Alice Callahan's Blog, page 3

Baby Nap Strikes Are a Real Thing, Plus 4 Tips for Survival (with VIDEO)

I keep saying that I’m going to blog more, especially since I have a new baby to write about. But finding time to write has been easier said than done because of – you guessed it – the baby! Just as I was submitting grades for my spring term course and thinking that I’d have more time to devote to the blog, BabyM stopped napping. Flat out stopped. And now, finally, after a 2-week nap strike, we’re getting back on track. I’m excited to have time to write again, but I feel woefully behind on al...

For Premature Babies Born by C-Section, Umbilical Cord Milking Is a Good Option

It’s well-established that infants born prematurely benefit from a delay in umbilical cord clamping. However, many preemies are born by cesarean section, and delayed cord clamping may be less effective and practical after surgical birth. Some obstetricians opt to speed things up by “milking” the umbilical cord, manually pushing blood from the placenta to the baby. A study published in Pediatrics this week shows that cord milking can be just as effective – if not more so – than waiting to cut...

S.I.T.! Feeding Your Child Using Stability and Independence at the Table

(Guest Post by Melanie Potock)

Here on Science of Mom, we’ve been discussed starting solid foods over the last few posts. It’s a topic that I spent a lot of time researching for my book, and I ended up devoting two chapters to feeding solids. It’s also highly relevant to me right now, because 5-month-old BabyM is just starting to dabble in solid foods, and I want to be sure that we get off to a good start with his lifelong relationship with food. I was thrilled when Melanie Potock, a pediatri...

4 Signs Your Baby Is Ready for Solid Foods

My last post went into great detail about the research on age of starting solids and health outcomes, including nutrition, growth, illness, and allergies. If you read that post, you know that there are small risks and benefits of starting earlier or later (in the range of 4-6 months), but there’s no evidence for an optimal age of starting solids for all babies. Here’s what to look for instead, starting with a brief summary of the data on age:

1. Your baby is at least 4 months of age.

Read my...

Starting Solids: 4 Months, 6 Months, or Somewhere In Between?

Science of Mom reader Roxanne left a comment on my post about the recent peanut allergy study. She wondered about starting solid foods with her 4-month-old baby boy:

“Do you have an opinion on starting solids at 4 months versus 6 months? I noticed that many of the studies on allergy include babies in the 4-6 month range, but I think that the current recommendation is to wait until 6 months. I ask because my baby WILL NOT drink out of a bottle while I’m at work. He is miserable all day. I’m on...

My Book – The Science of Mom – is Available for Pre-order!

UPDATE – June 2015 – The publication date of my book has moved around a bit. I now expect it to be available in mid-August. You can still pre-order the book on Amazon.

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Imagine my surprise when, last week, my editor at Johns Hopkins Press emailed me to ask that I check over the Amazon page for my book. What? There’s an Amazon page?! As far as I knew, my book wasn’t coming out until the fall. I did a search for my name and book title on Amazon, that great vault of hundreds of thousands of...

A Letter to My 3-Month-Old: On the First Season of Your Life

Dear BabyM,

You are 3 months old, and as your mother, there is something I must confess to you: I haven’t yet cracked open your baby book. It sits neatly on my nightstand, undisturbed and unmarked, while a succession of telling objects rotate around it as the nights go by: pacifiers (mainly rejected by you), nipple cream, novels, water glasses, vitamin D drops (barely remembered by me), burp cloths, tiny nail clippers, cards of congratulations, a copy of Goodnight Moon, and a messy pile of ki...

A Bedtime Conversation with My Daughter

Cee is four. Four-and-one-third, but she can’t wait to be four-and-a-half. We’ve drawn out those fractions. And she asked if we could make a cake for her half birthday. Four-and-a-half is a big deal when you’re four-and-one-third.

She’s exploding with awareness about the world, and I’m just trying to keep up. She wants to know what the sky is made of, how many pennies are in a dollar, and why it’s still light at her bedtime now. She “reads” books to BabyM and her dolls with the confidence of...

What To Do About Babies and Peanuts: New Study Finds Early Exposure Can Prevent Allergy

You’ve probably already seen headlines about a study showing that feeding children small amounts of peanut products in the first 5 years of life can prevent the development of peanut allergy. The study was conducted in the U.K., led by Gideon Lack of King’s College London, and was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine (free full text available here).1

Why is this study important?

Photo by Sanja Gjenero

Food allergies are on the rise in Western countries, and peanut allerg...