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.

Colic: Even The Experts Can’t Solve It

Check out the excerpts from a recent New Yorker article via Daddytypes.

Solving Severe Diaper Rash

When diaper rashes break out, forgo wipes in favor of a small spray bottle filled with plain water or at most, a soft wet washcloth. Air dry after changes and baths while holding the baby’s legs up (perhaps on Chux pads or a washable surface like a soft towel or cloth diaper), or use a gentle hair dryer with a COOL setting.  Daddy blogger Ben of the Trixie Update let his daughter air-dry at each change, and never had a problem with diaper rash.  

The Girlfriend’s Guide to Baby Gear recommends “Aqualox,” a recipe used at the Denver Children’s Hospital for severe diaper rash. Combine 6 tablespoons of Aquaphor and an equal amount of regular Maalox in a stand mixer until smooth, and store in a small plastic container with a lid.

Ointments containing zinc oxide are frequently recommended, but they can cause a skin condition known as oxide pox.

 The zinc oxide content of popular diaper rash creams:
Balmex=11.3%
Arbonne’s Herbal Diaper Rash Cream=12%
Bourdreaux’s Butt Paste=16% zinc oxide

Pinxav=30%

Desitin=40% 

For diaper rashes involving yeast, a Nyastin cream or grapefruit seed extract oil (available at health food stores) may help. Or your doctor may approve of mixing some Monistat into Aquaphor.

Also try:

Switching to a different brand of diapers or trying cloth diapers.

Creams with 1 or 1/2% hydrocortizone (for NON-YEAST rashes only!)

Triple Paste (sold at pharmacies with the Enemas).

Milk of Magnesia in the diaper.

Soaking in a lukewarm or cool water with baking soda or oatmeal (finely ground in your blender so it doesn’t clog your pipes).

For an older baby, try avoiding acidic foods (tomatoes and citrus) and adding yogurt or children’s probiotic supplements to the diet.

Lotrimin AF for a fungal rash (looks like burn marks).

Neosporin in a rash has broken the skin.

Sprinkling the diaper area with cornstarch.

Low Cholesterol Puts Moms At Risk Of Having Premature and Low Birthweight Babies

Yahoo! News: …new research suggests that very low cholesterol levels in pregnant women may harm the health of the fetus. 

Expectant mothers whose total cholesterol levels were under 159 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) gave birth — on average — to babies weighing about one-third of a pound less than babies born to mothers whose cholesterol levels exceeded 159 mg/dL, the researchers found. Additionally, 12.7 percent of white women with low cholesterol levels gave birth prematurely, compared to just five percent of those with higher cholesterol levels. No such association was found in black women, however.

 

Preventing Food Allergies

From The Mayo Clinic:

Can food allergies be prevented?

Although there is no surefire way to prevent your child from developing a food allergy, introducing foods at the right age may help. Experts still need to do more studies to find out exactly what works best, but here are some steps you can take:

• Avoid peanuts during pregnancy and while nursing. Eating peanuts during pregnancy and while breast feeding may increase your child’s risk for developing a peanut allergy and other allergies — especially if you have a family history of allergies.
• Give your child only breast milk for the first 6 months, if possible. This is the best source of nutrition for your infant — and it may help prevent your child from developing food allergies that can last well into childhood or even adulthood.
• Wait until your child is 6 months old to introduce solid foods. Especially if you have a family history of food allergies, taking steps to prevent early exposure to foods that can cause allergies is a good idea. As a child grows older and the digestive system matures, the body is less likely to absorb food or food components that trigger allergies. Experts believe that waiting to introduce solid foods until your child is 6 months old may help prevent allergies to those foods.
• Introduce cow’s milk after one year. Studies show that waiting to introduce cow’s milk until your child reaches age 1 reduces the chance your child will develop a milk allergy.
• Introduce eggs at age 2. This may help prevent your child from developing an egg allergy.
• Introduce nuts and seafood at age 3. This may help prevent your child from developing an allergy to these foods. (Do not give your child whole nuts until he or she has molars and can chew them well.)
• Introduce all new foods gradually and one at a time. Before introducing mixed foods that could cause an allergic reaction, introduce each new food on its own. Don’t mix foods until you’re sure each individual food is tolerated.
• Give your child cooked or homogenized foods. Many foods are less likely to cause an allergic reaction after they are cooked. (However, be careful. A few foods — such as cod and celery — still contain allergy-causing proteins after cooking.)

Drown-Proofing Your Baby

The American Academy of  Pediatrics says not to teach kids younger than 3 to swim, because you and they will get overconfident and the kid might ingest too much water. Hmm.

The American Red Cross, on the other hand, does parent-and-child Aquatics classes for kids as young as 6 months, but recommends waiting until age 5-6 for real swimming lessons.
This Slate article recommends dumping water over your kid’s head and putting them on their stomach in the bathtub.

Here’s two contrary-thinking books, How To Teach Your Baby To Swim and Waterbabies.

An infant lifevest may be the best solution of all.

