Category: Motherhood

There comes a point in every woman’s pregnancy when people feel reasonably sure that your protruding belly is, in fact, due to pregnancy and not the large burrito you had for lunch. It is also around this time that everyone from your mother to your mailman begins to offer unsolicited words of wisdom regarding pregnancy.
Some are helpful, but you should definitely take the following bizarre pieces of pregnancy advice with a big pinch of salt.

Don’t Cut Your Hair

During pregnancy, hormones cause most women to grow thicker, shinier hair that would make a Pantene model envious. Lustrous locks may sound like a dream come true, but all that hair can be a real nuisance. Women are often tempted to chop off their locks in the third trimester.

However, one popular piece of advice pregnant women receive is that they should avoid cutting their hair until after the baby is born.
According to grandmothers everywhere, cutting your hair while pregnant severely inhibits your life force, leaving you susceptible to illness and other problems. This eccentric piece of advice has persisted since the biblical story of Samson but, to no one’s surprise at all, is entirely unfounded.

It is perfectly safe to cut your hair during pregnancy. But before you rush out to get the mom bob, remember that your amazing pregnancy hair doesn’t last forever. Many new moms experience postpartum hair loss as a result of fluctuating hormones, so you might want to postpone the trim until you see how your hair reacts post-pregnancy.

Indulge Your Cravings To Prevent Birthmarks

On the surface, this seems like a great piece of advice pregnant women can get behind. That fourth piece of pizza? Go for it. Ice cream with shredded cheese on top? Treat yourself. However, according to some, if you don’t indulge your pregnancy cravings, your baby will end up with a birthmark shaped like the food you craved.

No mother wants their child to be born with a very specific birthmark in the shape of a peanut butter and pickle sandwich, but it doesn’t appear there is very much truth behind this particular piece of advice.

Birthmarks can be genetic, but most spontaneously occur. In addition, almost everyone has a birthmark somewhere, even if it’s not very noticeable—and ours certainly doesn’t look like the ice cream/French fry sandwich our mother said she craved.

Eat More Bananas if You Want a Boy

Has anyone ever told you to eat more bananas if you’re set on having a boy? Turns out, there might just be some truth to this wacky piece of pregnancy advice. According to a study from Oxford and Exeter Universities, high levels of potassium (which is found in bananas), along with high levels of sodium, were associated with having a boy.

Because so many cereals are now fortified with potassium and other nutrients, a bowlful of Fruity Pebbles may also increase your odds of having a boy. (The effect of all that sugar on you and your developing little one, however, is another question.)

However, the old wives’ tale that drinking more milk to have a girl doesn’t hold any weight. If you’re set on sugar and spice and everything nice instead of snails and puppy dog tails, scientists suggest cutting back on your morning cereal to increase your odds of having a girl.

A Full Moon Brings on Labor

It’s well-known science that the moon influences the ocean’s tides, but can a full moon influence pregnancy and labor? According to superstition, there is a noticeable uptick in births during a full moon.

This superstition persists not just for pregnancy but across medical fields in general. Paramedics swear they get more calls during a full moon and emergency room doctors agree the waiting rooms certainly seem busier then.

According to Duke University scientists, though, there is no correlation between the full moon and labor. However, changes in barometric pressure can cause women to go into labor. So if you see thunderstorms in the forecast, it might be wise to pack your hospital bag just in case.

Toughen Up Your Tatas

One common piece of pregnancy advice many women receive is that they should “toughen up” their breasts in preparation for breastfeeding. Some women are told to use Brillo pads (yes, the same steel wool pads that are used to clean extra dirty pots and pans) to toughen up their tatas.

This is one piece of advice pregnant women should definitely not follow. Not only does it sound downright painful, it’s completely unnecessary. Your body was made to breastfeed, and though most new moms have struggles in the early days or even weeks of nursing, there’s certainly no need to do any kind of preparation in advance.

Don’t Rub Your Belly or You’ll Spoil the Baby

By the third trimester, you can usually balance a lot of things on your growing belly, and you might find that you rub your belly subconsciously. According to an old wives’ tale from China, rubbing your pregnant belly often will spoil a baby.

While research doesn’t show that a baby whose mother rubbed her belly is spoiled, scientists have proven that babies do respond to a mother’s touch more than her voice while in the womb.

Most doctors also agree that newborns can’t be spoiled, so go ahead and rub your belly as much as you’d like. Not only does your baby like it, it will also help them recognize you after they are born!

Do a Cleanse Before Your Due Date

The one thing that terrifies women more than pushing a baby the size of a melon out of a lemon-sized hole? Pooping during childbirth. In fact, “how to avoid pooping during labor” is one of the most googled phrases relating to pregnancy. Many women are advised to use enemas or natural cleanses before their due date to reduce the risk of embarrassment.

However, according to doctors, there’s not much you can do about it, and it happens to most women during labor. The good news is that you’ll be so focused on pushing, you probably won’t even notice if it happens—nurses are pros at quickly and quietly cleaning up. Trust us, that’s not the worst thing they’ve seen.

Don’t Lift Your Hands Above Your Head

Most pregnant women are treated more delicately than the enchanted rose in Beauty and the Beast. During pregnancy, women are often advised not to lift their arms above their head, which apparently could cause the umbilical cord to wrap around a baby’s neck.

Obviously, this makes everyday life pretty inconvenient. That box of cookies you hid on the top shelf? Don’t even think about it. Did you weight train before pregnancy? Stop immediately! Unless you’re Wonder Woman, don’t even think about any exercise more strenuous than walking for nine months.

There’s little truth to this particular piece of advice. Umbilical cord issues are due to fetal movement rather than maternal movements. The next time you feel like starting the wave at a baseball game, go for it. Your baby will be just fine.

Stuff Your Bra With Cabbage

This last one’s technically a piece of postpartum advice, but it’s really strange, so it made the list. Stuffing cabbage leaves in your bra during breastfeeding is supposed to help reduce engorgement, an extremely painful feeling that occurs as a new mom’s milk arrives. The cabbage leaves can either be chilled or used at room temperature.

