Baby Care

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

If your baby has a cold, you are probably not in the best of moods and doing everything in your power to get your baby back to full health. As when a baby has a cold, headache, flu, runny nose, or is feeling sick, it’s worse on the parent usually than it is on the child. You can be happy unless your baby is happy and when they have the common cold, they will be crying and complaining often as they are not feeling well. Unfortunately, babies get tons of colds in their first few years of life and it’s common. If your baby is going to pre-school or around a lot of other kids, chances are they are picking up tons of colds from the germs passed around at their local baby gym, school, or just at the playground.

First and foremost when you baby has a bad cold is to stay calm. Taking care of your baby and giving them extra love is always a good process when your baby is not feeling well. Think about when you get sick with a cold, you want to rest a lot, get a lot of fluids, and get tons of sleep and also put a humidifier next to your bed to help you break up the mucus and breath a little bit better. For a baby, it’s not much different and you should give them lots of water and apple juice to keep them hydrated through their cold, anything that has Vitamin C like in Apple Juice can help your baby. A good cool mist humidifier can go a long way and it can really help your baby. Put this on in your baby room during naps and at night time to help them with their cold.

If the cold also comes with a fever for your baby, make sure you are checking it often with a baby thermometer and giving your baby Tylenol to lower the fever and some babies do well with Benedryl to help with cold symptoms and runny nose. They also make infant advil which lasts a little longer than the Tylenol, however, the advil doesn’t work as good for the fever as the Tylenol does. If you feel your baby has a headache or has some pains then the Advil may be a good option instead of Tylenol. It may be hard to get your baby to eat so give them comfort foods to make sure they are eating during this period. If your baby loves mac and cheese like most babies do, treat them during their cold and let them eat what they like to make sure they are getting some food in their system in addition to all the water.

Also, it’s always a good idea to give your baby extra love and care during this tough time in the first few colds in their life. It’s always a good practice to take your baby to the doctor to get checked up. Having a nurse and doctor take a look at your baby may ease your mind and provide you with good tips on taking better care of your baby for the particular cold they are going through. The doctor or nurse can also check for an ear infection and monitor the cold symptoms to make sure your baby is on the right track to recovery.

Many babies get colds and ear infections in their first year of life. Some babies get so much fluid in their ear canal and end up getting multiple ear infections. It’s important to always go to the pediatrician to check for ear infections if your baby is getting fevers and you notice them pulling on their ears, playing with their ears, or putting their fingers in their ears. Friends of ours just had to have their baby have tubes put in his ears due to multiple ear infections before the year of one. This procedure is actually pretty standard and we’ve seen many parents get this done to clear out a babies ears and ensure they don’t get any more ear infections.

However, ear infections are tough to determine for parents as the only way is to go see the doctor and have them look in your babies ears. Therefore, try to be careful in your babies first year and keep an eye out for signs of an ear infection and always be extra careful in getting checked up for baby ear pains and problems.

Taking great care of your baby can be easy at times and also very tough at times. It’s important to stay level headed and know there will be ups and downs to being a parent. It will never be perfect, so all you can do is try your best and ensure the safety, healthiness, and happiness of your baby and your family.

Here are some baby care tips for a healthy and happy baby.

• Ensure your baby is properly fed. It’s good that your baby feels he/she is eating enough food, milk, or formula so your baby is not fussy through out the day. Overfeeding your baby may cause gas and upset stomachs so getting know your baby’s que’s for when they are full or when they are finished with their bottle will be important to keeping their gas levels down. If you do have a gassy baby, always properly burp your baby and make sure to get a good burp from your baby especially before putting them down to sleep. If not, your baby may be uncomfortably when sleeping and tend to spit up more often.
• Ensure your baby has proper sleep. Sleep training can be one of the toughest moments of your babies first year of life, so prepare for some good nights and some bad ones. When your baby has proper sleep, he will also tend to be less fussy and a more happy baby overall. Try the sleep train methods with letting your baby cry for a little and then stopping in to them know your there. Then, let your baby cry a few more minutes longer and stop back in again. Try to leave your baby in the crib and soothe them there… If your baby can learn to self-soothe in the crib, then the baby won’t really on your to pick them up all the time. Therefore, leaving the baby in the crib and trying to put back to bed there can help your baby. Another good time for nap time is put your baby to nap in the crib as opposed to a bouncer or a pack and play. Getting the baby used to sleeping in the crib will make them more comfortable in the crib. If your baby takes short naps, sometimes let your baby wake up and do their thing in the crib and then see if they put themselves back to sleep on their own before you step back in.
• Ensure there is proper playtime and activity. Keeping your baby stimulated is a very important part to your baby care development. If you let your baby lounge around all day and never take them anywhere, they will tend to get more fussy, but enrolling your baby in classes such as swim classes, music classes, baby gym, and more classes to interact with teachers and other babies will keep your baby stimulated and make them more happy during the day and also make your ques for sleep much more visible. If your baby is overly tired from a swim class, you will definitely know it, but if you are home all day with no activity for the baby, you may mistake a tiredness at home for being hungry.

