It’s never too early to start thinking about cultivating a love of reading. But how can you do this with the little bundle all swaddled in a blanket in the cradle?

Read to your baby. Even if you’re reading the New York Times to your newborn, he will not only enjoy hearing your voice, but will learn about sounds and patterns of sounds. Change the inflection of your voice, and read with feeling.

Tell your baby stories. You don’t need to be an expert storyteller or to know every detail of a fairy tale. Simply use your imagination and tell your baby a tale. Even if you’re talking about grocery shopping or changing his diaper, your baby will attend to the changes in your voice and will expand his vocabulary.

Your very young baby will prefer faces to any other pictures, so choose books accordingly. Consider books with textures and bright colors. As your reading, change the inflection of your voice, or make different voices for the different characters.

Make reading routine. Read a book or two to your child before nap time or bedtime every day. Be sure to follow your baby’s cues for when he’s had enough, though. Make sure your children see you reading, too! Children will imitate what they see you doing regularly.

Once your baby can start to handle books on his own, make sure he has lots of board books he can play with. He may chew the edges and not really understand going from start to finish, but the more you read the books out loud with baby in your lap, the more familiar he will become with a routine. After a while, try skipping a page of his favorite book, and you’ll see that he has already memorized it!

As your baby gets older, be sure to keep lots of books at baby-level (not on a high shelf). Allowing your baby to manipulate and play with books, in addition to reading books to him, will set him on a path to the love of the written word.

Take your baby to the library. Often the children’s department will have programs for different age levels. Ask a librarian for book recommendations, and tell your baby all about the wonders found behind a library’s doors.

Literacy is about more than just reading words on the page. Understanding conversation and context are also part of the equation. Every interaction you have with your baby – from birth on – helps baby to read signals around him, from body language to feelings to vocabulary and more.

Written by Michelle, childbirth instructor, lactation consultant, and mother to 4 busy kids

This information is not intended to replace the advice of a trained medical doctor. Health & Parenting Ltd disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information, which is provided to you on a general information basis only and not as a substitute for personalized medical advice.  All contents copyright © Health & Parenting Ltd 2016. All rights reserved.

Breastmilk – it’s how nature intended babies be fed. Apart from the nourishment and nurturing, though, the amazing properties that make breastmilk such a healthy food choice also make it an incredible medicine.

While some uses of breastmilk have only anecdotal evidence, many others have actually been researched and are supported with studies as to their effectiveness. In fact, donor milk is sometimes even used for treating older children and adults with certain conditions, such as cancer and other serious illnesses.

Full of antibodies, breastmilk has antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anti-inflammatory properties without the side effects of pharmaceuticals. According to one source, a teaspoon of breastmilk contains at least 3 million germ-killing cells.

While you may never have considered many of these, you will see from the list below just how versatile your breastmilk is. Breastmilk can be used for:

• Eyes: Whether from a viral or bacterial infection, breastmilk’s anti-infective properties have been use to effectively treat “pink eye” and clogged tear ducts. Even styes seem to respond well to some drops of breastmilk.
• Ears: Ear pain seems to be lessened with a couple of drops of breastmilk a few times per day.
• Skin: Treat diaper rash, baby acne, cradle cap, adult acne, cuts and scrapes, burns, rashes, poison ivy, insect bites and stings with expressed breastmilk. Breastmilk has even been used to get rid of warts (apply breastmilk several times per day until the wart dries and falls off).
• Cold symptoms: Stuffy nose? Try breastmilk instead of saline nasal spray or drops. Sore throat? Have a shot of breastmilk or a breastmilk gargle.
• Cancer: Amazing research has shown that in a laboratory situation, breastmilk causes cancer cells to commit suicide while not damaging the healthy surrounding cells.

With any illness, a visit or call to your healthcare provider may be warranted along with your home comfort measures.

