New Blog at Mothering.com

BBBD's co-author Jennifer Margulis has a brand new gig blogging for Mothering.com.

The blog is called MOTHERING OUTSIDE THE LINES. Here's a list of the posts so far:


The Waiting Game









Liberated From Prenatal "Care"

Beware of the Pregnant Jail Breaker

Don't Eat My Broccoli













The American Prejudice Against Large Families


People's Reactions When I Tell Them That I'm Pregnant











And You Thought YOUR Belly Was Big














On Being Pregnant For (Probably) The Last Time

We Heart Cloth Diapers

There's a recent AP article exploring how some frugal parents (they say moms but we say moms and dads) are turning to cloth diapers to save money in this difficult economy.

We all need ways to save money, an excellent reason to use cloth diapers.

There are lots of other reasons too, some of which are mentioned in the article but some which you won't hear about in the mainstream press.

#1 Here's one of the most interesting: some scientists theorize that the rise in male infertility among European men is partially connected with the widespread use of disposable diapers. Here's why--the male genitalia is on the outside of the body to stay cooler in temperature. Parents tend not to change disposable diapers as often as cloth diapers, because you can't tell when they are wet, thereby unnaturally raising the temperature of their child's genitalia.

Moral of the story: whatever diaper type you use, give your son as much air time (fanny exposure) as possible.

#2 Babies in cloth potty train earlier: This makes parenting a lot easier. Babies in cloth diapers learn to associate peeing with wetness more readily than babies in disposable diapers. The new cloth diapers are so state-of-the-art and amazingly dry that maybe this isn't as true as it used to be but it still seems to be the general case.

#3 Cloth diapers are cutier: Absolutely adorable. Your kid won't only be an ecobaby, he'll have the cutest derriere on the block.

#4 Cloth diapers aren't big business: A lot of people making cloth diapers are stay-at-home parents and small business owners. We heart them and we want to support them.

#5 Cloth diapers are easy to clean: Especially if your newborn is breastfeeding, you'll be so surprised how easy the cloth diaper washing thing is. First of all, you don't need bleach or ANYTHING like it. Second of all, you can get away with washing pee pee diapers on cold (we swear -- just put a little vinegar in the rinse water) and poopy diapers on warm. Honest.

Babies are bad for marriage

I just got this press release from the Council on Contemporary Families:

Old News: Having a Baby Will Save Your Marriage

New News: No, After Having a Baby, Satisfaction With Marriage Goes Down for Most Couples

New New News: Having a Baby Won't Improve a Poor Marriage, but Couples Who Plan the Conception Jointly Are Much Less Likely to Experience a Serious Marital Decline

And Really Good News: Couples Who Establish a Collaborative Parenting Relationship After the Child Is Born not Only Have Happier Marriages but Better-Adjusted Children

In the mid-20th century, marital counselors often advised couples that parenthood would increase their marital satisfaction and adjustment, and polls showed that most Americans believed that true marital happiness depended on having a child. But over the past three decades, a series of studies, including two by Philip and Carolyn Cowan and another 25 studies in 10 industrialized countries, have discovered the opposite. On average, satisfaction with marriage for men and women goes down after the birth of a first child and continues to fall over the next 15 years.

Today, conventional wisdom seems to have swung the other way -- holding that babies bring trouble to their parents' marriage. A recent New York Times article by Tara Parker-Pope (Jan 20, 2009), quoting from the most recent studies, points to the time bind facing new parents and the burden on women resulting from increased household work as factors in reducing marital bliss. She holds out hope to her readers by reporting the finding from a 50-year longitudinal study of Mills College women that couples are likely to re-connect once their children leave home.

For parents of young children, that's a very long time to wait. And it's not good news for the children either, because children are more likely to have social, emotional, and academic problems when their parents' marriage is in distress.