This piece of advice is weird, but it actually holds up. Evidently, cabbage leaves do absorb fluids. However, there are other, less cabbage-y ways to reduce painful swelling. Alternating cold compresses and moist heat will do the trick, and as an added bonus, you won’t smell like sauerkraut.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concludes with a definite recommendation for new moms: Don’t pay a company to dehydrate your placenta, put it into gel caplets, and then consume placenta pills every day until they’re gone.
File that under “sentences we never thought we’d write.”

Maybe you’ve noticed that there’s been an increase in moms who choose to eat their placentas in recent years.

Lots of high-profile celebrities have gotten behind the fad: Gaby Hoffman, Alicia Silverstone, January Jones. Proponents of placenta-munching say that it has all sorts of health benefits, like staving off postpartum depression, boosting milk production, and replacing nutrients lost during childbirth.

However, a 2015 literature review at Northwestern University says that there are no proven health benefits to placentophagy, which is what scientists call eating your own placenta. Even worse, there might be risks associated with the practice.
The latest story from the CDC suggests that there are risks, and they are ones no mother would willingly take. The story begins with a brand new mom who gave birth to a healthy infant. Then she sent the placenta off to a company that cooked, dehydrated, and crushed the placenta. They loaded the powder into gel caps and sent them back to the mom, who started taking two of the pills three times daily.

Then the nightmare really began.

The infant became very sick and had trouble breathing. In the neonatal intensive care unit, doctors discovered that the baby was infected with GBS (aka Group B streptococcus), a serious bacterial infection. They treated the infection and the infant seemed to have made a full recovery, so the child was allowed to return home.
Five days later, the baby became sick again. Again, the child was treated and sent home. However, doctors were becoming increasingly concerned about the origin of this recurring infection. They had apparently tested the woman for GBS before she gave birth and no traces had been found.

When the medical team learned that the woman had been eating her placenta, bit by bit, they thought they found a likely culprit for infection so they tested the material in the placenta pills.

Sure enough, GBS was found.

The report warns that “the placenta encapsulation process does not per se eradicate infectious pathogens; thus, placenta capsule ingestion should be avoided.”
Luckily, the baby in this story recovered. Still, this illustrates a risk that many new parents might not have considered: Eating your placenta might actually put your baby’s health at risk.

Psychologist Cynthia Coyle was involved in the 2015 literature review. She explained her position to Today.
“Our sense is that women choosing placentophagy, who may otherwise be very careful about what they are putting into their bodies during pregnancy and nursing, are willing to ingest something without evidence of its benefits and, more importantly, of its potential risks to themselves and their nursing infants,” she said. “There are no regulations as to how the placenta is stored and prepared, and the dosing is inconsistent. Women really don’t know what they are ingesting.”

It’s not easy to pick one single thing that’s the hardest part about becoming a new parent. (Yes, it is a miracle and all that jazz, but let’s be honest: It’s not all miraculous. Poop is not a miracle. Besides, even if poop is a miracle, it can still be a difficult miracle even in the best of times.)

If we had to, though, we’d pinpoint the moment when your baby falls asleep in your arms, then when you go to lay the baby down in their crib so you can finally take a shower—the little bundle of joy immediately wakes up screaming. What is with that?

It turns out that we aren’t the only ones to wonder why this occurs.

“Every time I put down my sleeping baby, she wakes up,” writes an anonymous parent on the health information site Ask Dr. Sears. “Help!”

While Dr. Sears proceeds to make a few helpful suggestions, he doesn’t really answer the question. “This is a situation that frustrates almost every parent at some time,” he writes instead. “Realize first of all that this is very normal. It is not that you are doing anything wrong, or that something is unusual with your baby. It is very normal for babies to do this.”

Yes, but why? Why is that normal? And how can we change it?

Surely the Baby Center community can help, right? Upon further research, we discovered that user aBabyCentermember asked the very same question in 2002.
“My baby will sleep for up to five hours at a time,” the user wrote. “But only if I’m holding her. As soon as I lay her down she snaps wide-awake. Help!”

The “best answer” suggests that “ultimately our time with our children is so limited and passes so fast, why not enjoy every minute of it?” Essentially, that means: Hold your baby all night long, every night.

That doesn’t seem like the most practical solution in the world, so we kept searching.

Eventually, we found what sounds like the truth. Sleep consultant Christine Stevens of Sleepy Tots Consulting added her two cents on the parenting site Romper.
“Babies usually wake up when they are laid down because of a change of environment,” she said. “They go from being snuggled in a parent’s arms to a cool mattress or surface.”

That makes perfect sense, but we can’t very well heat the mattress up to 98.6 every evening. Instead, experts recommend swaddling your infant. This keeps your baby’s startle reflex in check so they can relax even during times of change.

Even better, try establishing a predictable nightly routine and stick to it.

Slowly get your baby ready for bed over the course of half an hour or so. Dim the lights, read a bedtime story, and get your baby in bed while they’re beginning to feel sleepy but before they actually fall asleep.

That way, when it’s finally your turn to catch a few ZZZs, you won’t have to shock your infant awake with a sudden change of scenery. Instead, you’ll have a calm, quiet household filled with the lovely sounds of silence. A decent night’s sleep is sure to make the time you spend with your little one tomorrow that much sweeter.
[related article_ids=24304]

I’ve always felt fortunate to have so much help with my kids from my family members. Until recently, I had only hired a babysitter for one occasion in my five years as a mom. My kids’ grandparents have been on-call babysitters for my part-time work, the occasional date night, and doctor appointments.

But when my work-from-home job as a freelancer became a full-time responsibility, I was faced with the task of finding a sitter who I knew I could trust to take really good care of my kids several hours a week.
It made me anxious, to be perfectly honest. The idea of asking someone I had only just met to spend hours alone with my children felt risky, but it had to be done.

