January 18, 2009
Great opening from the NY Times:At a birthing class, Dr. [Pawan] Sinha, a neuroscience professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stunned everyone, including his wife, by saying he was excited about the baby's birth "because I really want to...
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Posted by greg at
4:04 PM
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Comments (0)
January 12, 2009
In modern history, breastfeeding has been fetishized and demonized, considered a woman's ultimate patriotic duty, and a savage, animalistic practice unworthy of mothers of the civilized, fair races. In 18th century Paris, an estimated 90% of women used wet...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 PM
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Comments (4)
January 9, 2009
What alarming, preliminary research are we supposed to use to revamp our failed parenting this week, you ask? Your kid doesn't have a peanut allergy. No one does. They just have over-sensitive yuppie parents. That's the result of a study...
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Posted by greg at
9:45 PM
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Comments (5)
January 8, 2009
The CPSC says the "clarification" issued today about the new CPSIA lead-testing regulations which go into effect Feb. 10. is "Intended for Resellers of Children's Products, Thrift and Consignment Stores." But it's also great news for thrifters, eBay sellers, craigslisters,...
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Posted by greg at
6:25 PM
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Comments (2)
January 7, 2009
A new study of over 24,000 full-term births found that the risk of complications increased 20-100% with scheduled [repeat] C-sections, depending on how early they were scheduled [i.e., 37-39 weeks]. The research was conducted by doctors at the University of...
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Posted by greg at
11:22 PM
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Comments (6)
January 4, 2009
I'd never heard of acetaminophen infant suppositories before I saw them at the drugstore tonight. But they have joined rectal thermometers and those snot sucker bulbs on my list of Things That Will One Day Be Linked To All...
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Posted by greg at
9:08 PM
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Comments (12)
January 2, 2009
I suppose I could write about how, now that K2 realizes we pick the food up from the floor and put it back on her tray, she's started refusing to eat in her chair, and would rather get down and...
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Posted by greg at
11:20 AM
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Comments (2)
December 28, 2008
So you're a pharmaceutical industry executive. And not only has the FDA muscled you into a "voluntary" withdrawal from the lucrative children's over-the-counter cold & flu medicine market. But your leading antihistamine brand is also the default, one-word punchline for...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (2)
December 26, 2008
It's an abbreviated Freakout Friday, which focuses only on the most pressing ways we're ruining our kids, as extrapolated from preliminary research: Should we let robots take care of our children? Because, uh, hello, they already are. That's the ethical...
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Posted by greg at
10:38 PM
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Comments (0)
December 19, 2008
No, I didn't backdate this list of alarming parenting conclusions drawn from preliminary or narrow scientific research; it was just freaking you out so bad last night, you blocked it from your mind: Unmarried fathers who were involved in prenatal...
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Posted by greg at
11:48 PM
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Comments (1)
December 16, 2008
With 4D photo studios popping up in malls, it's easy to forget that there was a time before ultrasound when pregnancy was a largely invisible mystery. Unless you don't count the X-rays to measure the size of the fetus's...
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Posted by greg at
2:29 PM
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Comments (5)
Trying to save newborns and preemies in developing countries from preventable deaths by donating crappy old incubators apparently doesn't work. Even if they work, no one ever sends the manual. But really, the things break down pretty quickly, and there's...
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Posted by greg at
10:13 AM
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Comments (1)
December 12, 2008
Let's see what too quickly drawn parenting conclusions the scientists and sociologists and such have to ruin this weekend with, shall we? First up, etsy.com sellers have finally gotten the news of the CPSC's new lead testing bomb that's set...
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Posted by greg at
10:52 PM
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Comments (3)
And instead of tired, they get wired. Like running around the house and moving chairs wired. What can you do, or do you have to just ride it out?...
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Posted by greg at
9:36 PM
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Comments (8)
Would you be surprised to learn that Debra Pascali-Bonaro's documentary, Orgasmic Childbirth, won the Audience Choice Award at the 2008 Motherbaby International Film Festival in Bermuda? I think, based on whether you knew of the existence of the Motherbaby International...
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Posted by greg at
2:32 PM
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Comments (4)
December 5, 2008
What's the baby and parenting world coming to? Well for one thing, if you joke about the Obama inauguration's stroller ban to a Washington Post reporter, a hundred irate strangers will email you, calling you a shallow, self-centered parent so...
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Posted by greg at
9:35 AM
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Comments (3)
November 28, 2008
Some alarming news and way-too-preliminary research to be thankful for this week: Thanks a lot, FDA, for the giant hit to your credibility about this whole melanine-in-baby-formula thing. I was all prepared to be all, "Bah, melamine-tainted formula is a...
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Posted by greg at
12:12 PM
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Comments (0)
November 25, 2008
Ho-Lee smokes. At least 17 cases of spinal meningitis, a potentially fatal or debilitating brain infection, can be attributed to the use of powdered formula or preemie nutrient supplements. The cases have happened in both NICU and home situations, and...
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Posted by greg at
11:22 PM
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Comments (3)
After banning female circumcision last year, the Danish Parliament is now considering a ban on male infant circumcision. In the case of religious or culturally dictated circumcisions, they would have to wait until the kid is 15 and can make...
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Posted by greg at
1:02 PM
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Comments (4)
November 21, 2008
It's a travel day, so DT Freakout Friday is short, just the bare necessities, you might say: Not only is he messed up for the school year cutoff, but now it turns out that babies born in the fall have...
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Posted by greg at
9:56 AM
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Comments (3)
November 20, 2008
Wait, he's only two and he's reading Mickey Mouse comic books? And wearing French cuffs? That's so advanced for his age! A 2-year-old smoking, 1959 for Life magazine by Michael Rougier [images.google.com via daringfireball]...
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Posted by greg at
9:59 PM
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Comments (0)
November 7, 2008
You know, I'm not feeling particularly freaked out this weekend. In fact, I'm feeling pretty good. And here are a few more reasons why: Because I'm not "mommy dating," and imagining that people are judging me for my watch and...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 PM
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Comments (3)
October 31, 2008
Happy Halloween! Just in case there wasn't enough to be scared about besides gay people getting married on the beach; Communist Muslim Terrorist Presidents winning in a landslide; lamp post-shimmying Phillies fans dropping from the sky; and the paralytic spasms...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 PM
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Comments (6)
October 9, 2008
Truly, nothing inspires confidence and medical credibility than hearing a big pharmaceutical company trumpet the safety of their children's cold medicines one week and then suddenly do a 180 and announce a voluntary [sic] ban on those same meds for...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 AM
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Comments (7)
October 4, 2008
Yeah yeah, you don't need to tell me that the Friday Freakout is late; it was one of those Fridays. On the bright side, the kid is as giddy as a schoolgirl about going to preschool now. And on the...
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Posted by greg at
5:13 PM
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Comments (0)
September 24, 2008
You new dads coming up now will get a kick out of this. Back before the FDA miraculously cured all colds, coughs, and flu in kids under 2 years old, we used to actually give'em medicine when they were sick....
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Posted by greg at
10:17 PM
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Comments (0)
September 9, 2008
Come to my Corn Refiners Association party and get all snotty with me about the fruit punch, and I will shut you down. I assume the scene where another parent walks up and says the issue with HCFS is...
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Posted by greg at
7:18 AM
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Comments (9)
September 6, 2008
Neil Fraser had an MRI, then he laminated his various cross-sectional scans onto a stack of 1" wooden blocks. Now he can do nifty tricks like cut away 3D models of the inside of his head. Wooden Brain [neil.fraser.name...
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Posted by greg at
4:33 PM
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Comments (0)
September 5, 2008
Somehow in the din of CPSC recall and safety warnings last week, I missed a formal Friday Freakout. But don't worry, here's some news from the worlds of preliminary studies you can freak out over this weekend: The connection between...
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Posted by greg at
11:47 AM
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Comments (1)
September 3, 2008
Leave it to the French to name a kid's first source of good head the Lovenest. Produced by Baby Moov, this sculpted foam headrest is designed by a pediatrician to safely produce "une tête bien ronde!" literally, a well-rounded...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 PM
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Comments (6)
September 1, 2008
I don't know what the Journal of Social History has been working on for the last three years, but they're finally getting around to reviewing Robert Darby's groundbreaking historical book, A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 PM
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Comments (0)
August 15, 2008
Whew, never do the Friday Freakout first. Anyway, just in time for your weekend, here's a round-up of alarm[ing/ist] news from the worlds of baby-related science, health and safety: Not sure why this is news now, since the scientifically baseless...
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Posted by greg at
8:17 AM
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Comments (1)
August 8, 2008
Here's a host of alarming research and news stories to shake you out of your parenting habits. After all, I'd hate for you to go the whole weekend only worrying about how you can fit a Chinese-style, 500-foot long LED...
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Posted by greg at
10:37 PM
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Comments (0)
August 6, 2008
K2 just went to the doctor yesterday for her 6mo checkup and shots, so she's a feverish, cranky mess today, even with the Motrin. Combined with her post-roadtrip nap disruption, posting is obviously a little slow today. So is fixing...