But many of these findings on marital distress in the early childrearing years are based on the uncritical use of averages. More in-depth examination reveals that the averages hide considerable variation. The Cowans' detailed interviews with 96 couples, followed for 6 years after their first babies were born, revealed four different pathways that couples take in deciding to become pregnant and carry the pregnancy to term. First are couples who agree about when to begin trying to become pregnant (about half of their sample). Then there are the couples who "find themselves pregnant" and decide to "accept fate" and go ahead (about 15%). Another set of couples (about 20% of the sample) are still ambivalent when they reach the 7th month of pregnancy. Finally, for some couples who are at serious loggerheads about the decision, one spouse agrees to become a parent only because the other threatens to go it alone (about 10%).

The Cowans found that the average decline in marital satisfaction was almost completely accounted for by couples who (1) slid into having a baby without planning; (2) were still ambivalent about becoming parents in late pregnancy, or (3) disagreed about having a baby but went ahead and conceived without resolving their difference. About half the planners showed increased marital satisfaction or maintenance of their initially positive level in measurements taken when their babies were about 18 months old. ALL the couples where one partner had given in (usually the man) were either separated or divorced by the time their first child entered kindergarten.

Other studies conducted by the Cowans in the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the 21st century, involving 1000 families, identified another important contributor to dissatisfaction with the couple relationship after childbirth, even when both partners equally wanted the child. After the birth of a child, most couples become much more traditional in their approach to housework and childcare. No matter how much they think the tasks will be shared, most women wind up doing more housework work than they did before the birth, and more of the childcare than they expected. The discrepancy between what the couples hoped for and the reality of wives having to take on a "second shift" at home leads to feelings of tension, depression, and sometimes anger in both partners.

To alleviate this source of dissatisfaction, the Cowans have been working with couples in groups, allowing parents with children around the same stage of life (making the transition to parenthood, sending a first child off to school) to share the fact that all are struggling to balance the complex demands of being parents, partners, and workers in today's society, and to get past blaming each other for their stresses. Follow-up assessments show that the couples who meet in the professionally led groups are more likely to maintain a positive view of their relationships, to work together more effectively to resolve disagreements, and to be warm while also setting limits with their children than couples without this resource. Not surprisingly, their children are also faring better in both the preschool, elementary school, and high school years, according to their teachers.

Given these findings and the challenge of having a baby, the Cowans say, it isn't wise for an eager spouse or would-be grandparents to pressure couples to become parents before both partners are ready. In light of the long-term consequences of the transition from being partners to becoming parents on the quality of both adult and parent-child relationships, the decision to start a family should not be rushed. Partners need to start by having a discussion or a series of discussions -- not by making a decision. If both partners can express both sides of their feelings, it is less likely that one partner will carry all the ambivalence for the couple.

When both partners feel they are part of this major family decision, they are more likely to be able to meet the challenges of balancing the needs of both partners in terms of work and family. All this bodes well for their developing relationship with each other and with their child -- and ultimately for their child's sense of security and well-being.

The bottom line? When men and women work together to plan when to have children and then establish a collaborative approach to parenthood when children are young, it's a win-win situation for the couple and for the children.

Baby's First Foods

First Foods

“The book says to take it slow,” my husband called from the living room where he sat leafing through a baby advice book. “Just introduce one new food at a time and wait for at least four days in case the baby has allergies. It’s called the Four-Day Wait Rule.”

I was standing by the stove whisking brown rice I had blended into flour into a pot of boiling water and cooking a yam to mash for our six-month-old daughter who we were just starting on solid foods. She was babbling happily in her high chair, flailing her little legs and cooing in time to her own music. I already had the menu in my head: mashed yam, mashed banana, rice mush, and some cold water to wash it down. But my husband’s caution made me realize I had to choose just one food for today’s mushy feast. Darn!

Starting a baby on solid foods is exciting. They raise their eyebrows at you, pucker their little lips, and look shocked and pleased as they roll the new food around on their tongue, not sure what to do with it. Invariably more food ends up on their bib (and on you) than in their mouths the first few times they try to eat. But get your camera ready—there’s no more photographable moment than that first look of surprise a baby tries solids.

