Building A Foundation - Your Child's Development from 0 to 2 Months

From their first hour alive, babies begin to learn about the world around them. Our support, attention, awareness, and response, will have a very strong influence on their social, emotional, intellectual, motor, and language development.

One of the most important things you can do for your newborn is to help them feel comfortable in their surroundings. They are just starting to regulate their eating, sleeping, and emotions, that is why finding out what soothes and distresses them is very valuable. Always respond to their cries as this is important for their social and emotional development. It also nurtures trust, confidence, and self-soothing.

Even though we may not realize it, newborns use their body movements, facial expressions and sounds to communicate their feelings. Things like looking away, arching their backs, or frowning when they need to take a break. They will have different cries for when they want to eat, sleep or get a change of diaper. Acknowledging and responding to them will help build a positive sense of self and will encourage them to continue to communicate. (source)

To further develop a newborn's communication skills talk and sing to them. Tell them what you are doing and what they are doing. See if there are sights and sounds they like. Find toys or everyday items with different colours and textures and let them explore. In fact your face and those of loved ones will be what baby will find most fascinating. You can play with them by putting your face close to theirs and letting them look at you and touch you. Play a game of naming the parts of your face they are touching and do the same to them.

The most important thing you can do the first two months is to always respond to your baby, pay attention to what they need and provide them with what that may be. All this will contribute to the foundation for their social, emotional, and language development.

Breast-Feeding Challenges

I received an article from a friend entitled 'Five breast-feeding mistakes new moms make, and how to fix them', needless to say I was very interested to see what these mistakes were and what solutions they proposed. The article is from CNN and you can view it here.

Here are the five mistakes:

1. Moms go at it alone

The article suggests that new mothers should seek out support groups where they can get advice on technique and emotional support. I have to say that I agree with what they suggest, I know from experience that breast-feeding does not come 'naturally' no matter how much people may tell you. I went to the classes and read the books and got the manuals but until I had someone (my doula) actually put my breast into the baby's mouth and show me how to do it I was completely lost. There is no doubt that we can always use more support as new mothers and you never know what great tip someone will give you.

2. Moms forget about their successful breast-feeding friends

In other words they suggest that you invite a friend who was successful in breast-feeding and have them help you out. I say why not, it will certainly NOT hurt and you will get a great deal of insider information.

3. Moms assume that they don't have enough milk

The article proposes that you rethink your baby's nursing behaviour. I think that as a new mom you never really realize that a baby will eat pretty much every two hours for the first few months. And that depending on how fast they eat it can feel like you are feeding every hour. I really think that you should not be focusing on ounces at the beginning. You really must take your cues from the weight the baby is putting on. The important thing is to speak with your health care provider and explain the baby's feeding habits and get their input. And believe me, there will be days every once in a while when you will feel like the only thing you did that day was breast-feed. These are the wonderful growth spurts.

4. Moms get intimidated breast-feeding in public

The article recommends that you have a snappy comment or reply for anyone who should actually say something to you. I have to admit that it took me a couple of months to feel comfortable breast-feeding in pubic. I was not uncomfortable about the idea of it, I just felt very clumsy doing it. It took me a while to really get the positioning right for breast-feeding, but once I did, I could feed anywhere. And by that time, I could not care what people thought, said or felt about the it. I was always respectful of where I breast-fed and was certainly not in anyone's face.

One thing to note is that breast-feeding in public is not for everyone, but it should not deter you from going out with your baby in the early days. It is always good to know the places that offer a private place where you can breast-feed. For instance I knew what stores in the mall had big stalls where I could go into and take 10 minutes to feed. No one will say anything and if they do, ignore them.

5. Moms panic when milk doesn't gush out

I don't really understand why this is a 'mistake' mostly because I knew after reading the books and going to my pre-natal classes that you did not get your milk right away. For this reason I was not exactly worried, I also did not try to measure my milk output. In many ways you don't want your milk to gush out as it will be very annoying. Certainly the baby does not like since it throws them off and they can choke on too much milk all at once. All I can say is don't worry, your milk will come in two to four days after birth and when it does you will know it. Also you don't really want it to gush out ever because when it does it will be when you are in public wearing a nice shirt.