I couldn’t keep trying to balance my work-at-home job and caring for my kids full-time. It took several weeks, but I eventually found a wonderful young woman who is the perfect fit for our family.
My big kids talk about her between her visits and my littlest giggles when she walks in the door. I know that, because my kids love her, we’ve found a great sitter we can trust.

Finding her wasn’t easy, though, and I learned a lot through the process. I originally thought I would have a large number of people to choose from, but it turned out that very few people were looking for babysitting work.
When I did find a few applications I was interested in, I had so many questions to ask and research to do so I could make sure they were as qualified as they said they were.

Needless to say, finding a caregiver you can rely on is a lot of work. If you’re looking for a dependable person to care for your kids, keep reading to find the tips you need to find a babysitter you can trust.

Create a job description.

Caring for children is important work and it’s okay (and even expected!) that you should take the process of hiring as seriously as you would if you were hiring for a position in your own workplace. One of the best ways to avoid the letdown of unmet expectations is making sure you understand exactly what you need from a babysitter.

Before you so much as call your first candidate, take some time to put pen to paper and outline what your family needs from a babysitter. Will they simply be hanging out at home, feeding your kids and putting them to bed? Or will they need to perform extra tasks like driving kids to school, sports practices or rehearsals? Will they be responsible for light housework or taking care of pets? These are all important details to clarify from the start and creating a formal job description is the simplest way to do just that.

Do an intensive job interview.

Hiring a babysitter is often treated with a fair amount of informality. For many parents, a quick visit over the phone is all that takes place in lieu of an interview. But if you truly want to be certain you are hiring the right candidate for the job, you’ll need to devote a little more time to the hiring process.

Plan to meet a few potential babysitters in person before they meet your children.
Begin your interview with the most obvious questions: What kind of experience do they have? Are they CPR certified? What days and time are they available to work? Once you have covered the basics, move on to questions specific to your kids’ needs.

You may even use your interview as a time to pose a few hypothetical situations, asking them how they would respond. How will they intervene when sibling conflicts arise?
Will they feel comfortable staying late if you regularly have to stay over at work?

You want a babysitter who is prepared to handle the real life situations that arise in the life of your family, so don’t be afraid to be honest about what they may experience as your family babysitter.

Do your due diligence.

In any job, a person’s past performance is one of the best indicators of how they will perform in the future. Any babysitter you are considering hiring for the job should be required to submit references for past work. After an interview, follow up by calling the references provided to find out how satisfied they were with the applicant’s performance.

There is a lot of helpful information you may be able to find out from the names your possible babysitter provides. Consider asking questions about their timeliness and dependability to show up at an agreed upon times.
If possible, find out why they are no longer employed by the family. If any red flags arise, don’t ignore them!

If you’re not certain the feedback provided by their references is a deal-breaker, you can always follow up with your applicant to ask questions about what the reference had to say about their performance.

Let your kids weigh in before you make a hire.

It’s a good idea to have any babysitter you are seriously considering hiring over for a visit with the family before you leave them alone with your little ones. Invite them over for coffee or a meal and let them interact with your children while you’re nearby.

Do your best not to intervene unless necessary; your job here is to be a silent observer of their interactions with your kids. Do they seem comfortable around your children? How do your children respond to their presence?
After they leave, give your kids the opportunity to weigh in before you make a hire. Most kids are fairly accepting, so if they do raise a concern, it’s worth looking into before you make a decision.

This initial visit is also a great time to show them around your house and talk about your kids’ routines. This will help anyone you decide to hire feel more comfortable on their first day working with your family.

Pay them what they are worth.

Finding someone who you can trust to care for your children as their own isn’t easy. In most cases, it takes a lot of searching and extensive interviews to find the perfect fit.

Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that what you are willing to pay is directly related to the care your children will receive.
If you aren’t willing to pay the person you hire a fair wage, how can you expect them to treat watching your children like a “real job”? Take them as seriously as you would like them to take their responsibilities.

The going rate for a babysitter varies greatly based on where you are located and how many children you have, but you can expect to pay at least $11 an hour for exceptional care for your kids. If you’re still having trouble deciding on pay, you can use a calculator that adjusts for your family size and location.

Set them up for success.

Once you found someone you feel is a great fit for your family, it’s a good idea to take some time to set them up for a successful on-boarding. Ask them to arrive early so you can spend time talking through the most important information they need to know.

Create an outline of your kids’ routines and plan to go over dietary restrictions and family rules. If you have specific expectations for your sitter, spell them out in great detail to avoid awkward conversations or conflict in the visitor.
This is the right time to make sure they know your policy on posting your kids’ pictures to social media, leaving the house with your kids, or how you feel about them using their phone while your kids are awake. It may feel nitpicky to you, but a good sitter will be glad to have the information.

A good babysitter is like family. By taking the hiring process seriously, doing your research, and helping them make a seamless transition into the role of your family’s go-to caregiver, you just may find someone who you can rely on for years to come.

It can be strange and terrifying to consider how deeply parenting affects children for the rest of their lives. Whether you’re a parent or a (grown) child, one leap down the rabbit hole of psychological exploration can leave you with the sense that there is literally no way to not screw up parenting. And you wouldn’t be wrong!

Thankfully, there is hope. For those of us who have already been effectively mussed by our parents, early friendships, or romantic partners—which, let’s be honest, is probably all of us—we’ve got therapy.

For those of you who are thinking of having your own children, you should know that studies continue to reveal the power that parenting style can have in infant brain development, counteracting negative environmental influences, and children’s capacity for innovation later in life.

Poorer Children Are Less Likely To Receive Parental Support

A supportive parent is an emotionally responsive parent. What does “emotionally responsive” look like? Not unlike a game of tennis, according to childhood development experts. 

The “serve and return” mode of communication between an adult caregiver and an infant is an interaction much like a tennis ball going back and forth, with the baby “serving” a gesture like smiling or babbling, and the adult caregiver “returning” it with affirmative behavior like eye contact or touch.