Good luck and hope these baby care tips will help you maintain a happy and healthy baby!

Below are some great baby care tips for traveling with your newborn baby! First, let us note that it’s never an easy feat to travel with a new baby. Babies are creatures of habit and traveling takes them out of their environment into new places that babies are not used to seeing. However, it’s important that parents don’t give up their lives and continue to travel as needed, but in doing so, take proper care of their baby to ensure the best trip for them and their baby.

One of the toughest travel items to deal with when bringing your baby along is not having

Baby Care Tips for traveling on the plane.
• Bring enough baby food on the plane in case the plane gets delayed. The most important baby care tip and primary care item is ensure you have enough food to get through the entire flight. You should also remember to bring extra food in case your plane gets stuck on the runway or the trip takes longer than expected and you may not have access to baby food.
• As your ears will pop on the plane, you can imagine the pressure your baby might feel in their ears on the plane. Therefore, it’s important to let your baby suck on something to help ease the pressure in their ears. We have seen good progress with feeding the baby on the way up and also start to feed your baby again as you descend. If you are not able to feed your baby, or it’s not the right feeding schedule for your baby, then you can let them suck on a pacifier or anything to get them sucking and ease the pressure of ascending and descending on the plane.
• Many parents will sit with their baby in their lap and this is fine as you can save money of having to buy another seat. However, having the baby in their own seat will make the flight much more easy for you and your baby, especially for longer flights. A good baby care tip could be to bring the car seat on the plane and put the baby in the car seat next to you in the seat you have for the baby. Your baby is used to the car seat and the movement on the plane may relax them as does the car, and in turn the baby may sleep throughout the entire plane ride. If your baby doesn’t normally sleep in your arms, then it may be tough for your baby to adjust and fall asleep in your arms on the plane. They may scream and get upset as your baby wants to be comfortable too, and missing their normal sleep routine location may cause problems for your baby and make for a more restless flight. If you don’t have your own seat for your baby, then you can always ask the flight crew or flight attendant if they can shift some people around to open up a seat next to you for your baby. While this doesn’t always work, you might be surprised how often it does as the passenger sitting next to you may rather sit in a different location, then potentially deal with an unhappy baby next to them during the flight

Hope you enjoyed these baby care travel tips and good luck flying on a plane and traveling with your newborn baby!

One of the most important baby care items you have to keep an eye out for is SIDS. SIDS stands for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and is causing by accidental loss of oxygen and suffocation while the baby sleeps at night. Many of the SIDS cases happen for babies between the ages of 2-6 months and babies that are on their stomach. However, there are cases of SIDS when the Baby is not sleeping on their stomach. Proper Baby Care recommendations by doctors and hospitals are to put babies to sleep in their cribs with nothing else, so no blankets, baby bumpers, and more!

With many parents we’ve talked to, we’ve seen tons of cases of babies hitting their heads on the crib rails and also getting their feet stuck in the crib railings. While there is definitely some risk to babies getting injured by getting stuck in the crib rails or banging their heads. Most parents think it’s not worth the risk of having bumpers, heavy blankets, and would rather limit the risk of SIDS.

Baby Bumpers can be thick pads that protect the baby from banging their heads or getting stuck in the railings. We would recommend the Breathable Baby Bumpers first to test to see if they work for your needs as they are made of a mesh Baby Bumpers and more breathable than the thick pad Baby Bumpers. Still there is an increased risk with bumpers, however, getting breathable bumpers is a good option if your baby is turning all the way around, banging their head or getting stuck in the crib rails. These breathable bumpers are very cheap and may make a good option to try out before putting heavily padded bumpers into the crib with your baby at night.

It’s also a good option to invest in a Summer baby monitor with video so you can check on your baby once in a while in their crib to make sure they are not stuck in the corner of the crib in a position that they may not be able to get themselves out of.

Good baby care starts with a good solid schedule for your baby. In order to get your baby onto a good baby nap schedule, it starts with a consistent schedule for baby feeding. If you feed your baby regularly around the same time, you will notice that the babies nap time will fall around the same time each day. However, baby naps and naptime can vary for each baby.

Some babies take a long nap in the morning. Newborns sleep all day and eventually they will settle into 2 naps per day, and ultimately just have one nap per day as they get older. For some babies, they will enjoy naps in the same spot that they sleep such as their crib. This will also help them get to sleep at night and become more familiar with sleeping in their crib location. Obviously some days will be different so it’s good to train your baby to sleep on the go, in the car seat or stroller which is usually an easier place to get the baby to nap as a baby will get tired when on the go…

Many babies will sleep for a short period of time during the day and then wake up. Most parents do not want to swaddle their baby during the day and keep the swaddle for the night time only if they are interested in swaddling at all. All babies are different and it’s important to understand their cues and when they are tired. Understanding where your baby enjoys sleep can help get them to sleep for their nap. Naptime can be difficult for parents and their is no easy answer as each baby is different. The best you can do is try your baby to get your baby to nap and create a naptime routine. Sometimes, putting dark blackout shades in the babies room will help the baby nap for a longer period of time during the day.

