Oh, here’s something else. As Romola said, for the first month the baby is a lump. Dude, enjoy that time! When my son was like that, I was all concerned and regretful that he wasn’t more fun and interactive. Well, at least I got some rest, for Christ’s sake. Now I’m debating Clay vs. Ruben all the damn day, when I’m not answering dumb questions he knows the answer to and running around the block after his bike. I do love him though and I’m pretty sure they don’t come cuter or smarter than him.
Oy. This being the straight dope, the straight dope is that babies are resilient. They are designed to build their own immune systems without help from mommy milk if necessary. But the research is clearly on the side of ‘optimum and normal is breastmilk’. Latest bit on the AAP website is the recent research that shows that exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months decreases the risks of upper respiritory tract infections significantly. Other research supports reductions in risk of illness continue up to 2 years (beyond that, research has not been done).
Formula is getting very good. It is not poison nor is it a wrong choice, in and of itself. Given the number of compounds that are in breastmilk that are not in formula, it is a long way off from ‘really close to the same’ as breastmilk, still. (The FDA rightly will not permit a chemical to be added to formula JUST because it is in breastmilk, because they require testing to prove that the chemical as manufactured does something of value and does no harm). And no immune support, either. Baby must build its immune system on its own, without help.
But still, formula is not a wrong choice. It just must be an advised choice, taking into account the differences in outcomes, statistically, against the needs of that particular mother-infant dyad. And once you choose, you will never be able to compare to another child accurately - if your child is healthy or not, there is no way to compare that anecdotal evidence against how that SAME child would have done on the alternative food. Even less so can you compare your child against some other child with different genes and different environment. Comparisons of individual data points are invidious. Statistics, however, do show a definite difference between formula and breastmilk use, and also between breastfeeding for a few days vs. a few months vs. 6 months vs. a year or more. Each feeding you give lasts a lifetime, though - so stopping ‘early’ does not take away any benefit gained. It only stops further additions. There are reasons for doing so that are valid, but they are also individual.
Reason for guilt if you do not breastfeed or wean earlier than recommended by the AAP or the AAFP? Not if you made the right choice for you and your family, with up-to-date research as a basis, and reasonably skilled support and help (if available).
I’ve nursed one past 3 years, and another is still going at 18 months. I have also considered formula very seriously at times, when things got rough. I’ve also helped women get over their guilt at having weaned earlier than they hoped, and defended moms who never started. But in all those cases, the moms thought about it, and made the best decision they could, with the best info they had, with their personal issues, culture, and expectations. Some of them later found out that there was something that would have made the difference, if they had only known. But that’s not cause for guilt either - regret, perhaps, but not guilt. Live and learn, and apply to life as you go forward. No going back.
If you choose to use formula, make sure you feel FOR YOURSELF that your choice is the best one, and you should not feel any need to defend yourself later. Surety, even if you later regret the choice, is your best bet for freedom from guilt, and also freedom from concern about anyone else implying you should feel guilt for that choice.
As for how long is it the best start? The latest research supports EXCLUSIVE (that is, no solids) breastfeeding for 6 months, then adding in a variety of foods in the second half of the first year, and continuing to nurse until it no longer makes sense for your mother-baby dyad to continue (that end point depends on many factors, most of them having to do with the child’s needs, but not all). Some kids will not take to solids until 9 months, or even 12 months. You will discover that you can’t really force them - they are actually in charge of their preferences. All you can do is offer good options. And while people will insist that breastfeeding without supplemental foods past 6 months will make your child anemic, the reality is that less than 10% of kids breastfed exclusively past 6 months develop anemia. The risk is higher, but it is not absolute. You can ask for a hemoglobin test to be sure before you supplement with iron (you don’t want to give too much iron, it is toxic - so give it if it is needed, and not if it is not).
