Parenting in our culture is a struggle. Bookshops are overflowing with advice to help us with crying babies, sleep problems, feeding problems, toilet training, temper tantrums and discipline. These are the same areas our parents had difficulties with, and probably our grandparents too. But these are not issues for parents in many contemporary cultures.
The full reference for this article is Trotter S (2007). Baby products – it’s all in the labelling. MIDIRS Midwifery Digest, 17:2, 263-266 Abstract Sharon Trotter recently joined us at MIDIRS to present our second Webinar; ‘Skin deep –neonatal skin/cord care: exploring best practice in skincare and umbilical cord care of the neonate’. The
As you know, it is not always easy getting your child to go to bed during bedtime, let alone staying there and then falling asleep. Your child may be the “stay up late, no matter what” type. You know, it's ten o’clock and you’re bleary-eyed but he is wide awake and bushy-tailed. Or it's
Elimination Communication (EC)- also known as Infant Potty Training (IPT), Elimination Timing (ET), Going Diaperless and Natural Infant Hygiene- is how most babies are brought up around the world. This ‘method’, which is so integral and so obvious in most cultures that it needs no name. It involves the mother and baby becoming attuned
As you know toilet training a child can be a time of testing the patience of parents. It can be a time of upsets, and disappointments, one step forward and two steps backwards. And sometimes toilet on floors and the thought of “will my child ever learn how to make him/herself to the toilet?”
Most couples can anticipate the birth of a first child with joy. After, they then make the transition from being a couple into a family, but there are some who find this a difficult and complex step to negotiate. The preparation for a baby’s arrival is not just about buying the equipment babies now
The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (FSID) today announces its latest advice that breastfeeding your baby can reduce the risk of cot death. The advice, released to launch FSID’s cot death awareness drive Save a Baby Month which runs from 1-31 May, is based on research which showed that babies who were
My first-born, Emma, was 14 months old. I had enrolled in a course, and, with the feeling of my life opening up again, had begun to wean. It was at that time that I read a book called Mothering Your Nursing Toddler. Starting with the assumption that extended breastfeeding is satisfying for both mother
Supporting Our Babies by Showing Our Breasts. The Federation of Commercial TV Stations has performed a welcome back-flip on its rating of an Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) Community Service Announcement. It shows a mother breastfeeding her baby. Its initial assessment and PG rating, with the implication that the sight of ‘too much breast’ might
The information available to women once they have a baby is sadly lacking. All the focus of information is mainly on pregnancy and birth. The postnatal period begins from birth and ends when the baby is six weeks of age. The postnatal period is a very special time when women undergo the transition into