Apart from home remedies for illnesses, breastmilk has been used for other interesting purposes:

• Contact lens solution: If you’ve forgotten your solution when traveling, or if you’re just out and about and need to clean your lenses, what could be easier than using breastmilk? Its antimicrobial properties will clean your eyewear, and the small amount you need can easily be hand expressed (no need for a pump).
• Soap making: You can find recipes online for creating a gentle cleanser with breastmilk. Soap makers say it’s an ideal ingredient since it contains essential proteins and amino acids, as well as lactic acid and vitamin A – all excellent for skin care.
• Cooking and baking: Recipes for breastmilk ice cream and cheese can be found online. Actually, in any recipe that calls for milk, breastmilk can be substituted. Though heating or freezing the breastmilk may decrease the number of anti-infective organisms, it’s still a healthy choice. Out of coffee creamer or milk for your breakfast cereal? Try breastmilk. Hungry for a smoothie? Use breastmilk as the base.
• Jewelry: A number of online companies will take your expressed breastmilk and make it into jewelry to immortalize your breastfeeding experience. Some will sell the supplies, as well, if you want to DIY.

Have you used breastmilk for anything other than nourishing your baby?

Written by Michelle, childbirth instructor, lactation consultant, and mother to 4 busy kids

This information is not intended to replace the advice of a trained medical doctor. Health & Parenting Ltd disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information, which is provided to you on a general information basis only and not as a substitute for personalized medical advice. All contents copyright © Health & Parenting Ltd 2016. All rights reserved.

Birth is a mystery – mainly because we rarely get to be a part of it. Throughout history, women shared birth by supporting each other through it. Young girls were exposed to birth – it was just another part of life. They knew what to expect and had seen how to cope. When their own labor started, they had at least some notion of what to do. Today, though, we rarely get to see birth. When we do, it’s a sanitized Hollywood version or a caricature of reality with grossly stereotyped actors and actions.

Storytelling has traditionally been the way that knowledge is passed on. And modern researchers suggest it’s because stories help our brains make sense of abstract thoughts and events. Stories help our brain make connections between reality and thought. Stories make us human.

Sharing your own birth story is a way you can help other women prepare for the births of their babies. Your experience will not only aid others in knowing the unknown, but will help you, as well. When you write about your birth experience, you preserve those special memories, you help your children understand where their own story started, and you may even be able to heal yourself if your birth was less than you expected.

Writing your tale doesn’t need to be complicated. You can choose to write longhand in a special journal, or type it all out at a keyboard. You might even use a voice recorder or dictation software if writing isn’t for you.

Start with the physical facts. Jot down everything you can remember. Ask your partner or any other support people who were present if they can remember details you may have forgotten.

Don’t judge your experience. Add emotions – consider how you felt at different times from the first contraction to the weeks following the birth. There’s no right or wrong – only what you know to be true.

Go back after a few days and edit. Add more details as they come to you. This is the opportunity to take your memories and smooth them out into a cohesive story.

Finally, share your story. You might decide to save it for your child’s eyes only. You might share it with family and friends. Or you might share it with a much wider audience by choosing an online resource publishing women’s birth stories.

Every woman has a story to tell – and her story is important to the preservation of women’s ways of knowing. The value of this knowledge connects one generation to the next through the tales we tell our daughters, nieces, friends, family, women we might not even know.

Written by Michelle, childbirth instructor, lactation consultant, and mother to 4 busy kids

This information is not intended to replace the advice of a trained medical doctor. Health & Parenting Ltd disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information, which is provided to you on a general information basis only and not as a substitute for personalized medical advice. All contents copyright © Health & Parenting Ltd 2016. All rights reserved.

The term ‘failure to thrive’ sounds pretty ominous, especially when a health professional is using it to describe your baby. In reality, however, it simply means your child weighs less than other children her age. It can even be used to describe unexpected weight loss in children.

You may have noticed that health professionals regularly weigh and measure your baby. This data is then compared to a growth chart. Plotting your child’s progress on the growth chart allows health professionals to see whether your child is growing as might be expected for her birth weight.

What causes failure to thrive?

If your child is diagnosed with failure to thrive, your health professional will work with you to determine the cause. Possible causes include:

• Difficulty establishing breastfeeding – some babies are diagnosed with failure to thrive after a rocky start to breastfeeding. Getting advice from a lactation consultant could help you to determine the problem and help you overcome it so you can continue breastfeeding.
• Illness – if your baby has been under the weather, she may have gone off her food for a short period, and not eaten as much as usual. This could cause an unexpected drop in weight.
• Reflux or vomiting – suffering from either of these could put your baby off her food.
• Sickness bug – if your baby has been suffering from a sickness bug, she might have lost a little weight.
• Weaning difficulties – some babies are diagnosed with failure to thrive after encountering difficulties when it’s time to wean onto solid foods.

