Child Development Resource

TheSavvySource

The Best Parenthacks

Before baby arrives

**Stock up on toilet paper
**Squirt witch hazel onto maxi pads and freeze them

**Have easy-to-grab snacks at the ready

**Change your voicemail to announce all of the baby’s stats

**Pre-stamp and address envelopes for baby announcements and thank you notes

**Stock up on dove chocolates

**Thumb thing for one-handed book reading

Going Out 

**Sanitize pacifiers in a small plastic container filled with water and a little antisceptic listerine.

**Wear a maternity jacket over the baby front carrier

** Breastmilk in a medicine-dispensing pacifier for ear pressure travel issues, or to get the baby to take a pacifier.

**Tie toys, bottles, pacifiers, and cups to the stroller, car seat, or diaper bag with links. Also, attach a new eater’s spoon and cup to the high chair with links.

**Get extra spoons for baby to play with when you go out to eat

Laundry  **Corral mismatched socks via a pegboard in the laundry room.

**Wash small baby hats and socks in a mesh bag

**Glue down collars on baby outfits to keep them clean

**Put socks over too-big footed pjs to keep feet in place

**Dress your child while they are strapped into the stroller (shoes and socks) or high chair (jackets). Put pants inside out on your hands first.

**Nursing tanks + faux wrap tops, mesh and/or dry wick tops for nursing leaks

**SmartMomJewelry teething pendants and bracelets

Changing Table 

**Use olive oil on baby’s bottom so that the meconium will not stick and baby will be easier to clean up. Put a piece of toilet paper or a gauze pad in the diaper to help you know for sure if baby wet early on when it’s not always easy to tell.

**Mark different-sized diapers with different-colored Sharpie stripes while they are still in the package

**Empty baby wipe box as kitchen cabinet organizer for small bottle parts

**After blowouts, pull a dirty onesie off over the legs**Diaper changes: Open wipes box and prepare new diaper first, grab farthest ankle and lift both legs with forearm

Misc. Good Advice 

**Stash spare pacifers in the corner of the crib

**Buy furniture that sits flat on the floor to avoid having to retrieve objects

**Showering: put the baby bathtub at one end of the shower while you shower, or bring the bouncy seat in, or bring the high chair in and give him a snack while you shower.

**Cornstarch gets vaseline out of hair

**Zinc oxide highlights where to trim fingernails

**Learn to drink from a cup while in the bath

**De-sand kids with baby powder

**Soft rope lowers stairway banister for toddlers

**Over the door shoe organizer for small toys

Pumping:**Massage, shake, reposition, visualize white rapids

**Drink water while pumping

**Use Camelback for nursing thirst

Changing Table Options

Ikea Mandel 3-drawer dresser in black and natural, $129.00

Ikea Malm 3-drawer chest in black, brown, oak, natural, white or pink, $79.99

Wholesale Wooden Things

Wow. The Maine Wood Company aka Casey’s Wood Products sells hundreds of gorgeous little wooden things (especially toys, things for the home, and decorations) for pennies.

As in, 35 cents for a wooden ruler. Go check it out!

Baby Name Remorse

CNN reports on parents who change their child’s name.

Lookybook

Lookybook puts children’s picture books online for your viewing.

The Best Pregnancy and Baby Books To Buy

Take it from someone who has read more than 100 books about pregnancy and parenting, these are the best available guides. Here’s why:

1. These selections are recent. Information about pregnancy, birth, and the newborn stage has changed rapidly, and books that are more than a couple of years old can be wildly out of date. This is especially true of books about birth, which may needlessly alarm you with disturbing statistics and “routine obstetrical practices” from the previous century. For that reason, I don’t recommend purchasing used books unless you know you’re getting the latest edition.

2. These selections are balanced. Rather than assuming you’ll be doing things their way, these books factually present the pluses and minuses of different choices and make evidence-based recommendations.

3. These selections are comprehensive and useful. I’ve picked the book you should read if you only read one book in each category with a *.