Those are the top 5 mistakes new moms make about breast-feeding. I really would not call any of them mistakes, because for something to be a mistake you have to already know what is the right thing to do and for many new mothers this is certainly not always the case.

If you would like to share your breast-feeding tips, please leave a comment. There is no doubt that new mothers would really appreciate it.

Everything I Needed to Know About Raising Babies I Learned From My Mom-Friends

The tittle is one from a great article written by award-winning journalist and author Ann Douglas. If you are new to the parenting world you may not have come across her yet, but believe me, you will. She has written the best selling 'The Mother of All' books, with her newest book being 'Meal Time Solutions for your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler'.

This article caught my attention because I recently met up with a new friend who is expecting her first baby in a month. At our meeting we started talking about things that you are not really told but should be. As Ann Douglas says...

You can wear out your mouse-pad surfing all the top ranked baby websites, fill your shopping cart to overflowing with the must-read baby magazines, manuals, and momoirs, but, in the end, it’s your mom-friends who tell you what you really need to know. Here are six all-important lessons about motherhood that I learned from other moms.


1. Only supermodels shed their baby weight by the six-week checkup. (Okay supermodel mommies and their biological equivalents. You’ll meet the odd non-supermodel who manages to get skinny fast, but she’s the exception rather than the rule. The rest of us take months (or longer) to lose our baby bellies.) So don’t measure yourself against the super-crazy supermodel mommy weight loss standards unless you want to start speed-dialing the therapists of the rich and famous.

2. Your partner is not “the enemy”. It just feels that way at 3 am. It’s easy to start staring daggers at your sleeping partner, particularly if you’re convinced he’s ignoring your baby’s middle-of-the-night cries, just so he can snatch a few more minutes of uninterrupted sleep. Before you pack your bags and hop the next train to Splitsville, take it from other moms who’ve been there: He’s not a selfish swine: he’s just a sound sleeper. Scientists have discovered that dads simply don’t hear babies’ cries as well as moms do in the night. Of course, you can help him to hear better by giving him a gentle poke or prod if you need some middle-of-the-night support. There’s no scientific research to show that Dads can’t be roused to provide hands-on help to moms.)

3. Germs have been getting a bad rap. Studies have shown that taking things to extremes on the housecleaning front can increase children’s likelihood of developing allergies. In other words, a few germs can be a good things as far as kids are concerned. So relax a little and consider giving your inner Martha Stewart the day off every now and again.

4. Every mom needs time off for good behavior. Whether you take your time off across town, around the corner, or in your bathtub with the door locked is up to you. (Not every new mom wants to venture too far away from her baby, after all.) But taking some sort of break from baby will give you the chance to recharge your maternal batteries and get reacquainted with your pre-baby self. (Remember her?)

5. Time doesn’t move at a predictable speed once you’ve become a mother. Some days—the not-so-great days—tick by painfully slowly. Then entire months flip by in roughly the same amount of time in takes to flip a page on your calendar. S-l-o-w d-o-w-n, speedup, s-l-o-w d-o-w-n, speedup: it reminds you of the way your Slinky used to flip-flop down the stairs when you were a child, gathering up speed and taking on a life of its own.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about pregnancy and parenting, including—most recently—Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler and Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler. Visit her on the web at www.motherofallblogs.com.

All five things that Ann Douglas mentions I learned through the mom group which I joined when my daughter was a few months old. The group was one of my support structures, we would share our troubles, our struggles but most importantly our accomplishments and joys. To this day we are still there for each other to offer support and advice and to share in our children's milestones.

If you are interested in joining a mom group, take a look at the many already created at Baby Thoughts.ca. If you don't find one that fits your needs, create one, because you never know who else is also looking to join a group with the same preferences.