As part of an ongoing study, Joan Luby, MD, conducted an experiment in St. Louis. A group of children between the ages of 4 and 7 were invited into the lab along with their primary caregivers—usually their mothers—to observe the pair’s dynamic during a stressful situation. The child was put within arm’s length of a brightly wrapped gift and told that they could open it as soon as their caregiver filled out a stack of questionnaires that would take about eight minutes to complete.

Researchers, trained to measure hostility and supportiveness, observed how moms responded to their children’s whines. Some of them reassured them by telling them they knew it was hard to wait or praising them for their patience; some ignored their children, even snapping at or hitting them for being annoying as they filled out the forms.

Luby’s team had uncovered a pattern: the poorer children were more likely to be met with hostility from caregivers.

“Parents can be less emotionally responsive for a whole host of reasons,” Luby said. “They may work two jobs or regularly find themselves trying to scrounge together money for food. Perhaps they live in an unsafe environment. They may be facing many stresses, and some don’t have the capacity to invest in supportive parenting as much as parents who don’t have to live in the midst of those adverse circumstances.”

Toxic Stress Can Damage Children’s Brains

If you remember reading about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in an intro to psychology class, you can probably guess why a parent living in poverty has fewer emotional resources to offer her child. When your ability to fulfill your most basic needs—like shelter, food, and safety—is under threat, stress levels skyrocket. Your fuse is shorter. Brain chemicals go all out of balance.

To complicate matters, where there is financial insecurity and high stress, there is often addiction and abuse. As Denise Dowd, who mentors victims of poverty and domestic violence in Kansas City, Missouri, told The Atlantic, “The very resources the moms need to handle those stressors—the ability to predict, the ability to remain calm and think through a set of problems—that’s
the prefrontal cortex, and that really takes a hit when you’ve been exposed to abuse and neglect.”

A child inevitably picks up on these cues that the world is unsafe and responds with his own heightened stress responses, which stunts the brain’s development. This is a huge problem when trying to stop the cycle of poverty.

“It has long been known that low socioeconomic status is linked to poorer performance in school, and recent research has linked poverty to smaller brain surface area,” Diana Kwon writes in Scientific American, referencing a study published in 2015 about lower test scores among poorer children. “The current study bridges these converging lines of evidence by revealing that up to 20 percent of the achievement gap between high- and low-income children may be explained by differences in brain development.”

But, Supportive Parenting Can Counteract The Damage Of Toxic Stress

Luby’s experiment—part of a larger study of depression in early childhood—involved some children who were depressed. What they found was that parental supportiveness was more important to brain development than whether or not a child was depressed.

“When Luby and her colleagues conducted an MRI four years later, they found that the non-depressed children whose mothers had not been nurturing had smaller hippocampuses than the kids who were depressed but had levels of high maternal support,” Olga Khazan writes for The Atlantic.

“In other words, it was better for the kids to be depressed with supportive moms, than not depressed with unsupportive ones. Since the hippocampus governs things like memory, cognitive function, and emotion, the smaller hippocampal volume suggested to Luby that the children with the non-supportive moms were doing worse both cognitively and emotionally.”

What experts believe, then, is that a caregiver equipped with better nurturing skills could counteract some of the negative effects poverty has on early brain development. Of course, this leaves us with one question: How do we provide parents who are barely scraping by financially the tools to be better nurturers?

According to Andrew Garner, a pediatrician in Westlake, Ohio, one answer might be in increasing government spending on social services, and improving how social programs are integrated into our healthcare system—areas the U.S. is characteristically lagging behind in.

Supportive Parenting Vs. Overbearing Parenting

It’s worth noting in a discussion about the importance of supportive parenting that there is a big difference between nurturing and helicoptering, which can be its own kind of emotional abuse.

Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success and former dean of Stanford University’s mental health task force, offers an extreme (we hope) example of a (monstrous) father who told his daughter he would divorce her mother if she refused to major in economics. But even overbearing parenting that does not wade into such overtly dysfunctional territory can have lasting effects on children’s minds.

Author and academic Adam Grant, writing for The New York Times last
year, points to studies suggesting that the attempt to jam children into parents’ preconceived notions of who they should be—artistically, academically, or philosophically—limits children’s creative growth, and can, in fact, have the opposite effect of what parents desire for them in terms of professional success.

As Grant points out, few child prodigies go on to be “adult geniuses who change the world.” Of course, individual identity fears and academic complacence stemming from society’s incorrect messaging about what it means to be “smart” likely play a huge role in this, but part of the equation in many cases is whether parents allow joyful curiosity to exist in their children. For many helicoptered kids, the message is that life is primarily about excellence and duty—and this isn’t very good for cultivating intellectual freedom.

“What holds them back is that they don’t learn to be original,” Grant writes. “They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.”

21-year-old Morgan King is a student at the University of Tennessee.
In addition to studying therapeutic recreation, she also works nights at a restaurant; needless to say, she has a busy schedule.
King is also a single mother, which certainly doesn’t simplify her daily routine; she’s often juggling her work and school responsibilities with her duties as a mom. As a result, King regularly depends on childcare services to care for her young daughter, Korbyn, while attending college classes.
“It is so hard,” King told the Knoxville News Sentinel. “But I am so determined to graduate and get my degree for Korbyn and I. It’s not just about me anymore. I have to do this for us.”

Recently, King missed one of her classes because she was unable to find childcare for Korbyn. She emailed her professor, Dr. Sally B. Hunter, to let her know. That led to a heartfelt response, which has quickly spread across the internet.
“Told my professor I missed class yesterday bc I couldn’t find childcare & this was her response,” King wrote on Twitter. “I’m literally crying. So blessed/thankful.”

Hunter’s response began with a quick rundown of the class work King missed, along with some instructions for accessing a couple of videos. In the second paragraph, however, Hunter addressed the reason for King’s absence.
“In the future, if you are having trouble finding someone to watch Korbyn, please feel free to just BRING HER with you to class. I would be absolutely delighted to hold her while I teach, so that you can still pay attention to class and take notes.”
“I work for the Department of CHILD and FAMILY studies—so how terrible would it be, if I was unable to have a child visit our class?”