Treatment for failure to thrive

Once the problem has been diagnosed and the cause has been determined, your health professional will be able to best advise you of what to do next. Some good advice may be all you need to help your baby get back on track.

If you are worried that your baby may be failing to thrive, speak to your healthcare provider for advice. Remember, just because your baby is smaller than her friends, this doesn’t mean she will be failing to thrive. If you feel worried, however, it’s always worth getting it checked out.

Has your baby been diagnosed with failure to thrive?

Written by Fiona (@Fiona_Peacock), mother, writer and lover of all things baby related.

This information is not intended to replace the advice of a trained medical doctor. Health & Parenting Ltd disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information, which is provided to you on a general information basis only and not as a substitute for personalized medical advice. All contents copyright © Health & Parenting Ltd 2016. All rights reserved.

You do everything you can to keep your baby healthy. But at some point, your little one may not feel well. One of the most common childhood illnesses is an ear infection. An ear infection is usually caused by a virus or bacteria that may lead to a backup of fluid in the middle ear.

The tube that connects your middle ear to the back of your throat and nose is the eustachian tube. Your baby’s eustachian tubes are shorter than an adult’s tubes and less steeply angled, which means fluid can get trapped in the middle ear. Ear infections are so common; it’s estimated that about 75 percent of babies will have at least one ear infection by the time they are two.

What often happens is your baby gets a cold, which causes an increase in mucus. The lining of the tubes become swollen and congested. The fluid remains in the tubes instead of draining, which can lead to an infection.

Since your little one cannot tell you what’s bothering them, it’s important to recognize signs of an ear infection. You may notice your baby is tugging or pulling at her ear. She may also cry when lying down or sucking due to increased pressure and pain in the middle ear. Yellow or white fluid may drain from your baby’s ear. Your baby may also have a loss of appetite and develop a fever.

Some babies also experience a temporary decrease in hearing. If your baby appears not to hear you, he’s not ignoring you. The swelling and pus in the ear may block sound. Once the infection has cleared, hearing should return to normal.

Treating Ear Infections

If you think your baby may have an ear infection, call your pediatrician. Your doctor will likely want to examine your baby and determine the best treatment. Although not all babies that have an ear infection require antibiotics, they may be prescribed in some cases.

Your doctor may also suggest over the counter medications to treat fever and make your baby more comfortable. Keep in mind, certain over the counter fever reducers, such as ibuprofen are not recommended for young babies. As always, only give your baby medications with your doctor’s approval.

Preventing Ear Infections

You may not always be able to prevent an ear infection, but there are a few things you can do to decrease the chances. For example, breastfeeding for at least six months helps provide your little one with the antibodies that builds her immune system and prevent infections.

If you bottle-feed, hold your baby in an upright position. Drinking his bottle lying down, may cause liquid to pool in the tubes. Keeping your baby free of secondhand smoke also decreases the risk of ear infections.

Written by MaryAnn DePietro @ writerlady34

This information is not intended to replace the advice of a trained medical doctor. Health & Parenting Ltd disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information, which is provided to you on a general information basis only and not as a substitute for personalized medical advice. All contents copyright © Health & Parenting Ltd 2016. All rights reserved.

Everyone knows that babies are life changing, but did you know that having one will also change your relationship? When you were pregnant, your parent friends probably kept advising you to ‘date’ your partner, take a vacation and simply enjoy your freedom as a couple before the baby arrived. You most likely ignored this advice and instead spent nine months eating ice-cream snuggled up on the sofa like countless women before you.

Now that you’re a parent, however, you can probably understand what those friends were trying to tell you. Without scaring you, they were simply trying to let you know that your relationship would never be the same again. Life as parents is totally different to life as a couple or life as newlyweds. Here are just five of the ways your relationship changes after having a baby:

1. The neverending sleep debate

You will spend approximately the next five years of your relationship enjoying a healthy debate into who is the most tired. You think it’s you, your partner thinks it’s him. This argument won’t stop until your child (children, if you choose to have more, thus elongating the length of the debate) sleeps well. This will take years, sorry, but it will. Until then, you’ll spend about 80% of your waking moments as a couple arguing over who is the most tired. It’s you, obviously.