Beyond that first year, breastmilk does not lose its value, any more than formula does. Mature milk changes its nutritional value to match the needs of the changing development of the child (very cool - there’s even a special colostrum-milk that shows up just for preemies). As my pediatrician commented when I sheepishly admitted I was still nursing my 15-month-old older son, “breastmilk is a nutritious part of a healthy toddler diet.” That same visit (for a nasty stomach bug that had Son1 vomitting all night), I was told I didn’t need a pediatric rehydrator, just breastmilk. Kinda cool.
So, enough on that point.
As for things you don’t know, here are the things I didn’t know:
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birth related, not child-related. That whole ‘discharge’ thing they talk about after the birth? It is every period you skipped in the pregnancy, all rolled into one. Expect blood to be everywhere. :eek:
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Babies don’t come with a book, they ARE the book. If you look to your baby for the answers, often you’ll find them. Within reason, trying things out on your baby will tell you what works, and what does not. If baby cries more, it didn’t work. If baby cries the same, it may have helped even if not enough, and if baby stops crying, it worked. Pay attention to their responses, and you will learn what they mean.
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You will have to invent your parenting to meet your child - you are all three unique, and how you fit together will be unique. That means that some things will not work when Daddy does them, but will work when Mommy does them, and vice versa. Allow those differences, as long as they actually work and don’t violate safety or some agreed-upon principle (like, say, giving chocolate as a bribe for obedience may work, but may not meet the agreed-upon principles). This also means that with another child, you start over to some degree - new child, new parenting.
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A medical reference is a help. I eventually went to the AAP version (the Mayo Clinic book is good, too), rather than the pre-digested “what to expect” which can scare the pants off you if you don’t know when to take it with a grain of salt.
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Babies are really hard to break. Unless you are trying to break them. The AAP/Mayo books will give you some guidelines. I’ve heard good things about “The Baby Book” from Dr. Sears, too, though I don’t have it.
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Your parents will need to learn that they are not the parents THIS time. They won’t know this until you tell them - they’re used to being in charge of decisions about the cherished babies in their lives. Remind them that these are your babies, and while you will make mistakes, they are your mistakes to make.
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Normal parents are optimal for infant mental health development. Respond as your instincts tell you, make eye contact, play, touch, and above all, let your child tell you what it likes and does not like. If you mess up, don’t have a crisis over it - you will, and they are designed to use your errors to their advantage, neurologically. If you lose it now and then, do not panic. It isn’t the losing it that counts, it is the getting it back together. Perfection is not only impossible (give up on that dream now!), but is not actually what babies are designed to respond to best. If you want some utterly fascinating reading on why they work the way they do, check this link.
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They understand way before you think they do. I was having difficulty keeping a hat on my 7-month-old’s head (he flung them), and read some advice to just explain why I wanted him to do what I wanted. So I showed him the door, pointed to the rain, told him about the cold and wet, let him feel the cold breeze, told him the hat would keep his head from getting cold and wet, and then said I needed him to keep his had on while we got to the car, but since he didn’t like the hat, he could take it off when we got into the car. It worked. He didn’t even reach for the hat until I put him in his seat - whereupon he flung it. Talk to them, ask them, and see how soon they respond. It is utterly amazing.
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Colic symptoms can come from an oversupply of milk, as well as many other sources. My second son was miserable until we discovered that I had an oversupply, and he wa allergic to dairy. Cutting out all dairy was hard for two weeks, then got easier, especially when the punisment for failure was vomitting, diarrhea, hives, and screaming for 48 hours (his, not mine). But far more common is oversupply, which is easy enough to resolve if you know to ask. Check this link for more on what makes babies gassy and miserable when you breastfeed (the solutions are generally very simple!).