Baby Teeth Care

Moxie writes:

The children of mothers who use xylitol toothpaste and/or gum in the first two years of their children’s lives have fewer dental problems up through age five than kids whose moms don’t use any xylitol products. So the first thing you could do is switch to xylitol toothpaste yourself (there are some great brands online like Squigle and Epic, and I love Tom’s of Maine CinnaMint flavor) or start chewing gum with xylitol.

But even if you don’t use xylitol toothpaste your kids can. Tom’s of Maine makes a liquid toothpaste  for kids with xylitol that comes in a few flavors (our favorite is grape), and it’s in Gerber baby toothpaste, too. For a 9-month-old you want to use just a teeny bit of the toothpaste with some water. You can use an extremely soft-bristled brush, or one of those things that fits over your index finger with little nubbly parts that lets you brush by sticking your finger inside the baby’s mouth. (Be warned, though, that if your baby has a tooth and chomps down the soft toothbrush will not protect your finger and it will hurt like you didn’t think possible).

If your baby is too young for toothpaste or a brush (gags or won’t open mouth or otherwise resists), you can get Spiffies xylitol wipes to wipe their little baby teeth. They’re individually-packaged wipes (the size of wet wipes) coated in a xylitol solution. They taste like very mild grape, and you just use them to wipe the surfaces of all the teeth and gums.

If you nurse to sleep and can’t imagine waking up your baby to brush, you can still brush or wipe with Spiffies right before you nurse. Some of the xylitol will stay on the teeth, and since the nipple squirts milk in the back of the mouth instead of the front, the milk won’t wash all the xylitol off.

She also links to pictures of dental carries, which can be used to scare children who resist dental hygiene efforts.

Back-and-forth Car Seat Data

Slate weighs this new research:

Over an 18-month period in New Zealand, 43 babies had a “life-threatening event,” and nine of them stopped breathing while restrained in an infant semi-reclined car seat. Their little heads nodded forward, and, without much in the way of neck to stop them, pressed against their chests. This cut off their oxygen supply. The babies in the study didn’t die, but according to another study, other car seat sleepers apparently have.

Aganist this information:

 Crashes kill about 1,200 children a year under the age of 12 in the United States. According to a 2005 study based on the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System, infant car seats reduced the chance of dying in a crash by 71 percent, and car seats for children ages 1 to 4 reduced the death rate by 54 percent.

Seat belts are pretty good at lowering the death rate, too; they cut it 47 percent for children under the age of 5.  In the New York Times Magazine last year, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Steven Dubner argued that this means child seat-belt laws “would likely do just as well—without the layers of expense, regulation and anxiety associated with car seats.” I wish they were right. But they’re not. Their article prompted a response by Dennis Durbin and Flaura Winston, doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and leading researchers in this field. Durbin and Winston tartly pointed out that car seats are a lot more effective at preventing injury in nonfatal crashes, of which there are 450,000 a year. According to Winston, for kids under the age of 6, car seats win out over seat belts at injury prevention by 30 percent to 40 percent.

And considers that:

A 2000 study found that 9,000 children who fell when their parents put the car seats down on tables or counters—because they weren’t buckled in or because the car seats tipped over—had to be treated in the emergency room.

Also note that the AAP recommends children remain in carseats until they reach 57 inches and 80 pounds, and the requirement in many states that children reach “8 (years) or 80 (pounds” before they stop using car seats.

Spanking Data

Spanking and economic data:

Professor Bruce Weinberg of Ohio State University has studied this. He found that if you’re a kid in a $6,000-a-year household, you probably get spanked every six weeks or so. If your parents’ annual income goes up to $17,000, you’ll get spanked about once every four months. As income rises above about $17,000, spanking falls off more slowly; $40,000 and $120,000 households are not much different from $17,000 households. That makes sense; in today’s America, you don’t have to be very wealthy before your kid has a Game Boy, so even a $20,000 household has good non-spanking alternatives.

For allowance withdrawal, the numbers go exactly the opposite way, Weinberg found. If you’re a kid in a typical $6,000-a-year family, you’ll almost never lose your allowance, but in a family that makes $17,000 or more, you’ll lose your allowance four or five times a year.

It might seem like a stretch to explain spanking with economics, but what else could account for these patterns? Well, there’s always culture. The very poor are disproportionately black, and blacks physically discipline their children more than whites do. But according to Weinberg, the effect of income persists even after you’ve controlled for race and other cultural variables.

Anyway, black parents punish their children more than white parents in all ways. If you’re black and you misbehave, you’re both more likely to get spanked and more likely to lose your allowance than your white neighbor, who in turn is both more likely to get spanked and more likely to lose his allowance than the Hispanic kid down the street. So on average, poor people spank more and withdraw allowances less, whereas black people spank more and withdraw allowances more. The income pattern fails to match the racial pattern, so the income pattern can’t be fully explained by race…

…There are other cultural factors: Boys are punished more than girls, with substantially more spankings and a bit more in the way of allowance withdrawals. Single mothers spank a little less, and withdraw allowances quite a bit less, than other parents. Older and better-educated parents are a bit less likely to spank and a bit more likely to withdraw allowances. Bigger families spank less and withdraw allowances more.

Extreme Parenting

The Atlantic covers the Baby Genius Edutainment Complex in an article called Extreme Parenting.

Full article below the jump.