babies

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Why Listening to Other Parents On Your Child’s Sleep is Often A Complete Waste of Your Time

http://evolutionaryparenting.com/listening-to-other-parents/

Parents today have often been bombarded by other parents telling them the things they need to do to improve their child’s sleep.  Often these things are based on cultural norms which inform on things like sleeping location, sleep training, feeding surrounding sleep, and so on.  Many families end up worried they are doing something wrong because so many others tell them they are.  They hear families telling them how happy they are and how much sleep they are getting and all these behaviours that felt so normal, so instinctive, and so right suddenly seem questionable.

The problem is that there are many scientifically-backed reasons to just flat-out ignore these families.  So before you let one more person worry you, let’s look at why these people’s statements mean absolutely nothing.

(Click link above to read the rest on evolutionaryparenting.com)

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The Fourth Trimester – Why Newborns Hate Being Put Down

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sarah-ockwellsmith/fourth-trimester-newborns_b_9607642.html

“Why will my baby only sleep in my arms, what am I doing wrong?”. A question so frequently asked by exhausted new parents.

The first three months of parenting are often the hardest. A quarter of all babies in this age group are diagnosed as suffering from colic, a diagnosis given when doctors don’t know why a baby is so unhappy and parents are unable to stop their tears.

There is hope though, understanding the enormous transition that babies make from ‘womb to world’, a concept commonly referred to as ‘The Fourth Trimester’, can prove ground-breaking for sleep deprived new parents. When babies are born they are incredibly ill prepared for life outside of the uterus. There are theories that due to our large head size human babies are born prematurely development wise, else they would be too large to be born naturally. While this is good news for mothers, it’s not such good news for the babies who could really do with another three months gestation. Understanding this and treating newborns as if they were still ‘in utero’ for their first three months of life can make life much easier for new families.

(click link at the top to read on huffingtonpost.co.uk)

 

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10 True Things About the First Year of Parenthood

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karyn-thurston/10-true-things-about-the-first-year-of-parenthood_b_4254464.html

“I did a ridiculous amount of reading when I was pregnant. I read natural parenting books and baby scheduling books and how to make your baby happy with no crying and eating is good for everyone led by the spirit of “your baby, yourself” books. If there was a book to read, rest assured, I gave it a go.

I thought I knew everything I’d need to know.

How much of that information did I actually use? Some. A little. The best bits of this, a quick trick from that, but no single book was spot-on accurate, and nothing was anywhere near as easy as all my reading had led me to believe. Fable was just herself, and apparently, she hadn’t been reading the same stuff I’d been bingeing on. All that reading was mostly a waste of time.*

These are the words I wish I’d read instead, before jumping headlong into the mommyhood with my books and my charts and my ideals and my high horses. They’re flawed, and they aren’t all pretty, but they’re hard-won and honest and as true as I can get ’em.”

(click to read blog on Huffington Post)

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Five Things NOT to Do to Babies

Five Things NOT to Do to Babies

*Note: “Babies” refers to 0-2 or so.

When I had a puppy, he hated to be ignored or left alone. At those times he would chew up the furniture. Babies hate these things too, but they can’t damage the furniture to let us know. Instead, their development gets undermined and we and society have to live with the anxious and depressed results.

What should we NOT do to babies?

(click to read on Psychology Today)

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How to Grow a Smart Baby

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201101/how-grow-smart-baby

Ancient principles for fostering smart kids

Research shows that head size growth in the first year of life relates to intelligence later (Gale et al., 2006). It doesn’t matter how large the baby’s head was at birth, it’s what happens in the first year after birth that matters most. (click to read article)