
Locally, Greater Baltimore Medical Center sends word that a mother who delivered a daughter on election night has named the girl Sasha Malia, after Obama's young daughters.
What do you think about marking the moment in this way?
(EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP)
If you're expecting or just had a baby, you'll want to check out this piece from the Boston Globe that examines which is better for the environment -- disposable diapers, or cloth. The story may leave you more confused than ever, though, because it says it's far from clear that one has a better overall carbon footprint than the other.
There's a useful discussion among parents who have used both kinds of diapers here.
(Associated Press photo/Danny Johnston)
With all the comments under the GBMC parent education thread this weekend, I thought I'd give a call to Dee Dee Franke, who left the hospital recently after running new moms' groups there for years.
Franke said she would like to find a way to keep ministering to new parents. When she does, she said, she'll let me know what form it's taking, and I'll let you know.
In the meantime, she said to thank the parents who have commented here -- and the others whom she worked with over the years -- for their support. "Tell them I really miss them," she said. "I learned as much from them as they did from me."
So the word is that Angelina Jolie's twins are due....sometime soon. She's checked into a French hospital, as we all already know, but her doctor is mum on exactly how soon she's due. So all that's left for us is to name her new babies.
Here's your chance to suggest that perfect name you never got to use for the girl you never had, or the boy's name your sister took first. Nobody seems to have a firm bead on the sex of the babies, so feel free not to let gender limit your suggestions.
Just so there's no duplication, here are the names of the four other Brangelina kids: Maddox, Pax, Zahara and Shiloh.
(AP Photo/Evan Agostini)
My poor expecting friend. She started her maternity leave two weeks ago today, a week before her due date, and only now is she showing signs that labor has started. I urged her to start her leave early, knowing that it would really be the last chance she had to do some of the things she likes to do, like go to big-people movies and eat in restaurants without springing for a sitter. Or just to sit and enjoy silence.
Then again, both my kids were a little bit early -- one by several days -- so I never really got that time. Now I suspect she's gotten too much. Then there's the discomfort factor of being that pregnant; how much fun can you really have? Maybe the distraction of work would have made the time go faster.
So it's time for....a Guilty-Mom poll. You have until 9 p.m. Sunday to give advice to the other expecting moms out there.
Need dinner delivery after your own delivery? Let's Dish!, the meal-assembly company, has an offer for new moms -- free delivery of its 8-meal DishDelivery orders for up to three months after a baby is born.
Details and rules of the offer are on the Let's Dish blog.
If you know someone who's expecting, a nice group gift might be to spring for the meals, then take advantage of the offer for free delivery of them. I know that when I had babies, all I really wanted was for dinner to be taken care of (and cleanup too!).
When my first was born, one of our favorite gifts was a big spiral sliced ham with biscuits, with a tray of fresh fruit. Whenever we were hungry and had a moment to eat, we'd grab it.
What food gifts have you received in the early days of having a baby that you liked best?
This ABC news piece brings some discouraging news for expecting parents: Just 16 percent of employers offer fully paid, six-week maternity leaves, according to a study by the Families and Work Institute -- compared to 27 percent a decade ago.
The study also found that despite technological advances that might make more working from home and job-sharing possible, employers aren't offering more of those options. One upside: employers are becoming more accommodating to mothers who need private spaces to breastfeed (or pump, I gather).
As our economic picture gets bleaker, I imagine it will be harder for some employees to feel they can leave their jobs for long to have a baby or care for a family member. In retrospect, I feel supremely lucky to have been able to take 6 months or so with each child. Yet I would love to have been able to take more time.
How much time did you take for your maternity leaves?
Thanks for all the great comments, gear recommendations and other pieces of advice for Amy and other moms (and dads) to be. I'm sure we all appreciate them, with the possible exception of Amy's friends and relatives, who will now have to deal with a supersized registry of all your suggested items.
Even with all those recommendations I found myself wanting to know more about some of the gear (Lea Orlando, what's a bumbo seat?). So I'll do a little more research and save that list for later. Meanwhile, with your comments and some advice I've been thinking about, there's more than enough for a tip sheet on Things We Wish We'd Known before that first baby came.
Here goes. (Click below for the list and see why in the world Coco Chanel is pictured in her little black dress. ...):
Continue reading "Tip Sheet Thursday: Advice for the expecting" »
It's time to suggest topics for the next Tip Sheet Thursday. This week I've been trying to come up with ways to help Amy, the mom-to-be who wrote in to the blog several weeks ago.