When to eat?

How do you know when your baby is ready to try solid food? Your baby needs to be able to hold his head up by himself and to sit in a high chair, though you may want to hold him on your lap for his first feeding.

“Babies often start showing interest in foods you are eating by watching your movements and opening their mouths,” says Jani Rollins, M.D., a pediatrician in Ashland, Oregon. “They may even reach over and dive into your plate. Most babies have extinguished their tongue thrust reflex by four months. However, most recent recommendations are to wait until closer to six months to start solids,” adds Dr. Rollins.

While six months is a good rule of thumb, there is no reason you have to start babies that young.

My oldest daughter was an eager eater but my second child ate very little solid food until she was well over a year old (she threw up almost everything we offered her). Gauge your child’s interest in food and take your cues from her.

What to eat?

Once you’ve got the bib poised and the highchair ready, what do you feed your baby? The American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends starting babies off with iron-fortified rice cereal. Ruth Yaron, author of the bestselling book “Super Baby Food,” adds that other perfect early foods include avocado, banana, and cooked mashed sweet potato.

According to Dr. Rollins, an easily digest high fiber vegetable like puréed cooked squash is an excellent choice for babies who get easily constipated. “Occasionally in babies who tend toward constipation or less frequent pooping, using squash or some other vegetable may prevent worsening of that problem at first,” says Rollins. “You can introduce cereal after that.”

Yaron’s super baby food diet is primarily a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet with the exception of dessicated liver (which is high in vitamin B12, amino acids, and other nutrients), which Yaron recommends adding as a “healthy extra” to a young child’s food. Although I was a vegetarian for 20 years before having children, my husband and I decided to include some organic, nitrate-free meat in our children’s diet. The first time my daughter tried chicken she liked it so much she growled! That said, a baby can be a vegetarian and enjoy good health.

“With careful attention to requirements for iron, vitamins and protein, I think it is safe for babies to be vegetarian,” says Dr. Rollins. “Parents must educate themselves about food options that contain these nutrients.” If you do decide to introduce meat, wait until your baby is eight or nine months old.

Whatever foods you choose to feed your baby, both Rollins and Yaron agree that all of a baby’s early diet should be organic. “If there are pesticides and insecticides in the food—and these are used to kill living things—it’s just intuitive not to put that in a baby’s body,” says Yaron.

What about milk?

Many parents wonder when to introduce cow’s milk products into a baby’s diet. While cow’s milk should not be the staple of a baby’s diet before the age of one, other milk products, like plain whole milk yogurt and cheese, can be introduced to a baby who is nine or ten months old.

Because yogurt contains healthy bacteria that support the digestive system (and help fight against things like yeast infections), doctors often recommend introducing a baby to yogurt first.

“Many families will try a little bit of dairy in the form of yogurt or cottage cheese,” says Dr. Rollins, who also advises her patients to mix cow’s milk with breast milk or formula to get a baby used to the taste.

If you have a history of food allergies in your family, or a sensitivity to dairy products, there is no need to rush to offer your child cow’s milk. The more developed your baby’s digestive system, the more likely he will be to tolerate cow’s milk. Goat milk, goat yogurt, and goat cheese are healthy and more easily digested alternatives to cow milk products and are readily available in most health food stores and conventional supermarkets.

While soymilk has also become a popular alternative to cow’s milk, nutrition experts are finding that this trend is misguided. Recent studies have shown that eating a lot of soy can have negative health consequences for women. According to Paul Buck, Ph.D., a retired professor who held a joint appointment in the Department of Food Science and the Graduate School of Nutrition at Cornell University, the plant hormones in soy products are similar to human hormones and can actually interfere with the production of hormones. “Soy products should never be more than 5% of a female’s diet,” says Buck.

As an excellent source of calcium, cow’s milk is a healthy food for a growing child. However, breastfed babies do not need to drink cow’s milk. Children between the ages of one and three do need 500 mg of calcium a day, according to Dr. Rollins. Nondairy foods high in calcium include beans, green vegetables, and fish such as salmon.