At times, it can be difficult to find a good babysitter or nanny for your baby, especially a baby sitter or nanny that will take great care of your baby It’s important that you don’t take this process lightly, and you always check the references of any babysitter or nanny to make sure they come highly recommended. These best way to find a great baby sitter and nanny is by referral. Simply ask around to all your friends and parents to see how they found their babysitter or nanny to get advice. Many cases, most of the good nannies and sitters will know each other and can recommend another good baby sitter or nanny if they aren’t available. There is nothing more powerful than word of mouth.

We don’t recommend finding someone to care for your baby on a website like Craigslist as you never know what you can find on this type of your site and your goal is to find someone that will take the best care of your little ones, so we wouldn’t steer you in that direction.

However, there are many nanny and babysitter agencies that can help set up meetings for you with prospective nannies and sitters. They will simply set up the meeting and take a percentage or nanny fee, or in most cases they will take a one time fee for their help in finding you a nanny.

There are websites that can be useful to find a part-time sitter to get kids to and pick them up from school, provide assistance with the homework, and even put dinner on the table for the family, such as SitterCity.com. What’s great about this website is that you can view resumes, profiles, and past work experience to make sure the babysitter is a good fit. You can even do a background check to make sure there is nothing on the record, or post a nanny job to all the local sitters in your area.

In Children’s book stores, you’ll find books with sturdy materials that are developed for babies and for children up to and including the preschool and kindergarten age years. Toy books can been made of heavy cloth, fabric, and cardboard which is sometimes padded. They are called Toy Books. These books are to be read but also to be played with by babies or toddlers.

These books are the first intro to written books and are very important for child development and care. Many Toy Books have a familiar story or nursery rhyme theme. Almost always the books have big images or bright colors. You can also find toy books that “pop up” images as you skip from one page to the next.

The can learn to turn the page, an important emergent literacy step, and hear language as it is also read to them. The books are meant to be shared, as an adult or older child can read it to them. The familiarity of this book then often lends itself to a child actually “reading” the book from memory (again, another important step in the reading process). In this way, the child learns language. In addition, many children’s books repeat words. This leads to forming a memory trace within the child of the letters and the sound of the word(s) as it is heard and viewed frequently. This then leads to the book being read by the child and the book becoming the child’s favorite.

The next time, then, you as a parent, friend, or relative of a baby or child pass an aisle containing these colorful, playful books that look indeed enticing for children, don’t pass them up. They make great gifts! It is highly likely that your intended little one will enjoy these books both in play and as a learning tool. The early books will lead a child to a love of shared reading as you or someone reads the book to the child and models the reading process for and with them. The baby or child will love touching or feeling the book, and, again, three of the senses are involved in the process (seeing, hearing, and the kinesthetic experience of touching). The Toy Book will, most importantly, instill in the child a love of books as a pleasurable, fun experience. This will lay the foundation for a lifetime of the enjoyment of reading.

Having a schedule for your baby is very important for not only your baby, but also for your sanity! A baby with a well-balanced schedule will sleep better and also be less fussy during the day. The best practice for a baby care schedule is feed the baby every 3-4 hours around the same time each day. A sample feeding schedule could be at 6am, 9am, 12am, 3pm, 6pm, 11pm. While you don’t have to stick to the same exact schedule time each day, it’s important to stay somewhat close to the schedule so your baby knows what time of day it is, and will an easier time going to bed at night.

Also, if you setup a schedule with your baby and then veer off course, it will be much easier to get back on the schedule if the schedule has been setup and in place for a while. However, if you have no schedule and you just happen to feed your baby whenever the baby is hungry and put the baby to bed whenever you think the baby is tired, you will get thrown off course easily and may be prone to tantrums and trouble with your baby sleeping.

Setting a good schedule from the start will be a great way to manage your life as well as your baby care needs.

The short answer is:  whenever you want.  The truth is, it is never too early, and it is never too late.  (Okay, well, if you are signing to your son while you are chaperoning his prom, that might be a little weird, but in general, it’s never too late!)

Many moms want to get a head start, and while a newborn won’t necessarily know what you are doing, it still doesn’t hurt.  It might even help your baby’s brain develop, and it sure gives mom the practice.

So here’s the long answer:  Most experts recommend starting to teach your baby to sign when she is six months old.  But as you know, each baby is his own creature, and each baby responds differently.  Some babies start signing at four months old, and some (like my son) show no interest at all until their first birthday, when they want more cake.

But six months is a good rule of thumb.  If you want to start earlier than that, then bravo!  Just don’t have unrealistic expectations about the results you will see!

Here are some signs that may (or may not) be helpful in determining if your baby is ready to start signing:

• Does your baby look at your face when you talk to him?
• Does your baby seem curious about the world around her?
• Does your baby point to things he wants?
• Does your baby already make her own gestures, such as waving goodbye?
• Does your baby imitate things that you do?
• Can your baby pick up small objects with his thumb and finger?