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Posted by greg at
3:54 PM
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Comments (1)
August 4, 2008
The Boston Globe's Beverly Beckham went to the "Ultimate Baby Shower," at the Wellesley Club, and all she got was seriously pissed at how the whole thing was actually a PowerPointy sales pitch by the umbilical cord blood banking company,...
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Posted by greg at
12:56 PM
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Comments (7)
July 31, 2008
Some vacation. I find that the days end up so packed with big events, I get behind on the blogging. Like how I didn't get to write about Monday's flat tire at the Spiral Jetty until Tuesday night. And how...
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Posted by greg at
12:23 AM
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Comments (10)
July 11, 2008
It's late, I know--almost midnight on the east coast--but it's not too late to ruin your weekend by jumping to conclusions based on preliminary results from the world of kid-related research: Got HPV-laced milk? A Finnish government-sponsored study of HPV,...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (3)
July 4, 2008
Scientists and researchers are always coming up with something for parents to celebrate. Here are some freakouts as American as gatekeeper moms and McDonald's apple pies: Actually, this one doesn't have to be a freakout. A psychology study by researchers...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 PM
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Comments (1)
Well, we're off to Grandma's house for a patriotic dip in the pool and some patriotic meat. I'll wish you all the same. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a Friday Freakout, try this on for size: evil communists touting...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 PM
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Comments (0)
June 24, 2008
I get so flippant and casual, so comfortable in the sheer, blessed, lucky ease of my life. Then the kids go to bed, and I pop open the computer to find as stark a reminder imaginable of the fragility of...
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Posted by greg at
11:42 PM
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Comments (1)
June 20, 2008
Neal Pollack writes in Salon about doing salvia [salvia divinorum, a still-legal-in-some-states hallucinogen that provides a very short, very intense high] a couple of times a year, in his basement, after the kid's asleep. Neal's right that salvia videos are...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 AM
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Comments (1)
In order to bring a more people-y focus to what is by definition more of an "inside people" publication, the editors of the American College of Physicians' Annals of Internal Medicine invite readers to submit photographs. Of people. I'm...
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Posted by greg at
7:16 AM
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Comments (1)
June 6, 2008
Sheesh, after sitting on some of these alarming findings all week, I am freaked out: Childhood cancer rates are highest in Northeast, study finds. higher by like 7%, too: 179/million vs 166/million average. Must be all that liberal health care...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (3)
June 5, 2008
Is infant vaccination a tough decision for you? Strident arguments about pandemics, irresponsible hippies, governmental conflicts of interest, auto-immune disorders, and autism got you down? Everyone sound like they're just peddling a party line of some kind, and you don't...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 AM
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Comments (11)
May 9, 2008
Holy crap. A few weeks ago, a group of educated, well-paid, professional women sat in a conference room at the Bonnier Corporation in midtown Manhattan and decided that, in matters of basic science, medicine, and health, they would treat moms...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 AM
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Comments (4)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } IMG_6581.JPG, originally uploaded by crabstick. E. Christopher Klumb & Associates designed a symbol and signage...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 AM
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Comments (0)
May 1, 2008
I totally forgot to post this earlier this week. At first glance, this press release from the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association might seem like one more mindlessly self-serving, knee-jerk response to a damning front page article in the Washington Post...
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Posted by greg at
5:07 PM
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Comments (1)
April 18, 2008
In a move clearly designed to exploit the misguided media confusion over the baby industry's most successful puberty hastening plastic compound, a publicity-craving, yuppie boutique in Bentonville, Arkansas has grandly announced that it will stop carrying baby products with BPA...
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Posted by greg at
4:43 PM
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Comments (6)
April 16, 2008
And thanks to NAFTA, soon Americans will, too, Bisphenol-A policies set right there in Ottawa, which polycarbonate gear manufacturers who treat the US and Canada as one market will have to adhere to. As a couple of Canadian types have...
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Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (2)
From the front page of the Washington Post: seems the new draft report of the NIH's National Toxicology Program panel is going to state that Bisphenol-A, the plastic additive found in baby bottles, sippy cups, and liquid formula can liners,...
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Posted by greg at
8:56 AM
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Comments (3)
April 15, 2008
I don't know what's more headscratching about this UK study linking commonplace processed food colorings and additives to ADHD in kids: the possibility that some of the most common food additives in the world [may be contributing to hyperactivity and...
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Posted by greg at
10:56 PM
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Comments (4)
April 12, 2008
The ABC News report yesterday on the International Breast Milk Project actually didn't lead off with their donations of breast milk to HIV/AIDS orphans in Africa. Instead, it began with a domestic tragedy, the tale of Kim Sciulli, who...
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Posted by greg at
7:29 PM
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Comments (9)
April 3, 2008
Seems that even when I'm on the road, the browser tabs just keep filling up with interesting stuff. And how: The Birth Tour 2008 is coming to a yoga center near you: "What is THE BIRTH TOUR? Imagine a room...
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Posted by greg at
12:23 AM
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Comments (2)
March 28, 2008
It's part of the "special relationship" the US has with the UK: we copy their ubiquitous surveillance state apparatus, and they get our cold medicine ban for kids under two. The BBC reports that The Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory...
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Posted by greg at
10:17 AM
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Comments (4)
March 17, 2008
1978 is the 30th anniversary of the home pregnancy test, which was developed by pioneering researchers in reproductive endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. "A Thin Blue Line" is the NIH's online history of the project, and it makes...
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Posted by greg at
7:41 AM
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Comments (1)
March 13, 2008
Uh-oh: "If you're a Mom, you're likely familiar with the age-old problem of trying to administer harsh-tasting medicine to a sick, fussy child!" Good thing the publicist added "or a dad" in the press release, or we coulda had...
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Posted by greg at
6:40 AM
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Comments (4)
February 26, 2008
Here are some follow-ups to recent posts on DT: From the NYT report that after spending several years and millions of dollars, Korean scientists have developed space kimchi:Ordinary kimchi is teeming with microbes, like lactic acid bacteria, which help fermentation....
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Posted by greg at
9:02 AM
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Comments (1)
February 23, 2008
At least it's not shaped like a pineapple. Musical SpongeBobâ„¢ Digital Thermometer [bd.com via cartoonbrew]...
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Posted by greg at
11:08 PM
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Comments (2)
February 19, 2008
A study at Sweden's Lund University shows that infants who have an imbalanced intestinal bacterial flora a week after birth are more likely to develop eczema.The composition of a child’s bacterial flora is dependent on the mother’s microflora, since...
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Posted by greg at
1:30 PM
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Comments (4)
It's devastating, but simple: Fort Worth has so many teen pregnancies with so many premature births, the Mothers' Milk Bank has to turn away throat cancer patients who would otherwise be cured by the liquid gold. Fortunately, the solution is...
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Posted by greg at
8:33 AM
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Comments (3)
Last week, the Trouble With Twins was all about getting into preschools on the Upper West Side and double stroller gridlock at Fairway. This week, it's all oocytes and comparative genomic hybridization. From the NY Times' apparently weekly series of...
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Posted by greg at
7:36 AM
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Comments (0)
February 6, 2008
Or, what's in my browswer tabs: If You Give A Baby A Protein Shake... Thirty years ago, researchers in Guatemala wanted to test the impact of high nutrition and protein intake on preschool growth and development, so they gave fortified...
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Posted by greg at
11:53 AM
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Comments (2)
February 1, 2008
I've been too unsettled about the New York Times' recent article on female infant genital cutting ceremonies in Indonesia to write about it. Though there's the obligatory quotes from human rights and womens' health advocates, for the most part, the...
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Posted by greg at
10:56 AM
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Comments (14)
January 30, 2008
Now that cold medicine's been criminalized, only criminals will give their kids cold medicine. I'd meant to point last week to the NY Times science blog, where Dr. Alan Greene, some hippie doctor with a Green Baby book to promote,...
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Posted by greg at
2:02 PM
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Comments (0)
January 28, 2008
Every new baby gear company needs a Big Vision. For the Baby Boomers who founded Munchkin, the dream was to "excite and delight parents" and make their "lives easier and more enjoyable." Which meant first, a baby bottle with...
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Posted by greg at
9:29 PM
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Comments (7)
January 23, 2008
The New York Times had tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants tested for mercury, and they found levels so high, they freaked out the chefs and restaurant owners and everyone else. Samples came from places we go, too:...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 AM
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Comments (5)
January 17, 2008
Well, don't say you didn't know it was coming. The FDA issued an official public health announcement today stating that over-the-counter cold medicines and decongestants should not be given to kids under 2 years old. The drugs can cause "serious...
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Posted by greg at
4:34 PM
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Comments (4)
January 15, 2008
First, the good news: Phthalates are still leaching from your kid's vinyl toys, and Bisphenol-A is still leaching from your polycarbonate bottles and the linings of your formula cans! At first, when it was named Worst Science Story of 2007...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (2)
December 13, 2007
Unsettling stories about Bisphenol-A are accumulating in my browser even faster than BPA itself is piling up in my blood. Or wherever it works its terrible, epidemiologically studied magic. First up, Mark Schapiro, of the Center for Investigative Reporting, was...
