Weekend AP Roundup - Oct. 9-15

I've decided to start a weekly attachment/natural parenting link/article roundup, as often as I can manage it. Throughout the week, I come across lots of fantastic articles, studies, and videos that support natural parenting, and I'd like to share them with anyone who might be browsing through my archives looking for good reasons to love their child.

I'm posting a bit late this week... somehow, Friday was much busier than I expected, and I worked all day Saturday (although this won't be going on for much longer; I'm officially counting down the weeks until I can go back to devoting myself 100% to keeping the house and toddler from collapsing like a flan in the cupboard).



What is Crotch-Dangling? Why can't my baby face out?

"Most parents enter babywearing at the same place--structured carriers that they can buy from the local Walmart or Target. While it is wonderful that these products can introduce new parents to the joy and benefits of babywearing, most of these products are not made with baby and mother's health and comfort in mind."

A New Way of Seeing Children

"A child's rambunctiousness in public embarrasses parents, because our society expects children to remain silent and to behave as though they are mature adults - a most unrealistic and uncaring expectation. Expecting the impossible can of course only lead to disappointment and frustration for both parents and children. Just like adults, children feel most cooperative when treated with kindness, understanding, and faith in their inherent good intentions. No adult feels cooperative when treated in a threatening, angry way by a spouse, employer, or friend. In fact, we feel hurt and resentful when treated that way, and far from cooperating, we often resist or retaliate. Why then do we expect children to respond with good behavior when treated with anger, threats, or punishment?"

Birth from the baby’s perspective

"Picture this… A mother sits holding her newborn son on a postnatal ward during visiting time. One of her visitors reaches forward, grasps the baby by the head and pulls him out of his mothers arms leaving him dangling by his neck. Can you imagine the reaction of the mother and those around? Yet no one raises an eyebrow when this occurs during birth."

Study shows that infants feel and remember circumcision pain

"A study led by Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) researchers has demonstrated that not only do male infants feel pain during circumcision, they remember that pain six months later when they receive their routine vaccination. The results of the study, led by Anna Taddio, a graduate student supervised by Dr. Gideon Koren, head of Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology at SickKids and a Professor of Paediatrics, Pharmacology, and Medicine at the University of Toronto, are reported in the March 1 issue of the British medical journal Lancet."

Several nations banning flu shots for babies

""The vaccines appear to be causing a pattern of neurological disorders affecting children and teens across the planet," said a report in India's Bharat Chronicle."

So, how *do* you recognize sucking vs. swallowing?

"On Monday I wrote about the importance of recognizing sucking and swallowing in figuring out what your baby is doing at the breast. It's how you can figure out if your baby is eating or nursing for comfort.* I think that this is more helpful than the common advice to wait until your baby comes off the breast on his or her own."

Weekend AP Roundup - Oct. 2-8

I've decided to start a weekly attachment/natural parenting link/article roundup, as often as I can manage it. Throughout the week, I come across lots of fantastic articles, studies, and videos that support natural parenting, and I'd like to share them with anyone who might be browsing through my archives looking for good reasons to love their child.



Mothering Special Report - Attachment Parenting

"Check out this Mothering Special Report on Attachment Parenting for a host of articles, resources, and expert advice on the subject. Look through the following information and browse around the site to find all the special AP content."

Good Nutrition: Nestlé is part of the problem, not part of the solution

"The problem with this scenario is that Nestlé is one of the companies pushing unhealthy food. It is hilarious that Nestlé underscores the problem of french fries, when its Gerber Graduates meals contain more than twice as much sodium as a medium order of French Fries at McDonald’s."

Tips for Biting While Breastfeeding

"...(according to studies and meta analysis by the AAFP, WHO and multiple national lactation/pediatric/health counsels) babies need their mothers' milk until they are at least 24 months of age for normal, baseline growth and development - physically and mentally."

Cosleeping and Biological Imperatives: Why Human Babies Do Not and Should Not Sleep Alone

"The term cosleeping refers to any situation in which a committed adult caregiver, usually the mother, sleeps within close enough proximity to her infant so that each, the mother and infant, can respond to each other’s sensory signals and cues. Room sharing is a form of cosleeping, always considered safe and always considered protective. But it is not the room itself that it is protective. It is what goes on between the mother (or father) and the infant that is. Medical authorities seem to forget this fact. This form of cosleeping is not controversial and is recommended by all."

I was pregnant for 10 months

"Jack, my third child, arrived last month, 20 days late. My first two babies were 15 days late. But a day shy of week 43? That is virtually record-breaking – and, some would say, slightly mad. For the last week I barely left the house. I knew what I was doing and was happy with my decision. But I didn't want to hear what anyone else had to say about it."