Pre-conception

* Taking Charge of Your Fertility

Getting Pregnant and the first chapters of The Mother Of All Pregnancy Books

Pregnancy

The Mother Of All Pregnancy Books

BabyCenter.com weekly pregnancy updates

Labor and Birth

The Big Book Of Birth

Breastfeeding

The Nursing Mother’s Companion

Baby Names

The Baby Name Wizard

Baby Gear

Baby Bargains

Child Development

What’s Going On In There? How The Mind and Brain Develop During The First Five Years Of Life

Wonder Weeks

First Year Guide

The Mother Of All Baby Books

 

How To Sew Children’s Pants

A tutorial is here.

Preventing SIDS

Image via www.prevent-sids.org 

SIDS is the leading cause of death in healthy babies over one year of age.

From Wikipedia:

Prenatal risks

• inadequate prenatal care ^{[citation needed]}
• inadequate prenatal nutrition
• tobacco smoking
• use of heroin
• subsequent births less than one year apart
• alcohol abuse
• being overweight
• smoking and taking other drugs while pregnant

[edit] Post-natal risks

• low birth weight (especially less than 1.5 kg (~3.3 lb))
• exposure to tobacco smoke^[2]
• laying an infant to sleep on his or her stomach (see sleep positioning below)
• failure to breastfeed
• excess clothing and overheating
• excess bedding, soft sleep surface and stuffed animals
• gender (61% of SIDS cases occur in males)
• age (incidence rises from zero at birth, is highest from two to four months, and declines towards zero at one year)
• premature birth (increase risk of SIDS death by 50 times)

As you can see from the chart at the top of this post, being a second or subsequent baby or being the child of a single parent also puts children at a higher risk of SIDS.

Some other tips:

1. Always put your baby to sleep on it’s back. The Back-To-Sleep campaign has helped dramatically reduce crib deaths.

2. Always keep your crib free of blankets, stuffed animals, toys, extra clothing, and loose or soft bedding.  NEVER USE PILLOWS OR SOFT BUMPER PADS IN A CRIB.  Most SIDS is caused by suffocation. Use a wearable blanket.

3. Get a new (not used) crib mattress and either wrap it in a cover specially designed to prevent SIDS or buy the HALO airflow mattress — the only mattress proven to reduce SIDS — and clean it regularly.  Make sure your mattress fits tightly and that the sheets and pad fight snugly (but not so tightly they might pop off.) Use only 100% cotton sheets and wearable blankets.

4. Never allow a young baby to sleep on a sofa, pillow, cushion, or in adult bed that doesn’t meet the above requirements for cribs (i.e. being totally free of soft bedding).

5. Consider short-term pacifier use as a means of reducing your baby’s risk for SIDS.

Used Baby Gear

Before pregnancy, I had a huge, extensively researched list of all of the best baby gear. I inputed 3 years of reading DaddyTypes, the whole Baby Bargains books, and thousands of Amazon.com lists and reviews to come up with the list to end all lists.

Then we got pregnant, and the stuff started rolling in. The complete 0-12 month dress wardrobe that I wore as a baby, plus my nursery curtains, found in my parent’s attic.  The family heirloom bassinet and hand-crocheted blankets from Grandma’s store room. A big box of onesies and hats from my mom’s co-worker, who I’ve never met. A bag of crib sheets, mattress pads, and waterproof pads from a coworker. A sling, several hats and coats, baby tights, a monitor, and a pull toy  from the neighbors. Somewhere in there we’ve collected enough booties, cloth bibs, and bonnets for twins.

There have already been a few new gifts, too, though the shower is still months away. There’s also the inevitable find — like the $8 Boppy w/ detachable play gym (new in box!) I spotted at the thrift store. And the universal carseat stroller frame found in perfect condition in a neighbor’s curbside pile.

My rules (so far) for accepting used baby gear:

no carseats (always buy the latest and best-rated model, you can’t be sure others have never been in an accident)

no breast pumps (milk gets into the machinery) or bottle nipples/teethers/pacifiers (always buy these new)

no used crib mattresses (higher rate of SIDS with a used mattress)
no cribs with widely spaced slats or broken parts

nothing that’s not either new-in-the-package or in very good condition from a trusted source…

…unless it’s an awesome thrifting or ebay find that can be easily be sanitized.

Finally (and most controversially), I’m not interested in keeping a 20-tab spreadsheet of items that people have “temporarily loaned” us until they have another kid.  Don’t take items that your friends aren’t really, truly done with unless you want to transition your 12-month-old out of his beloved crib because the original owner needs it back.