Babies need space to spread out in order to grow. Variation: Your baby will be crooked unless you keep his back perfectly straight in a stroller. I have to believe this arose from a gardener. Plants that are given more space grow better and if you let them bend for too long, they stay that way. Uh, yes, except that babies are not rosebushes. They are baby mammals whose most pleasant experience to date (perhaps ever) is in the tight warm confines of mama’s belly [...]

If your baby won’t take a bottle, just put chocolate milk in it. Variation: If your baby won’t take a pacifier, dip it in honey. Ah, the old bait and switch. Both these pieces of advice were actually dispensed to me in the doctor’s office (by fellow patients). Do not try this at home, folks. Seriously, these are both very bad ideas even if your baby still doesn’t have any teeth to rot. First, babies usually don’t need bottles or pacifiers – in fact, introducing [...]

Adiri Nurser: Yeah, so just because it looks like a breast does not mean that it is anything like a breast. Babies don’t develop nipple confusion because bottles don’t look like boobies, they develop it because the mechanics of bottle-feeding are completely different from those of breastfeeding. Period. Save yourself the very expensive cost of these (apparently leaky) bottles. Car Seat Carrier: There are so many ergonomic problems with carrying a swinging infant car seat that I don’t think we even need to address the [...]

I’ve been preoccupied with a story this week – and I’ve been trying to decide what it means. For a long time, I’ve followed themcdonaldfive blog about a family with three kids, the youngest a medically-fragile, beautiful 3 year old. I’ve been reading vigilantly thorough the spring as little Dakota has had a string of health problems and things looked pretty dire. Then, the unthinkable happened: someone sent me this link. Emily Beth McDonald, 23, was arrested after allegedly smearing feces in her daughter’s central [...]

So I’m all for promoting the power of breastmilk, but this silly prank by PETA goes a little too far.http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/09/25/peta-icecream.htmlThe most worrisome aspect of this is that the campaign fails to point out that the alternative to breastmilk for babies (formula) is made of cow’s milk. Presumably, babies whose mothers were producing breastmilk for the ice cream market would have to be fed something – and the tainted milk scandal in China has shown us that milk used for infant formula is no more protected [...]

Whose business is it what goes on in my bed?