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Another thing that amazed me was how fast you, the parents, learn. At first, it is utterly terrifying. But then, you adapt. You discover to your dismay that you stuck one thing out too long, and responded too fast to another. You pick up the lessons, and set your intuition accordingly, as the data is absorbed by your subconscious. You start tuning into the kind of information that is ‘right’ for your child, and start tuning out the information that does not compute. Case in point. This weekend, my younger son (18 months) merrily climbed up the BIG slide and slid down (my hands nearby for safety). He did it again. Then he did it a third time. This time, daddy was watching him, and daddy ‘helped’ differently - held instead of guarded. Son2 got angry for a moment, then in the process of getting angry, got very scared and wanted down. Reason not clear. He was rescued easily by daddy. Brother-mine (who was observing) suggested that the fear stemmed from us seeming suddenly more protective as I tried to explain how to ‘protect’ without ‘holding’. I rejected that assessment out of hand. I knew it wasn’t true in his case, but I didn’t know why. Then, late yesterday, I realized why I’d rejected the explanation - Son2 has never stopped doing something dangerous because we got upset, fearful, anxious, or tried to stop him. He still runs for the street as fast as he can, any chance he gets. He still walks toward the stairs and steps off the top step with the assumption that he will simply float down the stairs instead of fall. I checked with his daycare provider, and she agreed. He assesses risk on his own, and does not use input from outside persons to do so. My gut reaction was probably correct. You, too, will find that you ‘just know’ things that you don’t know how you know.
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A good mommy group will make you feel like less of an idiot. Nothing better than asking ‘does anyone’s baby do that weird {insert activity here} thing?’ and having half a dozen hands go up.
Expect parenting styles to diverge fairly soon after about 6 months of age, though. -
If you have allergies in the family, stick to the one-food-introduced-at-a-time rule. It sucks to have to try to track down a food allergy when it could be one of several items. Trust me on that one. (carrots, of all things! And they’re in every baby food, it seems…) Also, if you have confirmed allergies in your child, postpone introduction of other allergens an additional year (especially peanuts and shellfish).
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As good as the research is now, it isn’t perfect. It will change, go back and forth, update, refine. Take the best you can get (I do a lot of reading on Medscape, myself), and do the best you can with it. For example: There was recently a big to-do about peanut protien in breastmilk. No peanuts for mom was the immediate reaction. But further study has shown NO correlation between presense of peanut protien in breastmilk and peanut allergy in child. What has shown up is whether a serious rash was treated with an ointment that contains peanut oil - HUGE increase in risk of peanut allergy if a crusty rash was treated with an ointment that includes peanut oil (check ingredients on your prescription ointments, too!). Strong but smaller risks if the rash was less severe. Not that I’m recommending going out and eating peanuts all day while nursing - one study does not make a policy decision (usually, anyway).
One book that saved my sanity (I had it in bullet form before it was a book in the US, actually) : The Wonder Weeks. Plooij and Vanderijt. It describes the fussy periods of the first 14 months, in detail, and what you can do about them. So when you are pulling out your hair because your formerly placid baby is suddenly screaming every time you put them down, and is waking 5 times a night, you’ll know why, and you’ll know how long it will last, and you will know what amazingly cool thing is happening inside their brains, so you can actually look past the frustration and look forward to the new skills about to blossom like a bunch of daisies popping up. You want to know how babies brains work? This book will tell you. It will also tell you that you are sane, normal, and not actually spoiling your child when everyone else says you are - these stages are universal - they even show up in primates.
The other book you might want to get now, even though you won’t need it for a little while, is “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk” Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Best book on being a parent, period.
Those are my bits of things I didn’t know. Any other questions?
edited to fix URL tags - ub
Note: I didn’t renumber your paragraphs to eliminate duplicate “7’s”.
Pay attention to your children, and see what you can do to get them to value your good opinion. That means playing with them for a while every day.
Trust me, it pays off big time in the long run.
You are allowed seven parenting mistakes per day. Best course of action is to be sure they are seven different ones each day.
Feed one end, clean the other, hug the middle. That covers until they start to crawl.
No first-time parent has any idea what they are doing. The baby will survive. If it works for you and the baby, it is the right thing.
Get some rest while the baby is napping. That is not the time to clean the house or work.
90% of baby ‘experts’ don’t know what they are talking about.
No matter what, it always gets better. Then it gets worse. Then it gets better again. Then they go off to school, and you are left thinking “When the hell did that happen?”