2. The new date night

In your pre-parent days, date night probably meant getting dressed up in your finery, eating at an expensive restaurant and drinking too many cocktails before spending the night in a fancy hotel. These days you’re lucky if you can make it through the takeaway without having to breastfeed, finish an episode on Netflix before having to run up and check on the baby, or manage one cocktail before collapsing from sheer exhaustion.

3. Priorities

Your partner won’t be top of your list anymore, and you should expect to find you’re plummeted down a place too. Once you became a parent, your child will always be the most important thing in your life. The good news is, being a close second isn’t bad at all. You love each other just as much as you did before, there’s just another special person you each love even more these days, and that’s not a bad thing.

4. The sex

Sex is different now. Not because you’ve had a baby, but because you’re both exhausted, because you feel ‘touched out’ at the end of the day and because you want nothing more than to be alone, just for a little bit. You might not be having sex as often, or as well, as you once did. It might feel a little forced at times, perhaps a little rushed. Don’t worry too much, your sex life should get back on track as your baby starts to need you a little less.

5. The turn-ons

Don’t worry, you will still find your partner attractive. Only these days, it will be different things that make you swoon. Nothing will make you want to jump your partner more than waking up to discover you’ve had an unexpected lie in because he’s taking care of the baby downstairs so you can catch up on your beauty sleep. The sight of him lulling your baby to sleep by rocking him in his arms will stretch your heart to a size you didn’t even know possible. Now that you’re a parent, it’s the sight of your partner being a good dad that will leave you feeling pretty damn lucky to be a part of his life.

How has your relationship changed since having a baby?

Written by Fiona (@Fiona_Peacock), mother, writer and lover of all things baby related.

This information is not intended to replace the advice of a trained medical doctor. Health & Parenting Ltd disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information, which is provided to you on a general information basis only and not as a substitute for personalized medical advice. All contents copyright © Health & Parenting Ltd 2016. All rights reserved.

Being a baby is tough. They can’t talk, they can’t walk, and their bums are forever at risk of being itchy. Diaper rash is a real threat to little ones, leaving them cranky and uncomfortable, completely at your mercy for relief.

But what causes diaper rash? And what can you do to help?

1. The Diaper: Seems simple enough, right? After all, they call it “diaper rash” – or “Nappy rash” in the UK – for a reason. (Actually, it’s called “diaper rash” because it occurs in the diaper area—but you get the point). Diapers can often be the cause of those itchy, red areas of skin your baby is suffering from. They may be experiencing a reaction to the chemicals used in the diapers, or they may just be getting a rash as a result of too much wetness. Chafing can also be an issue to contend with when diapers are in use.
2. Food Sensitivities: If it’s not the diaper, it could be that your baby is allergic to something he or she is eating. This may be especially true if the rash is also on other parts of the body.
3. Introducing Foods: But your child doesn’t have to be allergic to what they are eating for a diaper rash to result. The simple act of introducing new foods can have an affect on their bowel movements, which can result in a greater risk of diaper rash.
4. Infection: Did you know that babies are just as capable of getting infections down there as you are? A yeast infection could absolutely be to blame for a bad diaper rash.
5. Antibiotics: Antibiotics are sometimes necessary for getting healthy, but they have the downfall of destroying some of the good gut bacteria that usually keeps the bad at bay. If your baby has been on antibiotics recently, that could explain the rash.

Treating diaper rash is usually something you can do from the comfort of your own home. First, strip your baby down and let him or her go diaper free as much as possible while the rash is healing. Some parents find that putting some towels down on the ground for baby to roll around on, simply anticipating accidents will happen, can be worth the fresh air and all its healing qualities.

You should also have a good over-the-counter diaper rash cream on hand for at least the first two years of your baby’s life. You never know when that might come in handy! Avoid the use of zinc oxide diaper creams on broken skin, as it can further irritate raw skin.

Keeping baby clean and dry can help to prevent diaper rashes, and avoiding diapers and wipes with alcohol or fragrance in them can also help.

If you are dealing with a rash that seems particularly resistant to at home measures, make an appointment with your pediatrician. There may be an infection going on that requires stronger treatment.

Written by Leah Campbell, infertility advocate, adoptive mama, writer and editor. Find me @sifinalaska on Twitter.

This information is not intended to replace the advice of a trained medical doctor. Health & Parenting Ltd disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information, which is provided to you on a general informational basis only and not as a substitute for personalized medical advice. All contents copyright Health & Parenting Ltd 2016. All rights reserved.