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Happiest_Baby32 karma

That's fantastic!

You have two jobs with the calming reflex. One is to turn it on, and the other is to keep it turned on. When you put her in bed, you want to continue some of the 5 S's, like snug swaddling and the right type of white noise.

Over the first six months of life, one of your big jobs as a parent is to teach your baby to feel secure and trusting. So you really want to respond to her fussing whenever you can. That's what teaches her to have confidence in the people who love her. After nine months there will be plenty of opportunities to teach her what discipline means and limit setting. Now the goal is to build her trust and confidence.

Happiest_Baby26 karma

I was interested in all areas of medicine but working in the South Bronx with underprivileged kids, I was so amazed by their resilience and I felt so good as a doctor to be able to make a difference and be able to relieve their suffering that it captured my heart. And maybe I always to be able to tell my parents what they should do - I like giving other parents advice.

I almost went into pediatric cardiology. I trained in that for a year, but I missed dealing with the whole child and the whole family. For the last twenty years, what I've been most interested in is trying to solve problems that hadn't been solved before. That's what drew me to the issue of crying babies and sleep. I was especially motivated to do this when I worked at the UCLA emergency room in the 1980s and had to care for children who were seriously injured or even killed by their parents for no other reason but they were crying. It just made no sense to me that we could put a man on the moon but we couldn't teach parents how to calm their babies better.

Happiest_Baby12 karma

Great question. Of course, none of us can predict the future, but I feel as a pediatrician I've been particularly focused on not just preventing unsafe issues, but adding safety. Exhaustion is the number one stress on new parents. It can trigger post-partum depression, child abuse, unsafe sleeping practices and infant sleep deaths, breastfeeding failure, car accidents, over-treatment with medication, marital stress, and even obesity of the mother and child. I am very hopeful that by reducing a child's crying, improving their sleep, and being able to keep babies in the safest position - on the back, all night - for the first six months, will significantly improve the health babies and their parents.

One last thing - we have had our product reviewed by several independent safety experts to make sure we are doing everything possible to create the best bed for our babies.

Happiest_Baby12 karma

I feel so terrible that parents have the worry that their child could be autistic. This is an area where I feel that our medical leaders have to do a much better job. During the decades that I've been a pediatrician, I've seen the number of children rise dramatically with the diagnosis of autism. There is a ton of evidence that this is not related to vaccines, but I am very concerned that it could be related to chemical exposure during pregnancy. We are exposed to so many endocrine disrupting chemicals in our personal care products, in cleaning products that can have all sort of effects on the developing child. It's why I feel deeply committed to reducing environmental exposures in children. For the past five years, I've been on the board of directors for Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) and I highly recommend you take a look there for suggestions on how to keep your house as safe and healthy as possible.

I don't think I'd worry about this yet (she's clearly indicated what she wants by her gaze.) One thing I would do is to spend a little time trying to teach her sign language. A 1-year-old can usually learn several signs like milk, blanket, flower, dog, etc. When she interacts with you and shows interest in the things you are sharing with her, that's a nice sign of her being at the appropriate level of social development.

Happiest_Baby11 karma

Two year olds are notoriously picky. They seem to survive just on air, bread, and cheese. In truth, they are gaining weight very slowly so they don't need a lot of calories. Usually you can wait them out a little rather than going right to fried and sugary stuff. You can also offer them a little healthy food first and then they can the more junky food afterwards. In general I find that even a two year old can help you a little bit with making the meal and the more they feel involved the more they can participate with eating. (Of course this is effective for kids four years and older.) One other thing is to hide healthy food in the food you are giving, like mixing pureed carrots and broccoli into pancakes. There's a great book called "Deceptively Delicious" by Jessica Seinfeld that can give you some tips on this.