Induction of labour: balancing risks

"In comparison to other mammals, humans have the most variable gestation lengths. This suggests that other factors such as environment and emotions (eg. anxiety) also influence the start of labour. This would make sense considering what we know about the function of oxytocin. It is also something most midwives are aware of – a stressed out mother is more likely to go post term than a relaxed and chilled out mother. Having said that, post term is probably the normal gestation length for many women regardless of what is going on. Creating anxiety and stress around due dates and impending induction is probably counter productive to labour."

No Such Thing as Too Much Love: 'Spoiled' Babies Grow Up to Be Smarter, Kinder Kids

"Now another group of studies, led by Notre Dame psychology professor Darcia Narvaez, confirms earlier work suggesting that children who get more positive touch and affection during infancy turn out to be kinder, more intelligent and to care more about others."

Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills

"But during the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff argues, play changed radically. Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played Star Wars with a toy light saber. Chudacoff calls this the commercialization and co-optation of child's play — a trend which begins to shrink the size of children's imaginative space."

Circumcision & Human Behavior: The emotional & behavioral effects of circumcision

"He found that children who had undergone operations experienced an increase in anxiety and various fears, including night terrors, fear of physicians, nurses, and strange men. The oldest age group exhibited greater hostility and aggression. Levy compared their behavior to that of soldiers who suffered from what was then called “combat neurosis,” and now recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. Anna Freud (1952) pointed out that operations on the genitals, such as circumcision, would cause “castration anxiety.”"

Let's talk 'Babytalk'

I am what can commonly be referred to as a "geek." I read. A LOT. So if someone tells me that the letter Q is actually the letter B, I'm going to research it until I can either prove or disprove them.

Because I, as a mother of a nearly-11-month-old infant and also the official Laundry Manager and Chef of the house (and 'mommy' to four small dogs), can manage to research things, I think that it's not too much to ask that magazines, who are claiming to have some know-how, should have to do research, too.

Now, I'm not 100% opposed to Babytalk Magazine. They DO promote breastfeeding. But for the most part, Babytalk Magazine is (a free magazine that is) mainly a vehicle for advertising a lot of unnecessary baby gimmicks.

Recently, they published two articles that bothered me (both were published in the March 2010 issue).

In their first article, "Cravings," under the Bedtime Browsing category, they say that bed-sharing actually increases the risk of SIDS. Okay, look... that is just patently ridiculous. It has been proven through multiple* studies that mother-infant bed-sharing actually DECREASES the risk of SIDS. Most deaths caused by co-sleeping are, in fact, caused by adult mistake and not by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (an unexplained sudden loss of life). If you research safe co-sleeping (which I recommend), then the chances of you rolling onto your infant are very, very low. If you're STILL worried about it, set up a side-car situation with a co-sleeper or a crib, so the baby can still benefit from having his mommy right next to him throughout the night, responding to his cues to nurse.

Their second article, though, has raised a lot of hackles. The Woman from "Woman, Uncensored" has a whole blog post about it, and I definitely recommend you check it out: Dear Babytalk

It's bad enough that they recommend manipulating and infant's foreskin in ANY fashion (which is a huge no-no; would you want someone pulling up your fingernail to clean underneath it? of course not! this is no different), but Babytalk wasn't even truly apologetic for their misinformation. This was the best they managed.

Let it be known right here, right now that the foreskin of an infant IS NOT TO BE MANIPULATED IN ANY FASHION. Not by you, not by your pediatrician, not be a pediatric nurse, not by your midwife. It is attached to the glans (head of the penis) for a REASON, and it will separate on its own schedule when it is ready to do so (usually somewhere between the 5th year of life and the teen years).

Yes, Babytalk is a free magazine, but they should still do at least basic research (Google is your friend) before publishing articles that scream "SIDS!" and "RETRACTION!" to people who may not double-check everything as obsessively as I do.

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* Here are just a few pro-bed-sharing studies:
J.J. McKenna et al., "Sleep and arousal patterns of co-sleeping human mother/infant pairs: a preliminary physiological study with implications for the study of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)," Am J Phys Anthropol 83, no. 3 (Nov 1990): 331-47.
S. Mosko et al., "Infant arousals during mother-infant bed sharing: implications for infant sleep and sudden infant death syndrome research," Pediatrics 100, no. 5 (Nov 1997): 841-9.
S. Mosko et al., "Maternal sleep and arousals during bedsharing with infants," Sleep 20, no 2 (Feb 1997): 142-50.
S. Farouqi et al., "Ethnic differences in infant-rearing practices and their possible relationship to the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)," Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol (England) 7, no. 3 (Jul 1993): 245-52.
N. Watanabe et al., "Epidemiology of sudden infant death syndrome in Japan," Acta Paediat Jpn (Japan) 36, no. 3 (June 1994): 329-32.