It hasn’t been a great week in the annals of breastfeeding help. I am feeling frustrated and discouraged and a little hopeless. This week, I answered 19 emails from mothers at various stages of nursing their babies – and none of them were suffering because of their own choices.  For several, my helping was to grieve with them the breastfeeding goals that wouldn’t be met and hope that my support would help them move forward with their families. These are the weeks where I wonder [...]

Tonka trucks and ponies…. and Dr. Phil? The insidious nature of gender stereotyping.

Breastfeeding in the news for the week of January 7, 2011: more Facebook controversy, hating Celine Dion a little less, rare tongue-tie, breastfeeding in Yemen and the dangers of swaddling

My latest moral dilemma – giving my baby chicken pox. Or not. Am I a chicken?

Boobies in the news for the week of October 22, 2010: new growth charts, Nestle-free Week, Quebec milk bank, bed-sharing safety and the mediocre, but prolific French mother.

Breastfeeding news round-up for the week of October 8 – World Breastfeeding Week, in case you missed that!

I thought I was done with this series, but my mom of all people came out with a great one a few weeks ago and I needed to share. Thomas has been constipated for much of the last two months – not painfully so, but worrisome to us because he had some early trouble in that department that landed him in the Sick Kids NICU (fabulous people, give them money). Mom suggests that the old-fashioned cure for this is to stimulate baby’s anus. This makes [...]

Babies bond through smell, so mom should avoid scented products and deodorant when you have a new baby. Unlike some of the other weird advice, this is one that sounds weird and crazy, but it’s actually good advice. Baby’s sensory systems are brand new and adapting to a whole avalanche of new stimuli. Researchers have shown what mama knows instinctively – babies are soothed by the mere presence of her scent. And animal studies suggest that that repeated exposure is critical to bonding and brain [...]

To keep your baby from rolling off the bed, use a diaper pin to pin their sleeper to the sheets. I first heard this advice second-hand before I had children and, I admit, it actually sounded like a good idea at the time. But it isn’t. For one thing, it’s demeaning (we restrain animals, not people) and probably uncomfortable. For another, it has the potential to be unsafe: the pin could undo and injure the baby or the baby could become entangled in the bedding [...]

To get boogers out of your newborns nose, put pepper under their nostrils and it will make them sneeze it out. Hand to God, this advice was given to me. In defence, the giver was a childless aunt who was well-intended and quite concerned about the baby having a cold and being stuffed up. Here’s the thing: newborn babies were, just days prior, in a liquid environment and there’s a lot of junk to get out as well as getting the hang of breathing air [...]