Here are some of my ideas for a new-mom-themed list. Let me know what you think of them, and also pass along your suggestions for what items should be on each list.
--Ten pieces of baby gear you'll actually use.
--Ten bits of most useless advice we've ever heard about having a baby.
--Ten things we wish we'd known when having our first babies.
Please vote below.
(Photo of Scandinavian furniture collection by Babi Italia and Mod Pod bedding set from Babies "R" Us, distributed by the Associated Press)
Parents have been talking today about increasing evidence that a chemical widely used in plastic baby bottles and other food and beverage containers can cause harm to humans.
Here's our story from yesterday, in which the federal National Toxicology Program reported that the compound bisphenol-a, or B.P.A., could be linked to precancerous prostate tumors, early puberty and urinary system problems in rats injected with it. The New York Times report today that Canada is about to label B.P.A. as toxic was the second most-emailed story on the Times' Web site when I checked just now.
We talked a bit earlier about glass baby bottles making a comeback, and now there's more reason for a parent to fret about this. When I saw one of my best mom pals this morning, it was at the top of her list of worries.
What do you think? Have you combed through your house to get rid of plastics you're worried about?
I've been meaning to get a chance to read the new book Parenting Inc. and tell you what I think about it. So I was glad to see this excerpt on NPR's website, which will probably be all I -- and you -- will have time to read this week. Judging from the beginning, the book looks promising, though just reading about the financial binds facing parents today is enough to make my head ache. And that's even knowing these problems quite well from my own experience.
I'm sure we'll talk more about the book in general, but there was one thing at the very beginning of the excerpt that interested me. The author, Pamela Paul, talks about anguishing over whether she should enroll her baby girl in baby sign language classes to help her communicate before she learned to talk. You'll probably remember that baby signing was all the rage a few years ago, but Paul reports that after doing lots of research, she concluded that having her daughter learn sign language wouldn't be worth the effort; some research told her it could even do more harm than good.
I've been wanting to ask about your experience with baby sign language classes. (Neither of my children took them, and fortunately both learned to speak on a normal schedule.) Did your children learn to sign, or are you considering signing up a baby? What went into your decision? Did you see benefits?
There's an interesting story on the Los Angeles Times web site today about parents wrestling with the circumcision decision. It's interesting to read the statistics behind the debate: In 1965, the story says, 85 percent of boys born in the U.S. were circumcised. In 2005, slightly more than half were.
How did you make this decision for your son/s? And if you're expecting a boy, is this a topic of debate in your house as birth approaches?
The Chicago Tribune reports that by tricking the body with medication, herbs, or pumping, adoptive mothers can breastfeed a child without giving birth. The newspaper included stories of mothers who made it work.
This Web site is dedicated to supporting the practice. Here's an older story about adoptive breastfeeding from the Web site of Mothering magazine.
Have any of you readers who've adopted tried to breastfeed? Were you successful? I'm interested in the pros and cons.
The Associated Press reports that because of concerns about a chemical used to make plastic baby bottles, glass bottles are making a comeback. But there are concerns about those, too -- they're breakable, for one thing, and more expensive.
Have you used glass baby bottles? Let us know the pros and cons, and if you have any local sources for them, please share in a comment below.
(Associated Press photo of Dr. Brown's Natural Flow glass bottles)
Now that the celeb mother of four has shown off another baby bump, her growing brood with Brad Pitt is the subject of more discussion, such as this one on The O'Reilly Factor the other night. A psychotherapist came on the show and said that some women having so many children close together are "trying to fill a void."
Funny, I didn't read anything in the transcript (which veers off halfway through into the Eliot Spitzer case) about whether Pitt has any voids to fill.
What do you think?
(Photo by Gabriel Bouys, AFP/Getty Images)
Yesterday's post about the new multimedia symptom tracker at parenting.com sent me digging into the album for this picture last night. Baby girl was just 9 months, and my parents, bless their hearts, had treated my family, my brother and his wife to a Caribbean cruise.
The first or second night, my folks had offered to babysit while the two younger couples enjoyed a rare evening out sans kids. We had just climbed into the hot tub with our little umbrella drinks when my dad ran up in a panic.
Seal cough.