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Posted by greg at
11:53 PM
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Comments (4)
December 11, 2007
The British Medical Journal has published a pro & con debate on whether infant male circumcision is neutral, harmful, or beneficial, and if there are demonstrable medical benefits should operation be put off until the guy can decide for himself....
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Posted by greg at
11:02 PM
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Comments (1)
December 7, 2007
It's Daddy Types editorial policy that there's no quid pro quo for advertising on the site. So when I saw the ad appear on Daddy Types for John F. Mooney's play, "A Million Little Diapers," my interest was piqued. So...
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Posted by greg at
5:50 PM
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Comments (0)
December 5, 2007
A Penn State study found that honey was more effective than dextromathorphan for treating nighttime coughs in kids ages 2-11. The dosages used in the test were equivalent to the cough syrup: half a teaspoon for kids 2-5, a full...
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Posted by greg at
12:17 PM
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Comments (6)
November 8, 2007
I swear, I read it on the internet. Dr. Dilbert somethingorother, I missed his last name. [via chimay]...
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Posted by greg at
2:32 PM
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Comments (1)
October 31, 2007
In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, a pediatric cardiologist at UMass Medical School argues that an all-out FDA ban of cough and cold medicines for kids is an unnecessary overreaction that would increase the suffering of...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (3)
October 21, 2007
It's funny what three years of parenting will do to your attitudes on drugging children. Last week, I was plotting to promote an underground band of renegade dads, calculating their own doses of contraband decongestants, but in August 2004, when...
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Posted by greg at
1:58 PM
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Comments (3)
October 20, 2007
As DT reader Gromit pointed out yesterday, there's something of an "information void" about what medicines and active ingredients are included in the drug industry's recent voluntary withdrawl of cold & cough medicines for 0-2 year-olds, and what medicines the...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 PM
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Comments (10)
October 19, 2007
Well it was an awkward day for the infant cold medicine-hoarding MBA's in the house, let me tell you. The FDA's joint advisory commitees for non-prescription drugs and pediatric medicine met today to review and vote on a petition to...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 PM
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Comments (10)
October 18, 2007
And we'll all get freakin' polio as a result. Thanks a lot. From the AP:Twenty-eight states, including Florida, Massachusetts and New York, allow parents to opt out for medical or religious reasons only. Twenty other states, among them California, Pennsylvania,...
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Posted by greg at
1:24 PM
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Comments (23)
October 11, 2007
So the major drug makers--members of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association--are voluntarily pulling their over-the-counter infant cough & cold medicines from the market rather than be forced by the FDA to pull them [or to put decades-old, grandfathered-in drugs through...
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Posted by greg at
8:15 PM
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Comments (12)
How are new parents supposed to get more than four hours of sleep or travel to Asia with a newborn NOW?? The NY Times just reported that the makers of major infant cold medicines are pulling their products from the...
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Posted by greg at
2:45 PM
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Comments (7)
October 4, 2007
A few quick items to clear out the browser tabs: There's a party in my tummy tuck! Can't quite figure out what the takeaway is on the "Mom Job" post-pregnancy plastic surgery package article in the NYT, but Karen's quote...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 PM
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Comments (5)
October 1, 2007
Part of me feels like I've gotta clear these browser tabs, but part of me feels everyone can read the NY Times on his own: Slow-mo Infant Cold Medicine Ban Rolls On--Slowly: Instigated by pediatrician activists in February and finally...
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Posted by greg at
10:22 PM
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Comments (3)
September 20, 2007
Dr. Brent Logan, PhD., the self-esteemed neurogeneticist/psychologist, is the inventor of the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System, the only prenatal rhythm sequencer-on-a-beltpack endorsed by both 02138 Magazine: The World of Harvard AND famous pregnancy expert Nicole Richie. Logan invented the system...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
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Comments (23)
September 12, 2007
The Sept. 17 issue of The New Yorker has a long, fascinating, informative, but ultimately frustrating article on the vexing mysteries of colic. If your kid has colic, though, please don't use your one precious hour of quiet reading about...
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Posted by greg at
9:53 AM
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Comments (8)
September 1, 2007
I'm running out of pretend-surprise. The NY Times has a damning article about the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which has been systematically weakened, rendered ineffective, and nearly destroyed by the Bush Administration's appointees, who promised their former employers--manufacturers, corporate...
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Posted by greg at
8:24 PM
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Comments (4)
August 31, 2007
I've gotta get the kid out the door for pre-preschool [it started yesterday!], so I haven't even had a chance to read this story on the front page of the Washington Post yet, much less think of an outraged, pretend-surprised...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 AM
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Comments (39)
August 29, 2007
The University of Brussels and the ANTY Project are developing a friendly, plush hospital robot for diagnostic and therapeutic use with children. Despite getting burned on the Teddy Ruxpin thing a few years back, Bill Gates is involved in underwriting...
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Posted by greg at
3:11 PM
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Comments (2)
August 24, 2007
Afghanistan has the second highest rate of mortality for pregnant women and newborns in the world. Women have a 1 in 9 chance of dying during or after birth, and children of those women have only a 1 in 4...
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Posted by greg at
9:04 AM
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Comments (0)
August 23, 2007
So while I didn't get on CBS yesterday, I did get a quote in the Washington Post's article about the latest developments in the whole Bisphenol A toxic plastic baby bottle controversy. [I guess that means I'm not TV-hot, only...
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Posted by greg at
3:42 PM
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Comments (2)
August 17, 2007
I am totally floored. The playwright Arthur Miller had a son with Down Syndrome in 1966 who he never publicly acknowledged and all but wrote out of his life. [What an odd choice of words, under the circumstances.] The boy,...
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Posted by greg at
12:30 AM
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Comments (4)
August 15, 2007
The NY Times commissioned its own testing, and found that vinyl bibs made for Toys R Us by Hamco contained three times the lead allowed in paint. Hamco bibs sold for three years at Wal-Mart, however, had as much as...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (2)
Last spring, a group of pediatricians petitioned the FDA to finally conduct a formal safety review of cough and cold medicines for kids under two years old. [The FDA had resisted for decades in large part because of the longstanding...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:36 PM
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Comments (2)
August 6, 2007
So a quick stitches update: the kid has been doing fine. She was a bit clingy and wiggy for the first couple of days, but she was the best patient I've ever had. We developed a little ritual for changing...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 AM
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Comments (4)
August 3, 2007
Good L-rd, people, PLEASE tell me you are not out there choosing your mohels based on which celebrity offspring penises he's circumcised?! Just check out what happened to Babble contributor Sam Apple when he went chop-shopping at the JCC:Thirteen circumcisions...
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Posted by greg at
1:04 PM
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Comments (2)
There's a lot to swallow, but the deft reporting hands at US News & World Report do a good job of pulling back the outer layers of controversy and concentrating on the most sensitive areas that are the thrust of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:50 AM
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Comments (3)
July 30, 2007
Frankly, I always thought it would be the bookshelves. There's a 9-foot niche in one of our living room walls, a perfect spot for some low, sleek, floating shelves to hold artbooks with a display shelf on top. So...
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Posted by greg at
7:37 AM
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Comments (13)
July 28, 2007
Wow, I was definitely taken in by The Dark Side of The Force on this one. I was about to blast George Lucas like a Tatooine womp rat when I saw this picture of a kid hugging a pink...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 PM
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Comments (7)
July 23, 2007
A couple of very interesting research results for the food-and-baby-conscious New Yorker: First, new mom Meg Hourihan [mazeltov!] has a very enlightening discussion of how to decide what to eat during pregnancy. Statistically, her data sample has problems, since it's...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:22 PM
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Comments (0)
July 17, 2007
Writer Jen Graves takes a long, circuitous, and self-involved look at pregnancy in the way that only someone writing for the Seattle indie paper The Stranger could. The gist of the piece: an unexpected pregnancy and an even more unexpected...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (1)
Asian food writer Steven A. Shaw guts, skins, and filets the American medical community's warped recommendations about eating sushi during pregnancy. Then he slices them into tasty, bite-sized morsels and serves them up in the New York Times today:WHEN my...
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Posted by greg at
7:21 AM
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Comments (12)
July 14, 2007
Peggy Orenstein, who covers the uterus beat for The New York Times Magazine, has a long, fascinating, and somewhat frustrating article charting the socioemotional landscape of egg donation. It's all worth reading, but Orenstein's account of surfing an egg donor...
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Posted by greg at
1:57 PM
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Comments (3)
June 14, 2007
In Slate, Emily Anthes has a very interesting round-up of research into the physiological, chemical, hormonal, and neuronal changes men undergo during pregnancy and fatherhood. It's interesting, but also short; one of Anthes' main points is how little interest scientists...