What about fat?

Despite the current fat-free craze in America, experts say that babies need to have a certain amount of fat in their diets in order to grow strong and healthy. “Babies should have fats in their diets,” says Yaron. In fact, fat is both a good source of energy and an essential component of brain development. The AAP recommends that no fats should be restricted from a baby’s diet until after age two.

According to Paul Buck and other nutrition experts, it is a misperception that saturated fats are bad for you. It is hydrogenated fats, also called trans fats, that are highly processed foods and categorically bad for your health. While parents should not allow babies or young children to eat any food containing these processed fats, children (and adults) should have a diet that includes a good balance of saturated and unsaturated fats. Read the labels. If any of the ingredients include the words “hydrogenated vegetable oil,” “partially hydrogenated,” or “trans fat,” put the item back on the shelf!


It is a lot of fun to introduce healthy foods to a baby, who has no preconceptions about how things should taste.

“It’s so easy to feed kids a 100% perfect diet because they don’t know about sugar yet, they don’t know about chocolate yet,” laughs Yaron. “What you feed them, they will eat.”

Five Ways to Make a Baby Smile

A new article about how to make a baby smile by James di Properzio is up at www.GreatDads.com. In case you don't feel like clicking over there, we're taking the liberty to post it here:

Much has been made of the importance of a baby’s smile, and cross-cultural studies show that all human babies smile at about the same age, 3-5 months. As a father, this is one of the best ways to connect, because it’s gratifying to see them smile, and they will pay rapt attention, and start looking forward to your stimulating company. All it really takes are the simplest tricks, and a total lack of inhibition—at least around babies. Here are five ways for dads to make a baby smile, and probably even guffaw.

1. Pretend to sneeze: For some reason, this is like Saturday Night Live for babies. Ham it up, acting like you’re really going to have a big sneeze—the baby will stare at you, riveted, maybe even looking worried. Then fake sneeze in the most ridiculous way you can—try channeling one of the Three Stooges. Even very young babies you might have thought to be pre-humor will crack up. In fact, that look of worry suggests that the anticipation, and the catharsis at your fake sneeze, are probably what makes it so funny—that’s the basic structure of all jokes, and this is the first one they really get.

2. Toes in Beard: While the baby is on her back, pick up her feet and stick her toes right into your beard, combing them through with swooping motions like you’re trying to remove tangles. Don’t forget to look surprised and exclaim “Toes in beard!” as if the baby were doing something alarming to you. If/when you don’t have a beard, sideburns work fine; in a pinch, even you hair, if you’re not too fussy about your ‘do. Five-o’clock shadow is also good for tickling the bottoms of the toes and feet, and as a variation you can pretend to shave with the baby’s feet. Anything that involves the feet being on your face is good for them, including hiding your eyes behind the feet and then saying “Hey, where’d he go?” while trying to look around.

3. Neck attack: While holding baby, turn your head and get right in there to kiss the baby’s neck repeatedly, making loud smacking and snortling noises. Works even better with a little stubble, which tickles. This is one of the few tricks that work from earliest babyhood until they’re old enough to make you knock it off, like around ten.

4. Stinky feet: While the baby is on his back, hold up one foot and say, “Let’s see if this foot is clean.” (Once the baby is talking, you can ask instead, which adds to the fun.) Smell the foot, rolling your eyes around as if considering carefully, and say, “Oh, yeah, what a nice clean foot!” Then pick up the other one, ask if this one is clean, put your nose up to it and immediately howl “Oh, stinky!” Once they can talk, they’ll ask you to do this one over and over, like 25 times. My 7-year-old, whose feet really do get stinky by now, is still trying to get me to do it again, even though I’ve been refusing for years.