We raced down and found baby barking up a storm. I'd read about croup, but to hear it, in a baby so many miles from home, was really scary. I did remember the advice I'd read about getting the child some cool night air (just as Christine mentioned in her comment).
Fortunately, my folks had sprung for a balcony. The little girl and I stayed out there all night, and in the morning, my husband snapped this picture.
For me, it captures what parenting is all about. It's an image of an exhausted mother, to be sure, but she's in a beautiful place with a child who, so sick hours before, appears miraculously healed in that way only young kids do. What could be better?
Do you have pictures you love with your kids of times that were hard -- but worth it? Please send them to me in an email and I'll post them here. And do tell us the stories that go with them, either in a comment below or with the pictures.
(Photo courtesy of me)
Parenting.com has a great new resource for parents -- an online symptom checker, developed in cooperation with the faculties of Harvard and Dartmouth medical schools, with audio and video of children with common illnesses. You can hear what croup with stridor sounds like and watch how a child with a stiff neck (a sign of meningitis) behaves.
It's painful to watch the videos of these sick children (though they are later seen getting better). But I suspect this will be valuable for many of you, especially when a child suddenly gets sick in the middle of the night. Sometimes all the books in the world just don't really tell you what you're looking for.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission yesterday sent out a reminder to parents about crib and play yard safety for babies. The CPSC reported that of the 97 crib deaths it recorded between 2002 and 2004, half occurred in cribs containing pillows, quilts and other bedding.
Thirty percent of the deaths involved problems with old cribs that were in bad condition, and babies becoming trapped in spaces between the sides of a crib and an ill-fitted mattress. The rest of the deaths "were associated with accessories situated in/around the crib (such as window cords or curtain tie backs), falls out of cribs, alterations made to cribs, or entrapment when the child became wedged between the crib and other furniture or a wall."
Here's a link to the full release. Also yesterday, the CPSC announced a recall of Munire Furniture wooden cribs sold at specialty juvenile product stores nationwide from November 2005 through November 2007 for between $400 and $600. They were sold under the names Majestic Curved Top and Flat Top Cribs, Essex Cribs, Brighton/Sussex Cribs and Captiva Cribs.
Those of you with children probably already know about putting baby to sleep on her back without a pillow, but the information is so important that it bears repeating. If you know somebody who's about to become a mom for the first time, please pass this on to her.
Newly available from eLUXURY.com -- Fendi Baby accessories. "Now, new moms can dress their tots in adorable fashions and accessories from the line fashionistas have loved for years," says a press release.
These are Fendi Baby "Memory" Shoes. (The web site doesn't explain what "memory" means, but for $150 I'd want them to come with a built-in digital recorder to preserve all the memories of the few months my baby would wear them.)
You can also purchase an $80 bib with the Fendi logo (keep the pureed sweet potatoes away from that, mister!) and a four-way convertible baby carrier for $325.
Hey, if you're invited to a shower for the latest addition to the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt brood, you know just what to bring.
The folks at MomLogic recently sent me a link to their post on naming babies, which quotes the CEO of babynames.com, Jennifer Moss. (Who knew this was so complicated?)
Here are Moss's tips, straight from the MomLogic press release:
* "Use the 'introduction test': Look at the name from the perspective of the child. Pretend that you're introducing yourself with each possibility on your list. How does it sound?
* "No expectations: A lot of people choose names like 'Chastity', 'Peace' or 'ESPN' (for boys), says Moss. What if the daughter you name 'Chastity' turns out to be, um, not so much?
* "Short and sweet: if you have a long and difficult-to-spell last name you might want to stay simple with the first. Walk in the footsteps of your child with that name--don't make it impossible for a 5-year-old to write her name.
* "Common, Weird and Transgender: If your daughter is one of 20 Avas, she may get confused, says Moss. (From KS -- I assume she means confused with other Avas.) Avoid oddball names, which might cause interesting reactions from those that hear it. And if you're looking to bend the rules, it's more accepted for a male name to be applied to a female baby than the other way around."
According to babynames.com, the most popular name for boys born in 2007 was Aidan, and it was Ava for girls.
I always liked my sister-in-law Nancy's naming rule: Pick a name your baby will feel great having his best friend call him, and that will still sound appropriate when he's running for president.
No pressure or anything.
How do you pick a baby's name?
(Photo courtesy of the Chicago Tribune)