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Posted by greg at
11:27 PM
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Comments (1)
June 8, 2007
It was a combination of smug self-satifaction and cluelessness that kept me thinking, "Gee, why aren't more people applauding my hilarious LOLSperm Test post the other day? That stuff was FUNNY." The truth, of course, is that dealing with infertility...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (4)
June 4, 2007
The Fertell male fertility test popped up around here last year when it was introduced in the UK. While its innovative adaptation of clinically proven sperm motility testing to a self-administered, at-home setting is laudable, especially because men are...
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Posted by greg at
8:25 AM
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Comments (3)
May 25, 2007
The "just a glass of wine with dinner" and "me mum said somedays, the only thing she could keep down was a Guiness" crowds just got a little thinner today. The UK government just changed their official recommendation about drinking...
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Posted by greg at
11:07 AM
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Comments (5)
May 21, 2007
If 2006 was the peak year for meat-eating meatheads to leave their kids with the valet parking guy, I really hope 2004 was the high watermark for vegan parenting stupidity. That's the year Coney Island vegan dad Raphael Spindell kidnapped...
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Posted by greg at
2:35 PM
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Comments (18)
May 9, 2007
A new Clemson University study finds that the five-second rule only applies when you can be sure the floor you dropped the food onto is free of salmonella or E. Coli contamination. The New York Times reports that 5-second rule-ology...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 PM
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Comments (3)
There's a fascinating article in the NY Times today about Down Syndrome screening, and a couple of must-see videos, too. When the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists officially recommended the newer, much less risky prenatal screening be offered...
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Posted by greg at
4:03 PM
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Comments (5)
April 26, 2007
The ReliaDose infant medicine delivery is basically a syringe-in-a-bottle. It's a way to fake out a feisty kid who won't take medicine via a syringe alone. It looks like it was invented while staring at a Dr. Brown's anti-gas...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 AM
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Comments (3)
April 23, 2007
I don't know which is more reassuring: the fact that this study about the possible obesity prevention benefits of hormone-filled baby formula was published in a journal called Chemical and Industry, or the quote from the lead researcher who argues...
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Posted by greg at
10:53 AM
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Comments (3)
April 15, 2007
Lead is highly toxic for kids. They shouldn't get near it. And it turns out to be mostly up to you to guess what has lead in it and keep it away from your kid, because the EPA and the...
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Posted by greg at
11:16 PM
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Comments (4)
March 28, 2007
First, let me take back the headline. Sure, a University of Rochester study just showed that the sons of women who ate a lot of beef during pregnancy showed sperm count decreases of as much as 25%, which researchers linked...
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Posted by greg at
10:29 AM
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Comments (1)
Can't decide whether to file this one in the Never-on-Bloggingbaby folder, or the Front-Page-of-StrollerDerby folder. Or maybe the health risks to the fetus of extra-marital blowjobs during pregnancy are significant enough to warrant their own folder. From Dan Savage's...
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Posted by greg at
8:22 AM
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Comments (2)
March 27, 2007
Even when the benefits to getting the word out are obvious, you have to wonder sometimes how some news stories come [sic] about. For example, this almost hilariously uncomfortable AP story about how most men with spinal cord injuries can...
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Posted by greg at
1:11 AM
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Comments (0)
March 10, 2007
From the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings:Use of Cellular Telephones in the Hospital Environment JEFFREY L. TRI, MSEE; RODNEY P. SEVERSON, CBET; LINDA K. HYBERGER, MA, CCRC; DAVID L. HAYES, MD OBJECTIVE: To determine whether cellular telephones used...
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Posted by greg at
7:57 AM
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Comments (3)
March 6, 2007
My wife flagged several very interesting studies on how kids' minds work and form and evolve in that looong NY Times Magazine article, "Darwin's God." I haven't gotten through it myself, but she's right; they're pretty fascinating. This one is...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (1)
March 2, 2007
But hey, at least they're in BPA-free plastic bottles! At the urging of a petition submitted by a group of prominent pediatricians and public health officials, the FDA will begin a "broad review of the safety of popular cough and...
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Posted by greg at
8:42 AM
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Comments (4)
February 28, 2007
Bottles of Doom in order of descending toxicity, l to r: Avent, Evenflo, Gerber, Dr. Brown's, Playtex This just in from Environment California, an advocacy group which commissioned the University of Missouri to test five major brands of hard,...
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Posted by greg at
3:08 PM
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Comments (18)
February 20, 2007
I guess cards with ready-to-go, sympathetic sentiments about infertility and miscarriage signal some kind of lifting of lonely taboos of silence, but still, they seem a little odd. Hallmark Journeys: The Right Words Help Cope. With Family Matters [hallmark...
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Posted by greg at
3:10 PM
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Comments (1)
February 15, 2007
Prompted by their school's switch to natural cleaning supplies, parents are switching, too...says Don Imus's wife, whose non-profit group tries to get schools to switch to natural cleaning supplies. And science schmience, if ammonia residue on the coffee table...
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Posted by greg at
8:38 AM
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Comments (2)
February 13, 2007
It may look like a harmless pacifier, but when you push the plunger on the Kidz-Med Medicine Dispenser--BAM!--the medicine hits the back of the kid's throat, bypassing his tongue, and most all his spitting reflexes. So if the trick...
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Posted by greg at
6:06 PM
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Comments (1)
February 12, 2007
This morning as my wife is hydrating in advance of her flight to Amsterdam [quick over&back for a conference; the kid and I are staying put], she took town this little pot of Crema Neige emmollient by Santa Maria...
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Posted by greg at
4:41 PM
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Comments (0)
February 5, 2007
Everyone knows that kids can react to drugs differently; it's why you test the Benadryl before the flight to see if your kid's one of goes-to-sleep kind or the bounces-off-the-wall kind. As we found out last night at 01:55, there...
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Posted by greg at
9:18 AM
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Comments (2)
February 3, 2007
What's that, you say? You thought gynecomastia only affected readers of the back pages of New York Magazine? Think again, my testosteronal friend. A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine links topically applied tea tree...
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Posted by greg at
3:52 PM
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Comments (0)
January 31, 2007
Good morning clean, cool water from a stainless steel sippy cup. Stainless Steel Sippy Cup [Klean Kanteen, Greenfeet]...
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Posted by dt-andy at
11:51 AM
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Comments (11)
January 24, 2007
Some news links that almost warrant their own posts. If you need a theme here, how about meddling? If you want to keep believing that it's not her parents, no way, Marla Olmstead has been a genius painter since she...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 PM
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Comments (2)
January 23, 2007
Feeling a little out of place in the delivery room? Looking for a meaningful way to contribute? Well, suggests Atilla Csordas in his 22-step, fully illustrated [!] tutorial, there's always prepare to harvest the stem cells from the amniotic...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:09 PM
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Comments (1)
Awesome t-shirt from The Grateful Palate. Available in kid's size 7/8, $16.95. Previously: Lips Stuck On A Pig...
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Posted by dt-andy at
11:20 AM
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Comments (2)
January 16, 2007
Putting lip balm on a toddler is like slipping a harness over the biggest pig in the pen and getting him to pull the portable pump back to The Man With The Yellow Hat's House so you can get the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:04 PM
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Comments (3)
January 11, 2007
After an enthusiastic embrace of the new toddler bed and love-at-first sight with the ghost, the kid has had a really rough week sleepwise. Most nights, the problem's been not going to sleep. The first couple of nights were great,...
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Posted by greg at
6:42 PM
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Comments (6)
January 10, 2007
Let's look at the facts: Armies of towering stewardesses A bunch of hippiesploitation flicks that, one way or another, obsessed our parents' generation Tiger Woods' bikini model wife The beds in which 25% of Europeans were conceived Is it any...
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Posted by greg at
1:58 PM
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Comments (3)
December 14, 2006
It's official now. After a French study in South Africa showed the same results last year, the US and the WHO have made pronouncements about two large-scale studies in Africa that showed circumcision significantly lowered men's risk of HIV infection...
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Posted by greg at
9:10 AM
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Comments (3)
Seeing as how it's based on a review in the October issue of SLEEP, the journal of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, I'd say the Times was asleep at the wheel with this story about which behavior techniques get...
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Posted by greg at
8:39 AM
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Comments (1)
December 10, 2006
A study at the University of Auckland [NZ] looked at the cases of 43 babies who suffered lack of oxygen. In 9 of those cases, the survey found, kids were resting in an infant carrier for some extended period of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:36 AM
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Comments (1)
December 6, 2006
[Q: Is Dwarfist a word?] A recent survey of 190 clinics offering Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis, or PGD, found that in 3% of cases, PGD was used to select embryos with a particular genetic anomaly, not without. Those cases were either...