Hunter then reiterated the point.

“I’m very serious with this offer—just bring Korbyn with you!”
She ended her letter by officially excusing King’s absence.

The generous, heartfelt note resonated with King, and soon, she wasn’t alone. The tweet of the letter was shared more than 5,000 times and favorited more than 25,000 times.

In one sense, it’s easy to see why the note was so powerful.

In many states, colleges simply don’t offer much support for students who are mothers. 51 percent of four-year colleges offered on-campus childcare as of 2013, while only 46 percent of two-year colleges provided these services.

“It’s taking a long time for institutions of higher education to undergo a culture shift that reflects the changing demographics, and to begin to view themselves as organizations that are family-friendly—not just for faculty, but for students,” said Barbara Gault, executive director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, in an interview with The Atlantic.
“Institutions are looking desperately for places to cut. Because there’s so little awareness of the prevalence of students with children I think it often ends up looking like something that’s an extra rather than something that’s essential.”

As the IWPR notes, universities stand to benefit by accommodating students with children. In the meantime, however, professors like Dr. Hunter are an important part of the solution.

Early last fall, the world celebrated the birth of a very special baby. For the first time in history, a child was born who had the DNA of three parents, according to New Scientist. The fertility doctor behind this groundbreaking science is John Zhang—along with his team at New York’s New Hope Fertility Center.

For women with rare genetic mutations that are passed on to their babies, this technique of using the DNA from three parents could be the breakthrough that makes it possible for them to give birth to healthy children.
This very first baby was born to a family from Jordan (the family has not shared their names publicly). The mother has a genetic mutation called Leigh syndrome that is fatal to developing children.

The couple had lost four pregnancies and two children to complications related to this mutation, so they were up for trying a more unconventional approach. After nearly two decades of infertility, the couple reached out to fertility specialist Dr. Zhang.

The Science Behind the Three-Parent Baby

We’re sure you’re curious about how Zhang and his team pulled off this impressive accomplishment. We had questions, too! We did some digging to uncover the science behind the three-parent baby, and it’s nothing short of fascinating.

Leigh syndrome is a disorder of the mitochondria. In this mother’s case, 25 percent of her mitochondria had a mutation that was causing her disease. Although she exhibited no symptoms, this mutation is passed from mothers to their children.
For this mother, this meant the heartbreak of four miscarriages and the death of the two children she was able to carry—one at the age of 6 and the other at 8 months of age.

Mothers like this are exactly the people fertility specialists like Zhang and his team hope to help with their experimental techniques. In this case, a procedure called spindle nuclear transfer was used to target the problem with her mitochondria.
Using a type of gene replacement therapy, they performed a spindle transfer on oocytes of one woman to the oocytes of the mother with Leigh syndrome. This technique has gotten more attention recently as an option for preventing the transmission of mitochondrial mutations from mother to baby.

After the spindle transfer, the oocyte was then fertilized with the father’s sperm, and the mother underwent in vitro fertilization using this new, three-parent egg. Although teams of researchers have performed a spindle transfer in the past on unfertilized eggs, this is the first time a family has fertilized and brought a three-parent baby to term.

The Ethics of the Technique

One of the most fascinating aspects about this story is the extreme measures that were taken to honor the wishes the couple had to remain faithful to their religious convictions as Muslims.

In fact, the method used was not the only available option for the couple. They also could have chosen to fertilize two embryos, both the mother’s and the donor’s.
After fertilization, the nucleus of the mother’s egg would have replaced the nucleus of the donor’s egg.

Because this required discarding the nucleus of the fertilized donor egg, the couple chose what they felt was the more ethical of the two options.
Additionally, they made the decision to choose the sex of their baby to be a boy. Their hope in doing so was to break the cycle of passing down Leigh syndrome, which is inherited from the mother.

Even so, techniques such as the one used still remain controversial, especially to some pro-life organizations that have criticized this technique as extreme and risky. Because of the questions that remain concerning the ethics of a three-parent pregnancy, the New York–based clinic performed the procedure in Mexico, where no regulations exist for this type of in vitro fertilization, according to New Scientist.

Life as a Child of Three Parents

The baby was born in April 2016 and has experienced healthy development so far. After testing the little boy’s mitochondria, Zhang and his team found that only 1 percent of it carried his mother’s mutation.

Current evidence indicates that at least 18 percent of the mitochondria must carry the mutation to be harmful to the child. This seems to suggest that the three-parent child has a high chance of growing up to live a healthy life.
Just days before the baby celebrated his first birthday, Zhang and his team gave an update. At their last check-in with the family, the boy was 7 months old and showing no symptoms that indicate the mitochondrial mutation is negatively affecting his health.

At this time, the family has chosen to only monitor his symptoms, opting out of any further genetic testing unless clinically necessary.
Practically speaking, life as a child of three parents won’t look much different for him than that of a two-parent child. Although this child is biologically the child of three, typical egg donation protocols were followed.

This means the donor’s identity was kept anonymous, and the recipient couple was not in contact with the donor in any way. It doesn’t look like there are any chances of creative co-parenting agreements being made, so this baby will be raised by his mother and father—and the donor may never know her eggs were used for such a remarkable procedure.

What’s next for three-parent babies?

Since the birth of the first three-parent baby, the world of infertility treatment has reached another major milestone. In January 2017, the first three-parent baby girl was born to a family in Ukraine, according to CNN.

This specific birth was controversial, because countries such as the U.K. have only approved the use of this technique if the mother has a mitochondrial mutation. In the case of the Ukrainian couple, the mother did not have such a mutation; instead it was reported they were experiencing infertility with an unknown cause.
Another controversial aspect of this case was the fact that the baby was a girl, which brought up concerns that she may carry a mutation that could be passed to her own children.

But the couple’s medical team completed extensive testing before the decision was made to move forward with in vitro fertilization after the team discovered that no male embryo had developed.
It’s hard to say for sure what the future holds for three-parent babies. According to Zhang, the next step is simple: to continue to monitor the children born using this approach and to move forward with scientific study until further conclusions can be made concerning the safety and effectiveness of using three parents as a solution for mothers with mitochondrial mutations who are experiencing infertility.