Regards,
Shodan
Sorry about the link messup. Ugh. (any mod who wants to repair that is welcome to do so!)
Run from any advice by Gary Ezzo or called Parent Directed Feeding as babies have died from parents strictly adhering to his advice.
Trim a tiny babies fingernails when they are asleep if you can.
Make sure you child crawls. If your child walks before crawling and never does anything that engages the same faculties, he or she is likely to be dyslexic. The time to do something is about crawling age. No biggie if you notice it early. There is something about the brain cooridating activity that includes both sides of the body that crawling helps to develop, though other activities can too.
Another one: don’t freak out about milestones. Late is not the same as not doing it at the beginning of the age range.
Oh and ignore anyone who says anything like this:
Gee… isn’t baby insert milestone here yet? My child did that at insert some age younger than your child here
All kids are different, some prefer to focus on physical development and others on social or vocabulary skills… Eventually it all evens out for most kids. Trust your instincts on that!!
Oh and enjoy everything because the stages come fast and furious when they are little… So many times we say "gee remember when she could only sit up… or where did “bubba panic” go? This is an amazing time… savor it.
Shortly after birth the Ig isotypes in the baby degrade and there is a lag period while current antibody levels decrease and new ‘infant’ Ig isotypes are created. I believe it’s around a 2-3 week period as the old antibodies degrade and the newly produced once start to kick in.
If I remember correctly antibody levels hit normal levels around 3 months for human.
Barring some pretty impressive mutations, infants do have fully functional immunesystems. We have vaccines against most of the dangerous childhood illnesses, rotavirus being an exception. But odds are most people on the board have access to pediasure/infant electrolyte replenishment beverages. Dehydration isn’t a dangerous thing in the modern world like it is in some 3rd world nations.
One thing to keep in mind:
Any antibodies an infant gains through breastmilk will be generated externally of the child. Which means that the child won’t have the immunecells generating those antibodies – so realistically in an immuneresponce mechanism the child won’t already have B/T-cell generated against a pathogen but mearly some antibodies floating around their system. Those antibodies will neutralize small quantities of pathogen, but won’t acomplish the same thing as memory B-cells pumping out antibodies.
My guess: Don’t kill yourself with breastfeeding. It’s not some magical cureall that will prevent your child from getting sick. A bigger, more cumbersome goal would be to raise your child so they make good food choices reflexively.
Both breast milk and foruma end up in the same place, in the stomach getting digested. I’m not sure how long a macrophage will survive in stomach acid, but I don’t think it will be very long.
Also, there is an autoimmune responce occuring. Non-native cells get attacked by a person’s immunesystem, which include maternal M0’s, NK’s and DC’s… But I’m getting pretty far out of my field of education. My guess is that breastfeeding will help for 3-6 months or so, then will be largely redundent once the infant’s own organ systems kick into full.
Again, I’m speaking about immune function here 
lee, I am skeptical about what you say about crawling. Could you provide a cite? It’s been my understanding that crawling is not a developmental milestone. Ffrequently babies don’t do it at all, or do something completely unlike crawling, such as scooting on their bottoms or dragging along with one foot out.
Wonderful post, Hedra. I always learn something from you.
Unfortunately, the research doesn’t back up the theory that immune function isn’t improved by maternal cell, hormone, and chemical application over the long term. Some of it is passive immunity, some of it is most definitely not.
Try:
http://www.everybody.co.nz/nutrition/24Jan03_bfeed.htm
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/july97/milk.html
and
http://www.aed.org/first_steps/immun.html
(check your research first, post second!)
Ellen Cherry: See http://www.sharpermindcenters.com/causes.htm
Many other sites list failure to crawl as commonly associated with dyslexia. I lack access to MedLine or PsychLit to do a document search.
The only sure shot way to understand is to ask as many questions as possible before the actual birth. I can tell you your concern shows me that you are definitely ready. Feeling like you know it all can cause you to forget the little things.