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Posted by greg at
6:00 AM
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Comments (2)
December 2, 2006
The question of a kid's gender is usually not much of a question at all, and as he or she grows up, the sense of identity, behavior, difference, and expectation all take shape. A very small number of kids are...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 AM
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Comments (1)
November 30, 2006
They're not just for men anymore. And by 'they,' I mean spam ads promising to increase your performance and size using unscientifically tested herbal treatments. Check out what DT reader Robert spotted in the hippie alternative [sic] to Craigslist in...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:26 PM
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Comments (3)
It's been known for a while that a baby's tastes for things are influenced by what the mother takes in while she's pregnant: salty, spicy, broccoli--and now cigarettes. According to a long-term study from the University of Queensland, Australia, kids...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 AM
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Comments (2)
November 29, 2006
After reading this agonized NYT article about how some women decide to have a drink now and then when they're pregnant, I am dying to hear some French mom confess to eating a salad:Many women who choose to drink have...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 AM
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Comments (3)
November 28, 2006
According to the New York Times, men just have to avoid paint and giving their future baby mamma the clap. Women, on the other hand, well, infant mortality researchers say that women in the reproductive stage of their lives should...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 AM
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Comments (0)
November 27, 2006
Not to be the unsupportive one pushing people back into the closet of miscarriage silence, or anything, I'm just saying... wow. In The Grip of Nature's Own Form Of Birth Control [nyt]...
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Posted by greg at
3:54 PM
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Comments (1)
November 17, 2006
DT reader Jeff asks a question that we struggle with ourselves. It seems like the first thing to get cut from a busy schedule, where you're being pulled in different directions by work, the kid, family, etc., is the gym....
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Posted by greg at
1:15 AM
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Comments (10)
November 2, 2006
A new study in based on autopsies of 41 infants who died of SIDS and other causes shows that a serotonin abnormality in the brain stem that triggers breathing reflexes may be involved. This breathing problem fits with the prevailing...
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Posted by greg at
9:56 AM
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Comments (0)
October 26, 2006
Just as we got able to overcome the kid's fear of the doctor's office--triggered by the wallpaper border and the icy, hard scale in changing/weighing room--the kid'd have another shot, and we'd be back to square one, having to prep...
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Posted by greg at
4:05 PM
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Comments (8)
October 25, 2006
This Wall St Journal article talks about early diagnosis of autism and anxiety disorder in infants [signs: crying, agitation, inability to express self, mood swings, what?], but my diagnosis is there's a whole lot of projection going on. Parents' own...
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Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
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Comments (0)
October 24, 2006
Yeah, I'm not really following this: Guys who are on their cell phones for four hours a day or more have dramatically reduced sperm counts. Which head are they holding that thing against? The findings are preliminary and unclear [duh],...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 AM
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Comments (1)
October 13, 2006
The Frieze Art Fair is this weekend in London, but because of preschool and other obligations, we're not there. As art fair circuses go, it's probably the most intelligent and well-thought-through and enjoyable, and not just because they make a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:38 PM
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Comments (1)
October 12, 2006
Researchers in the Czech Republic have found that women with high levels of the toxoplasma antibody have a 72% chance of giving birth to a boy, compared to the average 51% chance. The Toxoplasma parasite, which can cause birth...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:31 PM
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Comments (1)
September 27, 2006
The death of Rev. Run's daughter soon after her delivery by C-section last week might tee up debates somewhere about reality television and what point you stop the cameras--and about the ethics of hyping a show around a celebrity pregnancy...
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Posted by greg at
2:01 PM
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Comments (2)
Researchers in the Netherlands and Canada found that men who were regularly exposed to airborne paint solvents--they studied painters--in the three months before their partners got pregnant were six times more likely to have a kid with a congenital malformation...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:41 AM
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Comments (0)
September 2, 2006
The NY Times has a long article on the expanding frequency and breadth of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or P.G.D. PGD involves removing a cell from an 8-cell embryo for genetic screening. Then if it passes, that embryo is implanted using...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:38 PM
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Comments (10)
September 1, 2006
Over at BoingBoing, Xeni's all freaked out. You'd think she'd never seen a fully illustrated, nothing-left-out, 1971 Danish sex-ed book for preschoolers by Per Holm Knudsen before. [attention t-workers: that first link starts with an illustration from the book;...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:02 PM
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Comments (2)
August 23, 2006
I know there's a new study out showing babies are getting fatter. And I can understand the whole difference between "should be" vs "is," and how the WHO's newly calculated "optimal" height-weight percentile charts might be more logical than the...
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Posted by greg at
10:04 AM
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Comments (7)
August 9, 2006
The American Academy of Pediatricians is calling for new safety regulations and designs for shopping carts because of all the injuries they say occur with the current 70-year-old design. [Nice of you to chime in now, Docs. What took you...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:52 PM
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Comments (5)
August 8, 2006
In case you didn't notice, it was World Breastfeeding Week last week. And if you go over to Celebrity Baby Blog, right now, it's just bursting with a buxom bevy of breastfeeding-related posts. They really took aim and let...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:59 PM
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Comments (2)
Researchers at Eastern Virginia Medical School found that becoming a parent increased the incidence of depression for both men and women. 14% of new mothers showed signs of depression, compared to 9-10% of gen pop [Ah, Oz. Gone, but not...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:59 AM
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Comments (2)
August 4, 2006
What a long-term study of the emotional maturity and resilience of breastfed children says: by the time they were 10, kids born in 1970 who were breastfed dealt with their parents divorces 5x better than bottle-fed kids. What a new...
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Posted by greg at
12:45 AM
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Comments (4)
August 1, 2006
Studies of the prefrontal cortex structure of first-time and experienced marmoset parents show that "Fatherhood produces changes in very high-cognitive-level areas" said Yvesgenia Kozorovitskiy of Princeton University. It's important to remember, though, that this information is coming from people...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:04 PM
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Comments (1)
July 31, 2006
After a dad at her son's preschool vetoed the snacks she was sending--twice, two days in a row!--Emily Bazelon found herself not unsympathetic, mind you, but frustrated in dealing with other kids' nut allergies:But it would be a lot easier...
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Posted by greg at
3:16 PM
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Comments (4)
July 30, 2006
When are the nursing nazis at BabyTalk Magazine going to get the message? New parents have enough stress in their life without having to worry that their newborn infant might be inadvertently exposed to a naked, engorged breast in the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:56 PM
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Comments (16)
July 28, 2006
When the topic has come up around here, we have learned that, colloquially speaking, "so they can get more play" is a not uncommon reason guys give for deciding to have their sons circumcised. Well, if one of your rationales...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (0)
Hi-ho. John Biggs here, guest blogger and recent new dad. In an effort to fill the vacuum of my days, I've decided to take a stab at the old Elimination Communciation (EC), a process in which you listen for your...
[read the full post...]
Posted by johnb at
12:58 PM
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Comments (7)
After reviewing existing research on the health effects of processed soy in Western diets, the British government's Commitee on Toxicity [CoT] and the Food Standards Agency has recommended that infants not be given soy-based formula except on the advice of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:02 PM
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Comments (5)
July 27, 2006
Grrr. I get hyper-irritable when I read articles that reflexively namecheck Betty Friedan in their opening sentence and then proceed to discuss the dilemmas, stresses, and oft-ensuing depression that come with parenting, but that don't make a single freakin' mention...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:41 PM
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Comments (5)
July 19, 2006
Mothering Magazine is upset, and they're not going to take it anymore:The image of a baby bottle on an airport sign announcing the location of a "parents lounge" infuriated us and got us thinking: Isn’Äôt there an international symbol...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:38 AM
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Comments (9)
July 15, 2006
This is so cool, I don't know where to start. First, the Open Prosthetics Project is just that, a site and organization dedicated to the development and propagation of improved prosthetics solutions. The site rallies engineering, research, and manufacturing expertise...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
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Comments (0)
July 5, 2006
In the two months since it was published, I've probably received 300 requests from people looking for a copy of "Vessels," Daniel Raeburn's extraordinary New Yorker magazine essay about his and his wife's experience with their stillborn daughter, Irene. So...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:01 AM
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Comments (6)
June 29, 2006
In the UK, unused embryos from IVF and other fertility treatments are destroyed after five years. Other countries mandate that any embryos created during IVF must be transferred for implantation. In the largely unregulated and privately funded US fertility industry,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:20 PM
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Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
I guess I've lost a bit of sensitivity and awareness in my head, because I totally missed Genital Integrity Awareness Week. Meanwhile, now you know what G.I. stands for. Genital Integrity Awareness Week, March 29th - April 4th, 2006...