5. Chicken surprise: when the baby is old enough to sit up in a bouncy seat or high chair, get directly behind them, put both hands on your sides and flap your elbows behind your back like chicken wings. Walk slowly from side to side where the baby can’t quite turn enough to see you, making quiet bock-bock noises. When you get to one end and the baby finally sees you swoop in and peck at the nape of their neck with your nose, excitedly rattling off, “Bock! Bock-bock-bock-bockawk!” Repeat, headed in the other direction.

All of these shticks will have their rapt attention, and they’ll be begging for more once they can communicate. You, of course, will get tired of it after a few minutes, but it’s always nice to feel like you left them wanting more, and with very young children, the more you do it, the funnier it gets.

Proof that the first Halloween is really for the parents

This picture says it all...

Stranger Anxiety-Parents and Babies Both Get It

Some new parents don't want anyone to hold their baby. We understand this. It's a primal urge, perhaps, to want to protect your child from strangers and even the smell of someone else's cologne on your infant can raise hackles on the back of your neck. But other parents aren't uptight about the baby making the rounds and going from one admirer's arms to another, which is their prerogative as well, and which makes for easy family gatherings and a more relaxed mom and dad.

Once the baby gets bigger, he starts to have opinions about who's holding him. He starts to associate love and safety with mom and dad and gets anxious around strangers. Most experts agree that this is a sign of healthy attachment the baby has for his caregiver. So when your son starts to squawk when you hand him over to a fawning admirer, know it's because he feels safer with you than anyone else in the world (and don't force him to remain in someone else's arms, which will just make the anxiety worse).

Don't (Always) Trust Your Doctor

You know yourself and your baby better than anyone, and you may find that what you think is the right thing to do is not always what the doctor tells you to do.

If you live in a big city, you may have to wait 45 minutes to an hour (or longer) for a Well Baby Check-up. This happened to us in Atlanta and by the time the doctor saw us our baby, long overdue for a nap, had screamed herself hoarse. The doctor looked in her ears and said she had an ear infection, and prescribed antibiotics and "something for the pain."

She didn't have an ear infection. She didn't need anything for the pain. She was tired. She needed to not be at the doctor's!

We filled the prescription and hightailed back to the crib. And found Robert S. Mendolsohn's masterful, readable, smart book called How to Raise a Healthy Child ... in spite of your doctor.

Mendolsohn points out that babies are often misdiagnosed as having ear infections from crying.

He also says that in Europe ear infections aren't usually treated.

We disposed of the unnecessary antibiotics and pain meds and that was the last Well Baby Check-up we ever took our baby to.

How Many Minutes Do You Spend With Your Baby?

Forget playing. Forget peek-a-boo. Just try to put in the time. (Kid on the back drooling while you do the dishes counts).

Most popular baby names 2007

The Social Security Administration has released the most popular boys & girls names for 2007. Some are surprising.

Male names
1 Jacob
2 Michael
3 Ethan
4 Joshua
5 Daniel
6 Christopher
7 Anthony
8 William
9 Matthew
10 Andrew

Female Names
1 Emily
2 Isabella
3 Emma
4 Ava
5 Madison
6 Sophia
7 Olivia
8 Abigail
9 Hannah
10 Elizabeth

Read to Your Baby

A BBC article from April 10th called Dads Don't Read Bedtime Stories cites a new poll that found that only 42% of dads read to their kids before bed. In the Baby Bonding Book for Dads we tell dads it's never too early to start reading and we even suggest you read to your nearsighted 3-month-old! But reading to older kids is where the real fun begins. When our son was 3 he wanted us to substitute the name of all the main characters with his name. We no longer read Curious George, we read Curious Etani. The Runaway Bunny was The Runaway Etani ... you get the idea.

You get to re-read your childhood favorites when you read to your kids, and also discover some of the books you missed as a child (The Light Princess, anyone? A strange chapter book by a contemporary of Lewis Carroll's; Chronicles of Narnia; The Hobbit. Kid lit is so rich and amazing, how could you not read to your kids just to have an excuse to read it yourself?!).

Maybe it's an English thing? Hey American Dads, it's time to stop surfing the net and go read a book with your kid(s).