KellyM, I’ve seen the causality of that info disputed. Read the text carefully - crawling improves dyslexia that already exists. The problem is with the assumption that therefore NOT crawling is a risk factor for developing dyslexia.
Followup research (I can’t remember where, at the moment), suggested that crawling per-se was not the issue. It was the process of visual evaluation at the outstretched-arm/hand-to-eye distance, in movement, that had an impact. Crawling (as one behavior that falls in that category) is a good way to reinforce the visual process that counteracts dyslexia. It forces increased coordination in some critical part of the brain, IIRC, which does help if you have a problem already. But has little to no impact if you already have good visual processing.
If you have dyslexia in the family, it is not a bad idea to get down on the floor and encourage your kids to crawl. It doesn’t have to be at the ‘milestone’ time, it works fine in play at older ages. I’ve seen it recommended that parents encourage their kids to crawl as part of play activities througout childhood, to counteract any tendency to dyslexia, and to ‘exercise’ parallel eye tracking and other visual skills. Those recommendations did not comment on whether or not your child crawled before walking, that I recall.
hedra, I’m not convinced that there’s any causality. Note that I said “associated”, not “caused by”. I’d love to see the underlying studies, but I am not having much luck finding them on the net. Maybe lee will remember where she saw them.
Just to hijack the thread a little more…
I swear Hedra is an amazing resource queen! I sincerely wish you lived next door!!!
I’ve learned a lot from you in a variety of threads
End of Hijack… Sorry.
Just to add. Peanutbutter is a very bad thing for small children, not because of allergies but as a choking hazard.A big gob of peanutbutter in the airway can be a real problem, and the The Heimlich Maneuver wont do anything about it…it will just close right up again.
Oh, and my overall advice? Do what works, for you all. And keep trying things until something works.
Sometimes the right solution (the one that both feels ‘right’ and works) is something odd. Sometimes the answer is outside your expectations (often, really).
Again, case in point. Our older son was a poor sleeper. We tried a variety of things to get him to sleep longer, cosleeping, NOT cosleeping, changing his diet, changing bedtime routines, enforcing bedtime routines, partial night weaning, etc. We didn’t use sleep training because it wasn’t the initial going to sleep that was the problem, it was the tendency to wake (my mom tried it on him, and it failed miserably - if he got mad, he stayed mad, and that was that!).
Anyway, we found a few things that helped. Cold room (he overheats), water before bed, etc.
Only, he still woke often.
Only when he was 4, and I was still concerned (something setting off the mommy alarm), did we discover that his neck was massively misaligned. Serious curve visible on x-ray. Once that was corrected (about two weeks later), he started sleeping, stopped snoring, stopped moving around in his bed all night, and had energy and focus in the mornings. Plus, his usually cheery self became even more cheery. His teacher even asked what we did to him. Or rather, 
because it took four years to find out that he was physically too uncomfortable to sleep well, but just thought that was normal.
So, do what works, and keep trying until something works.
Kids are weird. Even if you think you are prepared and know what you’re doing, they will surprise you.
My parents were actually more comfortable thinking that what I did was normal than with knowing how odd all three of their children are/were. I refused to sleep and threw temper tantrums that nothing in any book could truly counteract. The next one (8 years later…heh.) refused to eat and gave everyone serious fits that she was autistic or seriously retarded. (She didn’t crawl either. Or roll over. She was a lump, for a long, long time. She’s better now. Still not very active, but mentally there and everything.She was just busy thinking and didn’t really have a use for the whole crawling/rolling thing.) The last one hated breast milk, hated cow milk, put up with soy milk until she could open Diet Coke cans by herself, hated soft things and was never happier than standing naked on top of the swingset or playing with sharp objects.
That stuff just isn’t addressed in books or classes. Seriously. Do what makes sense. (Becca was allowed to wear her crash helmet 100% of the time for several months, but not allowed to play with knives no matter how hard she tried.) You’ll muddle through just fine. Slightly less sane perhaps, but everyone involved will end up the better for the relationship.