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Posted by greg at
5:47 PM
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Comments (0)
A study by university researchers in Bangkok shows that post-vasectomy, the incidence of sperm with chromosomal abnormalities such aneuploidy or diploidy [different numbers of certain chromosomes, or a full double set, respectively] increases dramatically. Post-vasectomy? Those guys are out of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:39 PM
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Comments (0)
June 12, 2006
"Breast is Best" is apparently not good enough for the World Health Organization and the Dept. of Health & Human Services, who have instituted a new awareness campaign claiming that not breastfeeding is actually risky, for both a mom...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:31 PM
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Comments (25)
When the kid first started on solid foods, we did the whole "test one grain cereal at a time to see if she's got a sensitivity to it" thing. And when she spouted a diaper rash the week she started...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:28 AM
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Comments (11)
June 10, 2006
Because for many preventitive fetal and maternal health measure, "the horse is already out of the barn" by the time the bun is in the oven, the CDC convened a panel to formulate preconception health standards and recommendations. In a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:53 PM
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Comments (2)
May 30, 2006
If you can get past the story of an STD surge at Florida retirement communities, the last Human Nature column in Slate before a two-month hiatus is a fertile field of pregnancy- and kid-related science findings from all over. Guess...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (0)
But only one kidney. Doctors are still testing to see what the best options are for 2-month-old Jie-Jie, but so far, the kid's two left arms appear equally developed. Unless Bai Xiao Qiu, the shadowy Nick Bollettieri-like mastermind behind...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:08 PM
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Comments (4)
May 6, 2006
Are they bouncing, bikini-filling orbs of sensual wonder, embodiments of womens' self-esteem and mens' attraction? Or are they nurturing sources of live-giving milk, the source of mother-infant bonding over the millennia? Turns out you may have to choose. Because according...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:06 PM
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Comments (4)
April 29, 2006
In this week's New Yorker, Daniel Raeburn tells of Hemingway once boasting that he could write an entire novel with only six words: "Asked to prove it, he took a napkin and wrote, 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'" At...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:41 PM
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Comments (43)
April 12, 2006
A neurology and vision researcher (and physicist) in Australia named Allan Snyder is developing a new theory about how Savants function, particularly Autistic Savants, who can begin manifesting their mad, Rainman skillz as early as 18 months [although by age...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:43 PM
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Comments (0)
April 3, 2006
If I'd posted this on Saturday, you would've thought it's a joke. Unfortunately for people relying on the Canadian health system, it's all too real. The reason your dad can't get his hip replacement for six months is because the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:26 AM
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Comments (1)
March 30, 2006
So, Dr. Sydney Spiesel, of Yale, Connecticut, Slate, and NPR, you're saying that breastfeeding's probably still better than formula, but that the ecstatic health benefits of breastfeeding are not actually based on definitive research--because rigorous studies of humans, much less...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:29 PM
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Comments (6)
March 23, 2006
So do medications for attention deficit disorder really cause kids to hallucinate about spiders, snakes, jellyfish, and other creepy things crawling all over their skin? OR are they just nuts and trying to get attention? Hello, attention deficit disorder... Doctors...
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Posted by greg at
1:26 PM
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Comments (1)
March 16, 2006
I'm still struggling silently to wrap my head around that article from the Times the other day, the one about pregnancy being a subtle struggle between the competing self-interests of the mother and the fetus. It's fascinating stuff, but the...
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Posted by greg at
8:23 AM
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Comments (5)
March 13, 2006
Wow. I'd put off reading Elizabeth Weil's NYT Magazine article about the emerging concept of wrongful birth, but now I'm glad I did. It does a pretty great job of laying out the emotional, moral, ethical, and medical issues that...
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Posted by greg at
9:47 AM
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Comments (3)
March 10, 2006
DT reader Buck calls it possibly the "most obvious headline" ever: "Depression Hampers Parenting." A new study shows that parents--the study is only of mothers, wtf--who show symptoms of postpartum depression are slightly less likely to do child-interactive-type activities with...
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Posted by greg at
9:58 PM
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Comments (4)
March 7, 2006
NO! DON'T! It's normal to have those thoughts of harm coming to your newborn child dance across your mind! According to a Mayo Clinic study of 85 new parents--mothers and fathers both--"researchers found that 89 percent experienced distressing, intrusive thoughts...
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Posted by greg at
5:31 PM
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Comments (0)
February 27, 2006
I remember the first time the kid nearly took a dive off the sofa arm. There was this pop sci/parenting factoid in my head that a child had this innate perceptive ability to avoid danger. Some scientist somewhere had done...
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Posted by greg at
11:41 AM
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Comments (1)
A three-year study in the medical examiner's office in Detroit shows that most cases of SIDS can be attributed to accidental suffocation. The findings are based on a researcher visiting the locations of 209 SIDS-related deaths and asking parents/caregivers to...
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Posted by greg at
7:59 AM
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Comments (4)
February 14, 2006
Why do I think we'll see a Pavement reunion tour kicking off from Branson, Mo. before we see an American parenting magazine that addresses a dad's concerns? When it comes to parenting, moms may be a little bit country, and...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 AM
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Comments (2)
A frequent reason guys cite for deciding to have their sons circumsized is that if he doesn't, the kid won't get any play, because American chicks love themselves a cleancut penis. [A lot of assumptions here, of course, but let's...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 AM
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Comments (12)
February 7, 2006
To my untrained ear, the symptoms of Newborn Abstinence Syndrome sound a lot like the symptoms of Newborn Baby Syndrome: "high-pitched crying, tremors and disturbed sleep." But apparently there's a difference, and new study reveals that NAS has shown up...
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Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (0)
First, I'm surprised there's no plush version of the Rotavirus. It's so cute, it seems like a no-brainer for the Giant Microbes folks. But I'm sure they get tired of people telling them how to do their jobs. As I...
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Posted by greg at
9:05 AM
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Comments (1)
February 6, 2006
It was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Some stomach flu virus went through the whole family, one by one, the last few days, despite our efforts to avoid getting sick. [Big apologies in advance to the folks at the...
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Posted by greg at
11:45 AM
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Comments (14)
January 27, 2006
Mmm. Clorox Anywhere Hard Surface has the same stuff as regular disinfectant spray, just in lower quantities. So it kills bacteria, but not other small organisms. Like viruses and children. Mild enough to leave on a high chair tray or...
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Posted by greg at
9:25 PM
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Comments (1)
January 12, 2006
A dad-to-be writes in: My wife is pregnant, and we have both tested as positive CF carriers. (Cystic Fibrosis). We are going to see a geneticist early next week, wondering what to expect. Kind of a downer as opposed to...
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Posted by greg at
2:47 PM
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Comments (5)
Apparently, there are these children with extraordinary abilities who represent an remarkable shift in human evolution, and they're misunderstood, hounded, and persecuted by the mainstream culture? These kids could use a sweet private school in Westchester and unlimited access to...
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Posted by greg at
12:56 PM
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Comments (6)
January 5, 2006
I really thought I knew what long meant [cough]...until I came across this study on semen displacement and penis morphology published last year in Evolutionary Psychology. Touching lightly on the most sensitive part, it seems that the shape of human...
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Posted by greg at
11:07 AM
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Comments (0)
January 2, 2006
For parents seeking to adopt a child from a foreign orphanage, the question of undiagnosed medical conditions that might pop up later or that might cause developmental or behavioral challenges down the line haunts the whole process. Some pediatricians are...
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Posted by greg at
11:36 PM
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Comments (2)
December 13, 2005
That's why she's called Alpha Mom. While I've been downloading clips of sick&twisted kids TV shows, Alpha Mom's Isabell Kallman has been busy mobilizing her editorial staff to report on actual, important--lifesaving, even--news. Turns out the American Heart Association just...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 PM
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Comments (1)
November 19, 2005
Whether it's a kid drowning in the tub in that split second when you go to answer the phone or the door, or a large-headed, top-heavy baby drowning in the toilet, the bathroom is the site of over 300 unnecessary...
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Posted by greg at
6:25 PM
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Comments (3)
November 16, 2005
The way I see it, if I'm only a day behind Eric Snowdeal on being aware of Prematurity Awareness Day, then I'm still doing alright. Not great, but alright. Turns out Prematurity Awareness Day was yesterday. If you didn't know...
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Posted by greg at
9:14 PM
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Comments (2)
November 15, 2005
So on Defamer today, I read how Gwyneth Paltrow is a "germophobe" because she " insists that visitors take off their shoes at her house, she sometimes wonít shake peopleís hands, and she often asks people to use antibacterial soap...
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Posted by greg at
10:08 PM
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Comments (5)
Haven't had time to read the story yet, but judging by the headline, it's either about how preemies face developmental challenges because their final weeks of gestation are spent out of the womb, OR it's an explanation of why men...
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Posted by greg at
2:10 PM
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Comments (0)
October 25, 2005
It may look like the folks at the Guardian took a few months to read and digest that Wall Street Journal article about the African study showing significant reductions in HIV infections among men who were circumcized. But the Guardian...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 AM
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Comments (14)
October 18, 2005
The NYT reports that some parents are taking in all the SIDS prevention advice and theories that pediatricians put out, examining it, recognizing the still-unclear understanding of the causes of SIDS--and letting their kids sleep on their stomachs sometimes. Because,...
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Posted by greg at
5:26 PM
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Comments (11)
October 15, 2005
Four children in a Minnesota Amish community have contracted polio, the first cases in the US in 26 years. How the virus shows up is still not clear, but it's apparently related to the live-but-weakened virus used in oral polio...
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Posted by greg at
12:47 AM
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Comments (0)
October 11, 2005
The kid doesn't have crayons; because they make me nervous. The table, the walls, the art, I see the kid having a blast playing with crayons, and I don't think "Awwww, maybe she'll be an artist someday. Let's put these...