After that, there seem to be big dreams for the future of infertility treatment, as Zhang has said he hopes to commercialize this method of infertility treatment, making it possible for older mothers experiencing infertility to conceive healthy children using the spindle nuclear transfer technique.

Having a baby is both the most wonderful and terrifying thing in the world. In the first days of a newborn’s life, parents rely heavily on nursing staff for their expert knowledge and care, especially if a baby ends up in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

No parents expect to find out that their infant has been injured while in a nurse’s care, but that’s exactly what happened to Kelsey Bond and Kyle Keller. Their infant son Kieran’s skull was fractured when a nurse fell asleep and dropped him during a nighttime feeding.

Bond and Keller were told that their son had been examined by a pediatrician and was fine, but a subsequent ultrasound showed that Kieran developed an acute subdural hematoma, a brain bleed at the base of the skull.

While Kieran is recovering, Bond plans to sue the hospital for the negligent behavior that could have resulted in her son’s death.

A similar incident gained national attention when actress Eva Amurri Martino’s son, Major, was dropped by a night nurse after she fell asleep while caring for the infant.

Like Kieran Keller, Major suffered a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain. Major has also recovered with no permanent damage, but Amurri Martino suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the incident.

Dropping infants is one of the most common causes of newborn injury, but other shocking incidents have occurred as a result of hospital staff negligence.

Nurse severed newborn’s toe.

Devante Hogue, born prematurely at 29 weeks, has several serious medical issues that caused him to remain hospitalized after his twin brother, Delante, was released. After more than eight months, Devante remained in the NICU, where his mother, Erica, trusted the nurses she had come to know well with his care.

Erica was shocked when she was notified that a nurse accidentally cut off Devante’s pinky toe as she tried to remove surgical tape from the infant’s foot. Doctors tried to reattach the infant’s toe, but were unsuccessful.

Although the hospital did apologize for the nurse’s negligence, the Hogue family is considering legal action.

Unfortunately, accidents involving newborns and infants occur more often than parents realize, as nurses are often overworked, sleep deprived, and stressed on the job. In fact, the American Nursing Association blames a chronic nurse shortage on the extreme fatigue and burnout nurses face at work.

Nurse administered fatal dose to newborns.

It’s no wonder then, that medical errors are the third most common cause of death in the United States. Although most of these medical errors are the result of accidental negligence, in the truly shocking case of nurse Genene Jones, dozens of children and infants were administered fatal overdoses on purpose.

Jones is currently serving consecutive life sentences in the deaths of two children after giving them fatal injections. It is suspected that Jones may be responsible for the deaths of more than 60 other children and babies since 1981.

Switched at Birth

Not every incident involving nursing negligence results in physical harm to a child. It may sound like the premise of a Lifetime movie, but sometimes a nurse’s negligence results in the wrong baby being taken home.

Most hospitals now require Mom, Dad, and Baby to wear matching ID bracelets to prevent such mistakes from happening. Despite such safety precautions, babies are still accidentally switched at birth.

Karin Tanabe gave birth to a healthy baby girl and allowed her new daughter to be taken to the nursery so she could rest following the birth. The next morning, her daughter was brought back to her later than she’d expected. T
he nurse told the shocked mother that her daughter had been briefly given to the wrong family.

Tanabe’s new daughter and the other mother were wearing their ID bands, but the nurse misidentified the numbers, leading her to assume that she’d given the right baby to the right parent.

While the situation was rectified quickly, the nurse’s negligence almost caused Tanabe to unknowingly leave the hospital with someone else’s child. Fortunately, the number of babies who are switched at birth does remain relatively small.

Baby Kidnapped Just Hours After Birth

Even scarier than the thought of bringing home the wrong baby is the thought of a newborn being abducted from the nursery. That’s exactly what happened in 1998, when a woman posing as a nurse kidnapped hours-old baby Kamiya.

Shanara Mobley, Kamiya’s mother, thought the woman was a nurse, and the nursing staff who interacted with her thought she was a family member.

Mobley sued and won a settlement against the hospital for negligence after her daughter’s disappearance. All leads in the baby Kamiya case ran cold for 18 years, until law enforcement tracked down Gloria Williams, who was identified as the kidnapper.

The good news is that Kamiya is a normal teenager in good health and is working on building a relationship with her biological family.

Keeping Newborns Safe

Nursing negligence is most often accidental. Exhausted nurses are just as likely to drop a newborn as a sleep-deprived new mother is. 

Overworked hospital staff with several patients under their care are not likely to notice every visitor in the maternity ward.

Parents can take several precautions to keep their newborns safe while they are under hospital care. If your baby is healthy, request to “room-in” rather than send the baby to the nursery.

Rooming in allows Baby to stay in the room with Mom and Dad until it is time to go home. This ensures that babies are under the watchful eye of their parents during any procedures.

If rooming in isn’t an option, parents can still be proactive about ensuring their newborn’s safety during a lengthy hospital stay. Check your hospital’s Leapfrog scores to see how they compare with other hospitals in the area.

Does the hospital have a NICU on site? What is the doctor/nurse/patient ratio? Fewer newborn accidents occur in the NICU with specially trained nurses equipped to handle the needs of high-risk babies. In addition, the lower the staff to patient ratio, the more likely that your baby will receive the attention and care they need.

Hospitals too are working to ensure that fewer accidents involving newborns and infants occur. Well-rested nurses are more alert and attentive, resulting in fewer incidents of negligence.

In 2016, nurses in Washington state won their case against Tacoma General Hospital, resulting in more rest breaks that do not burden other nursing staff or require the nurse on break to be on call during their break.

In addition to matching ID bands, one hospital in Idaho has added extra security measures in the maternity ward. At Portneuf Medical Center, security checks are done weekly to ensure all equipment is properly functioning, and all maternity staff participate in at least nine security drills per year.