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Posted by greg at
9:47 AM
October 10, 2005
A woman stopped me on the street today to tell me that pacifiers may prevent SIDS. Literally. Of course, she only told me after testing my parental knowledge of SIDS prevention on-camera. She was from ABC News, and the Kid...
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Posted by greg at
3:21 PM
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Comments (3)
October 4, 2005
That numb sensation? That erectile dysfunction? That 70-80% drop in penile blood oxygen levels within 3 minutes of getting on the bike? That 28-year-old with the penile vascular system of a 60-year-old? At some point, serious cyclists who don't want...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 AM
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Comments (0)
September 29, 2005
Ring Around The Rosie indeed:New data compiled by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, reported in October 1 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggest that otherwise healthy 3- and 4-year-olds drive flu epidemics, a pattern...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 PM
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Comments (6)
I'd always wondered when the kid was going to stop grabbing at the balloon string in Goodnight Gorilla, now I know. A potentially huge research finding--that children under three don't develop the capacity for symbolic thinking--that could have far-reaching implications...
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Posted by greg at
4:06 PM
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Comments (1)
September 11, 2005
"...so if that doesn't do the trick, try the glycerine suppositories, or else the teeny tiny baby enemas." That's from a recent reader comment on an earlier post about dealing with a constipated baby. When the kid had trouble...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (0)
September 6, 2005
The March of Dimes has been campaigning for nearly 10 years for increased folic acid fortification of basic foods like flour and bread, and now they say why. (I'm sure they said why before, too; it's not like MOD is...
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Posted by greg at
9:54 AM
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Comments (3)
September 3, 2005
The kid already calls every monkey "Bobo," so we've been fighting the use of "boo-boo" and "owie" and other kidspeak. But now that she officially scrapes her knees and gets slideburns across her face, we needed something. So just now...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 AM
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Comments (6)
August 30, 2005
Ah, good. Because what the circumcision discussion has been lacking is good old-fashioned, nationalist class rhetoric. The ContraCosta Times takes a look at some of the issues and advocates for and against circumcision. In the covered corner: some peoplel talking...
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Posted by greg at
3:36 PM
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Comments (10)
August 29, 2005
Slate's columnists weigh in on two topics that have lit up the ol' weblog here the last few days. First, normally, I'd rather have the tip of my penis cut off than agree with Christopher Hitchens on anything, but when...
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Posted by greg at
9:59 PM
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Comments (5)
August 26, 2005
Remember that Orthodox mohel who got in trouble with the 'oral suction' phase of that circumcision, not because he developed his bris pictures at Eckerd's, but because the kid got herpes and died? Yeah, well that's still going on, apparently,...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 PM
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Comments (4)
August 23, 2005
Sometimes parents go to extremes to conform to externally imposed societal norms, ordering elaborate and expensive medical procedures be carried out on their children, just because they think their heads have an abnormal shape or appearance that'll keep them from...
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Posted by greg at
7:26 PM
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Comments (21)
August 14, 2005
The NYT Magazine profiles the efforts of Harvard child developmental psychologist Heidelise Als to help premature babies by making the NICU more supportive of kids' brain development, not just their phsyical survival. What that involves: making the NICU more womb-like,...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (2)
August 8, 2005
Newsweek's cover story is about advances in cognitive development in infants which show that babies are far more capable of emotion, memory, and analytical processing than was ever thought possible. In that zombie-like stimulus-response phase when we think they don't...
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Posted by greg at
12:39 PM
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Comments (3)
August 4, 2005
Where to start? A team of in vitro fertilization researchers in Australia have successfully captured a sperm cell in California. And cut its tail off. With a laser. On the Internet. While it's surprising enough to learn that IVF treatments...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 AM
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Comments (0)
July 10, 2005
"And I was like, "'you can easily spend $200?' HAH! We got this Maxi Cosi car seat from Europe. ebay Germany. "Huh? Nah, but you don't need to speak it; all the buttons are in the same place. Anyway,...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 AM
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Comments (0)
July 5, 2005
According to the most extensive and rigorous studies of the connection between circumcision and HIV transmission (the results are as-yet unpublished, but they've been widely discussed in the HIV prevention community, apparently), circumcision reduces a man's likelihood of infection from...
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Posted by greg at
2:33 PM
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Comments (18)
When it comes to psychiatry-hating, the Times of London's India Knight apparently hails from the Stiff Upper Lip faction, not the Tom Cruise one. But that doesn't make her dismissal of the idea of male post-natal depression any less stinging....
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Posted by greg at
1:20 PM
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Comments (5)
July 1, 2005
Apparently fed up with being criticized as a misguided pill-popping mess by the sideshow freak formerly known as Tom Cruise, Brooke Shields speaks out forcefully in the NY Times:While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand...
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Posted by greg at
1:29 AM
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Comments (1)
June 28, 2005
Or rather, for mothers in developing nations who don't have ready access to nurses and traditional mercury thermometers [d'oh, mercury?!!]. The Thermospot was designed by one John Zeal in response to the apparently widespread infant hypothermia problem in many cultures...
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Posted by greg at
2:07 PM
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Comments (4)
June 25, 2005
Precipitated, I guess, by Robert Kennedy's article in Rolling Stone/Salon, The NY Times waded into the "Thimerosal in vaccines causes autism" quagmire today. And the article leaves me imagining what'd happen if the paper had gone after other polarizing subjects...
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Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
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Comments (5)
June 24, 2005
Since posting a new dad's question about male postpartum depression research and resources earlier in the week, the international medical community has been spurred into action. After studying 12,800 couples over the first few weeks after a birth, they found...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 PM
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Comments (1)
June 21, 2005
A DT reader and new dad writes in with the following:Over the last few days I have to my surprise/chagrin/horror sunk into a depression and I was wondering if you had ever heard of other men experiencing what is traditionally...
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Posted by greg at
8:03 AM
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Comments (13)
June 16, 2005
Thimerosal, ever heard of it? A preservative containing mercury compounds that was used in vaccines in the US until 2003, including some of the most commonly administered immunizations given to infants and children: Hep B, Haemophilus Influenza B, and diptheria-tetanus-pertussis...
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Posted by greg at
5:00 PM
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Comments (11)
June 14, 2005
The Times had two stories recently that look back at old-school pediatrics; it's enough to make you want to hug your neo-natalogist, that's for sure. Sunday was the story of Dr. Martin A. Couney, aka The Incubator Doctor of Coney...
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Posted by greg at
1:56 PM
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Comments (1)
June 10, 2005
Because--except for locks of hair, umbilical cord stumps, cord blood, and the sheen of drool that now coats every surface of your house--there's never been a way to sample or store your baby's DNA "for your peace of mind" and...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (3)
May 19, 2005
Whoa, this show starts in 20 minutes. But it broadcasts many more times over the next month. There is an extremely unusual condition--it's thought to be rare, but then again, it's often discovered only be sheer accident, so who knows?--where...
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Posted by greg at
8:40 PM
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Comments (3)
There's a kid in Germany--his identity has not been published, because, do I have to spell it out?--who has a genetic mutation that gives him incredible muscle mass and strength. Doctors are following him closely, partly to make sure that...
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Posted by greg at
6:00 PM
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Comments (0)
[via robotwisdom] From ABC News, a story about the delivery at a Florida hospital of BabySIM, a $52,000 pediatrics training robot:At 21 pounds and 28 inches in length, BabySIM has the physical characteristics of a three- to six-month old infant,...
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Posted by greg at
4:38 PM
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Comments (0)
May 14, 2005
Despite what this slightly freaked out mom might think, the baby massage technique known as Indian milking does not originate in the Kamasutra:"If it's a boy," she said, "it's even weirder: dim the lights and put on mellow music and...
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Posted by greg at
8:25 AM
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Comments (10)
May 13, 2005
"We see coin, after coin, after coin, after coin, after coin, after coin," Dr. Frank McGeorge said. I raced out of the house so fast with the kid this morning, that I didn't notice she was sucking on a penny...
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Posted by greg at
8:48 PM
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Comments (2)
March 29, 2005
A cool almost-spring night at the end of cold season is probably the wrong time to tell you this, but Costco has a megasized bottle of Infant Tylenol Drops for like six bucks. Megasize for Infant Tylenol is, of course,...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 PM
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Comments (1)
March 25, 2005
A recent survey by The Quigley Corporation, makers of Cold-Eeze, found that "68 percent of Americans thought the media and government overemphasized the impact and import of the shortage." The survey also found that, if they were sick, twice as...
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Posted by greg at
2:34 PM
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Comments (0)
March 21, 2005
That's because turtles were banned as pets in 1975, and turtles, like all amphibians and reptiles, apparently, carry salmonella bacteria and were a major cause of salmonella cases--and even deaths--among infants and children. Coming a bit late to the story,...
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Posted by greg at
3:38 PM
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Comments (0)
March 7, 2005
which the kid just did when I picked her up. Wash hands before and after everything, try to keep the piles of babysnot-filled Kleenexes around the house below knee-level. Echinacea, Vitamin C, Jamba Juice, I even painted our door frame...
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Posted by greg at
9:06 AM
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Comments (10)
February 21, 2005
A federal advisory group is preparing to release a report that calls for nationwide standardized newborn testing for 29 extremely rare but potentially devastating diseases and conditions. Currentyl each state has its own set of tests that newborns automatically receive,...
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Posted by greg at
9:56 PM
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Comments (5)
February 4, 2005
A preliminary study shows that newborns who were exposed to anti-depressants in the womb may show some symptoms of withdrawl. [Yes, "preliminary," "may," "some," nice ambiguity-spotting. Obviously, ask your doctor(s).] It makes total sense that when pregnant women take drugs...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 AM
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Comments (0)
February 3, 2005
Hannah Stimmel, whose parents pursued a highly experimental cord blood bone marrow transplant for her after she was diagnosed with a rare disease called Nieman-Peck [via comments below] Niemann-Pick Syndrome, has died. Her story was told in an article in...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 PM
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Comments (2)
February 2, 2005
Three cases have been identified--including one twin who died--where baby boys in New York City contracted herpes shortly after being circumcised by Rabbi Yitzhok Fischer. "Under Jewish law, a mohel -- someone who performs circumcisions -- draws blood from the...
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Posted by greg at
4:02 PM
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Comments (18)
January 25, 2005
According to this front page report in the NY Times, the high cost of infertility treatments in the US--especially egg donor programs and in vitro fertilization--are driving increasing numbers of Americans to find foreign clinics. One South African doctor pitches...
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Posted by greg at
11:34 AM
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Comments (1)
January 22, 2005
The kids these days have taken to getting high--and OD'ing and dying--by guzzling cough syrup with dextromethorphan [DXM]. In some states like Utah, misuse got so bad a few years ago that pharmacies were ordered to put Robitussin and Coricidin...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
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Comments (1)
January 11, 2005
Talk about extreme parenting. Andres Trevino and his wife are from Mexico, but they have been basically living in Boston for the last few years after their 5-year old son, Andy began treatment at The Children's Hospital for a rare...
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Posted by greg at
5:41 PM
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Comments (1)
December 29, 2004
On Slate, David Dobbs examines the recent dramatic drop in the number of VBAC's, Vaginal Birth After Cesarean, which has occurred as more and more hospitals ban the procedure--and force women to give birth via cesarean again. The reasons, Dobbs...
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Posted by greg at
12:03 PM
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Comments (1)
December 19, 2004
If you have to find out your new baby has an extremely rare, deibilitating, and potentially fatal disease, at least try to be in a family of pediatricians. That's one lesson to learn from the story of Scott and Jill...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 AM
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Comments (0)
December 18, 2004
Researchers at Ohio State University found that children paid more attention to sound stimuli than to visual stimuli. They theorize it may be part of the language learning mechanism. Read the report of their findings or BoingBoing's original post about...
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Posted by greg at
5:39 PM
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Comments (0)
Rather than just be funny and critical (or just critical, depending on your POV), I thought I'd round up some info on testicular cancer resources, including an important issue for dads and anyone with designs on being a dad sometime...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (0)
December 8, 2004
A new study from researchers at SUNY found that the combination of high computer temperature and the knees-together posture required for actually positioning a laptop on your lap can increase scrotum temperature by as much as 2.8 degrees centigrade. That's...
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Posted by greg at
11:45 PM
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Comments (1)
December 7, 2004
On the supposedly squeamish subject of men and diaper changing: I've always figured that any gender who can create (and turn into a box office success) a movie like Dumb & Dumber should have absolutely no trouble working the business...
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Posted by greg at
2:36 PM
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Comments (7)
December 2, 2004
My wife showed up one day with this travel-sized assortment of shampoos and creams from California Baby. As far as the bottles go, so far, I've only used the shampoo and bodywash in the kid's bath, but it's pretty nice...
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Posted by greg at
10:17 AM
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Comments (2)
November 30, 2004
I didn't even know it existed. Most people don't. The Italians have olive oil mindshare just about cornered, but then the grocer down the street got all impassioned like I've never seen her when, upon seeing it on the shelf,...
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Posted by greg at
9:25 PM
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Comments (9)
One interesting vein of research was presented at the At-Home Dads Convention a couple of weeks ago in Chi-town. Rebel Dad mentioned it, and now, Peter Baylies, the at-est-home dad of them all, expands on it. Turns out that pregnancy,...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 PM
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Comments (1)
November 11, 2004
So maybe I shoulda listened to that old lady at the grocery store. Maybe I SHOULDA put a hat on the kid for that quick Diet Coke run. Anyway, she's got a cold, is very (and understandably) moody. I can't...
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Posted by greg at
11:07 AM
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Comments (2)
October 16, 2004
While a father in Michigan was "distracted for three to five minutes" talking to someone--or "playing football," I'm not quite clear--his one-year-and-a-day-old daughter got out of the house, onto the porch, and into a 5-gallon bucket of water that'd been...
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Posted by greg at
12:44 AM
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Comments (1)
October 7, 2004
I remember hearing that babies are born capable of making and understanding all possible human language sounds, and that their ability gradually narrows as they're exposed to a dominant language (or languages). Here's an interesting study of a preverbal baby's...
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Posted by greg at
9:06 AM
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Comments (1)
October 6, 2004
Vaccination for Influenza Priority groups, that is. Now that influenza vaccine stocks have been cut in half in the US this season, the Centers for Disease Control are recommending that only people in certain priority groups get vaccinated. The full...
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Posted by greg at
11:39 PM
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Comments (1)
September 28, 2004
in the order she learned them: 1) Matsyasana, the Fish 2) Setu Bandhasana, the Bridge 3) Joyful Baby Pose 4) Navasana, the Boat 5) Ardha Merudandasana, the Half Bear* * Note: foot is usually brought to her mouth, a posture...
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Posted by greg at
10:37 AM
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Comments (1)
September 27, 2004
Doing deep lunges while pushing the kid around in a stroller may be the best post-pregnancy workout ever, who knows? Get out of the house, bond with the kid, &c, &c. And officially, "partners and husbands" are welcome and can...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 PM
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Comments (1)
September 15, 2004
Sushi and alcohol are just the tip of the iceberg. In the last two decades, the lists of things a pregnant woman can't eat or do without putting the fetus "at risk" is a mile long. Not that I didn't...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (16)
September 14, 2004
And if, during my darker moments I feel at a loss for perspective, I can always recall the sentiments of my wife, uttered once she felt it was time for me to pull myself together, start changing nappies again and...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 PM
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Comments (0)
July 13, 2004
John and Helen During, parents of Alastair (8 years) and Andrew (5 years), [and founders of the AromaKids brand of aromatherapy and massage oils for children] feel strongly that the touch of a parent's hand and the sound of their...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (4)
July 8, 2004
WHOA. If you're on the fence about circumcising any boys about to be born in your vicinity, Gizmodo's got a review of a penis clamp that just might make your mind up for you. My wilfully uneducated guess is, the...
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Posted by greg at
2:14 PM
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Comments (3)
Kids born at the extreme edge of viability--24-26 weeks, or at a little more than 1 lb birthweight--are called "micro-preemies." Personally, I prefer "extreemies," or "X-treemies," which sounds tougher, and tough is what these kids have to be. They basically...
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Posted by greg at
1:26 PM
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Comments (1)
June 30, 2004
ChosenCouture.com, the makers of the Yo Semite! and Jews for Jeter t-shirts, also offer a few gift ideas for the new dad. You don't need to be Jewish to appreciate them (although for one, you do need to be a...
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Posted by greg at
12:14 AM
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Comments (0)
June 8, 2004
On Slate, Claudia Kolker looks at the latest research and thinking about dealing with "intersex" or gender indeterminate children, a condition with multiple possible causes where a newborn's gender is ambiguous. To some degree or another, it affects approximately 1...
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Posted by greg at
8:33 PM
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Comments (2)
May 13, 2004
Not the kind of off-gassing where that tiny baby you just brought home farts like your frat buddies on a ski weekend. No, it's the other kind of off-gassing, the one THAT WILL POISON YOUR CHILDREN IN YOUR NEW HOUSE,...
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Posted by greg at
8:39 AM
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Comments (0)
April 13, 2004
The National Health Service in the UK will roll out an anonymous helpline for fathers dealing with Post-Natal Depression (PND); the service has the so-upbeat-it's-disheartening title, "Fathers Matter." Although some psychiatrists--and at least one cranky farmer--dismiss the idea of PND,...
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Posted by greg at
11:30 PM
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Comments (1)
April 6, 2004
Research out yesterday reveals that: excessive TV viewing before a kid is 3 years old contributes to ADD, and the tastes a kid is exposed to in the first 3-5 months (as well as the last couple of months of...
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Posted by greg at
3:24 PM
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Comments (1)
March 9, 2004
You want to see how quickly you can get your pediatrician to roll his eyes? Just begin a sentence with, "I read on the Internet that..." If you're going to be researching questions about your children's health online, make sure...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 PM