In addition, babies are fitted with an extra security band that will sound an alarm if it gets too near an elevator or door.

Even though hospitals are working toward reducing nursing negligence, parents should always trust their instincts. Kelsey Bond, the mother of Kieran Keller, said she “had a gut feeling everything wasn’t ok.” She was right, and her actions may have saved her son’s life.

Raising children might just be the world’s toughest job. Science shows that good parenting has a lot to do with how kids turn out. With all the conflicting parenting advice available today, it’s hard to know if you’re making the right choices.

Has your latest decision just set your kids up for a lifetime of success or doom them to live in your basement forever? One action probably won’t bring about either of these extremes, but there are parenting behaviors that seem to help kids thrive. Take some of the guesswork out of parenting with these 11 ways to raise [linkbuilder id=”6498″ text=”successful kids”].

1. Praise effort over achievement.

When your kid brings home a stellar report card, a parent’s natural inclination may be to praise the achievement itself, with something like, “You’re so smart! I knew you’d make all As!” However, this kind of praise may set your child up for failure later in life.

Instead, parents should teach their kids to have a “growth mindset.” Children who learn to focus on the process of achieving goals instead of the achievement itself are often more successful. Rather than praising your kid for being so smart, focus your praise on the effort he or she must have put in to making good grades.
When parents value effort over achievement, children learn to appreciate setbacks, using them to overcome obstacles rather than be defeated by them.

2. Assign chores.

It might seem easier to just take care of chores yourself instead of supervising your children as they wash dishes, clean their room, or take out the trash. But having your kids complete chores is actually instrumental to their success.

Studies show that when kids have regular chores, they are more likely to be responsible, do well in school, and have fewer discipline problems than kids who did no chores at home.

3. Teach early math skills.

Most parents read their children nightly bedtime stories, but how many focus on bedtime math equations?

It turns out that kids who learn early math skills are not only better at math once they reach school age, but they also develop better reading skills. They have higher rates of college enrollment too.
Children who learn early math skills are successful later in life for several reasons. Kids who are focused on math from a young age tend to make better grades and thus feel more confident in their overall abilities, which leads to success in other areas.

Early math skills may also help children improve executive function skills, which help people organize and complete tasks efficiently—a hallmark of successful adults.

4. Get involved academically.

In addition to learning early math skills, children are more successful when their parents are involved in their education.

Kids are more likely to have better social skills and behavior, get better grades, and attend college when parents are actively involved in their academic life.
Parents can engage in a child’s academics in a variety of ways:

• Regularly attend parent–teacher conferences
• Participate in school fundraising with children

• Volunteer in the classroom or at school events
• Continue learning activities at home

5. Teach kids healthy habits.

The most successful adults practice healthy habits. The earlier kids learn about healthy nutrition and exercise, the more likely they are to stick to these habits as adults. Kids who eat a healthy diet have improved brain function. A healthy diet also improves school attendance, behavior, and test scores.

Parents can lead by example when teaching kids healthy habits. Get kids moving on a family bike ride or hike, or prepare healthy meals together to teach kids the basics of nutrition.

6. Lead by example.

Kids are incredibly empathetic and are susceptible to emotional contagion, a behavior in which one person’s emotions affect the behaviors and emotions of another. For example, if you’re stressed by a work situation, you may be more distant and irritable at home.

Your kids see your actions and may begin to mimic your emotions and behaviors. If these are negative and unproductive, children’s grades might slip or they may withdraw socially.
Parents can lead by example when it comes to managing stress. When your stress level is reduced, your kids will benefit too.

7. Practice mindful meditation.

In addition to stress management, parents who teach meditation to their kids can have positive effects on a child’s attention span, grades, and overall mental health.

Individuals who meditate are generally happier and less anxious. Meditation is often not an option in an already jam-packed school day, but parents can set aside time at home each day for kids to meditate. Institute a family quiet time before dinner each day for kids to totally unplug from devices, take a break from homework, and generally relax.

8. Take a step back.

Although coined in 1969, the term “helicopter parent” just gained widespread notoriety a few years ago. It refers to parents who are overly focused on their children, hovering over them like helicopters.

Although parents might think being involved in all aspects of their kids’ lives is proactive, it may do more harm than good.
For kids to be successful, parents should actually take a step back. Allow kids to make mistakes, take risks, and work through situations on their own. Of course, this doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t be involved; obviously parents should intervene if a child is in a dangerous situation.

But when parents limit their involvement in certain areas, kids learn to be self-reliant, a key tool for success.

9. Let kids follow their passions.

Kids dream of being everything from a rock star to the first farmer on Mars when they grow up. Instead of squelching their dreams, encourage kids’ passions, however outlandish they might seem.

Parents often measure their child’s success in terms of exclusive college admissions or high-paying careers. However, when kids are allowed to pursue their dreams, they are much more likely to be successful in their chosen field. After all, a kid who wants to be the first farmer on Mars might just be the first scientist to discover life on other planets.

10. Build a community.

Humans are not meant to be solitary creatures. Children especially thrive when they have a strong sense of community. Kids who develop strong ties to others have stronger social skills. They are also better at overall communication and problem solving.
There are many ways parents can help children build community bonds. Here are just a few ideas to get started:

• Have your kids volunteer once a month at the charitable organization of their choice.

• Get them involved in a recreational sports team or a club at school.
• Have them participate in community cleanup efforts.

11. Get advice from parents of successful kids.

Sometimes it’s nice to get advice from parents who have raised successful kids. Some parents set high academic expectations. Others allow children to pursue their natural talents. One family might have a weekly family meeting for better communication. Each [linkbuilder id=”6499″ text=”parenting style”] is different.

The one thing these parents have in common? They all agree there is no “right” way to raise successful kids. But these tips can help parents raise self-reliant children who are at a greater advantage academically, are socially adept, and care about their community.
Ann Landers, the iconic advice columnist, summed it up perfectly when she wrote, “It is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.”

When we added a third child to our family, I was overwhelmed by the workload of caring for three kids under the age of 5. Most days, I was so distracted by the round-the-clock feedings, diaper changes, and trying to get dinner on the table, my only goal was to make it to the end of the day.

I hate to admit it, but during that season of survival, I found myself turning a blind eye to little misbehaviors from my toddlers on a regular basis. It seemed easier at the time to just pick up the blocks myself instead of engaging in a full-on toddler battle again and again.
The reality is, I paid for it in the long run. Now that my third is becoming a little more independent, I am finding myself working double time trying to teach my daughters to do what they’re asked and to be kind to the other members of our family.

What I’m saying is, I definitely understand the all-consuming, completely overwhelming job that is parenthood. Simply making sure your kids are safe, dressed, and fed can quickly fill up a day, but these things hardly make up the whole of parenting.
Of course, there is so much more that goes into parenting, and guiding our kids on the path to being kind and responsible people is one of the most consuming tasks.

With all of the day-to-day demands of caring for our kids, it’s easy to lose track of the long-term work of teaching them how to behave. It’s totally okay to let a few things slide every now and again, but there are some behaviors you simply can’t ignore. If you notice any of these six little behavior problems surface in your child, it’s time to buckle down and address them right away.

1. Telling Little White Lies

Fibbing about how many snacks they had at school or exaggerating the details of a story may seem harmless enough, but telling little white lies can become a habit. And once a habit of exaggerating the truth is created, these little untruths can grow into more harmful lies with long-term consequences.

Addressing lying can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to be a dramatic interaction between you and your child. Instead, the experts at Positive Parenting recommend that you start by avoiding any questions that could give your child a chance to lie.
If you know they ate three cookies, don’t give them the opportunity to say differently. If your children still chooses to deny the truth, make sure they know you know exactly what took place. There’s no reason to play games in an effort to convince them to fess up.

Moving forward, take a proactive approach to addressing lying. Make sure your kids know you want to hear the truth no matter what has happened. This is a good opportunity to teach your child that everyone makes mistakes, but owning up to the things we have done wrong is a big part of growing up to be mature adults.

2. Ignoring You When You’re Talking to Them

It may be typical to have trouble getting your kids to listen, but if your child is making a habit of intentionally ignoring your directions, they need to know that isn’t okay. Selective hearing starts early.

It may not seem all that emergent when your toddler has to be told five times to stop picking their nose or your preschooler has to be reminded a half dozen times to get dressed for school. But when you ignore this behavior, you’re sending a message that you’re not really in charge.
It is reasonable to expect your child to listen and obey most of the time. If that isn’t happening in your home, we’ve got a few ideas that may help you out.

First, we suggest you stop repeating yourself altogether. Make eye contact with your child before giving them directions and then give them one chance to hear what you have to say. If they decide to ignore you, impose the appropriate consequences.
Whenever possible, make these consequences match the crime.

A young child who didn’t put her shoes on may have to sit on the porch while her siblings play, since it would hurt her feet to be barefoot. An older child who had to be reminded to complete their chores may need to stay home from an activity to make time for them to finish the uncompleted tasks.

3. Intentionally Hurting Others

If you are going to draw a line in the sand over any misbehavior, it should be intentionally hurting others. Young kids start testing boundaries early. For many kids, hitting, kicking, or biting are simply ways to express their anger.

As their parent, it is your job to teach them appropriate methods for expressing what they feel, making sure they understand it is never okay to inflict harm on another person.
Curtailing a hitting habit requires regular intervention when your child is upset, according to parenting expert Dr. Bill Sears. On Ask Dr. Sears, he suggests that parents begin by gaining an understanding of why their child is upset and help them out by providing the words to match how they feel.
For young kids, gently stop them from hitting or biting and remove them from the situation, telling them they are not allowed to hurt others.

To proactively address hitting, Dr. Sears also recommends parents model nonaggression and healthy expression of anger in front of their children.

4. Having an Attitude

It doesn’t take long for a new talker to learn the word “no!” and start using it on their parents. It may be cute to watch a little one toddle around barking orders at anyone in earshot, but a tiny attitude can quickly morph into a monstrous habit of disrespect.

You won’t regret making the time to teach your child to curb their ‘tude. For many little ones, disrespect is connected to experiencing strong emotions and feeling ill equipped to express and manage those emotions.
Talking about feelings openly with your kids is an effective way to begin to teach them the emotional intelligence they will need as they grow up, according to Zero to Three.

When your child responds with an attitude, empathize with their emotions and help them find the vocabulary they need to get their feelings out there. Try this: “Wow, you seem angry because I asked you to clean up after yourself. Let’s take a few deep breaths together and then you can do what I asked.”

5. Running Away From Others

In our house, this little misbehavior most frequently shows up at bedtime. Mommy and Daddy are exhausted. Our little ones can sense our complacency and take off running when we try to get them ready for bed. It’s so tempting to just ignore it, especially if you want to avoid a bedtime meltdown. But running away can turn into a safety problem.

When you are in public, it is so important that your kids stay nearby to avoid getting hurt in parking lots or lost in the store. For very young kids, respectful-parenting expert Janet Lansbury suggests parents begin with prevention.
Simply don’t give your child the opportunity to run away. Secure them in a stroller or hold their hand in public.

If your child gets away from you anyway, Lansbury suggests parents not give this boundary-testing behavior much power. Instead, calmly take hold of your child and let them know you’re there to help them listen so they can stay safe.

6. Interrupting Others When They’re Talking

Most kids aren’t trying to misbehave when they start interrupting others when they’re talking, but this can turn into a rude habit they carry into adulthood. If your child is having trouble controlling their excitement and regularly butting in on conversations, it is important to teach them the patience they need to wait their turn.

One popular method to help kids learn not to interrupt is teaching them to put their hand on your shoulder or thigh when they have something to say. Acknowledge your child’s presence by touching their hand, but continue your conversation until you are finished.
Once you are through, turn to your child and give them your full attention while they talk. It may take time, but consistently using this little trick will pay off in the long run.