aka the shopping list
aka the vitamin schedule
aka what to cook, when, and how
aka what Chloe done ate
From Quora: What are some good tips on getting along well with kids?:
Marcello: "The first thing that comes to mind is play lots of recordings of people speaking many different languages (preferably, pick something from each language family.) IIRC some part of the auditory cortex imprints on as allowable language sounds in the first year or two, so if you do this, you'll give her a huge unfair advantage at learning foreign languages."
I was talking to a pediatrician who said that if babies taste a food 6-10 times before they start to walk, then they'll develop a lasting taste for that food, but that once they start to walk, they distrust any new tastes. So the idea there would be to make sure she eats a little of every food you want her to like to eat 6-10 times before then.
Backed up by this article: they start swallowing (and tasting) amniotic fluid at 12 weeks, so the mother's taste influence extends from then to when breastfeeding stops.
Then there's swimming at six months, rock climbing at two years, and I guess designing nanotechnological chainswords at sixteen. That should be about it, really.
Ask for the umbilical cord to not be clipped for X(?) minutes, to allow the rest of the baby's blood to go into the body (until it stops pulsing). Dr. Greene was saying how 1/3 of the blood is in there, and if you cut it right away, the baby gets a shock and is anemic and such. The hospital will avoid clipping it at first if you ask for it, but otherwise they do it immediately.
Put babies in special dirt mixture in first 72 hours to boost immune system when they think everything is them--says Derrick, gotta Google it.
"Talk to me. I'm in a critical period." onesie. Because talking to the baby a lot is important. Also get a Lena monitor to count the words.
For vaccination information, search for "[twister] vaccinations" in my email: basically, don't vaccinate combined or early, and skip most of the ones that aren't really dangerous.
Normal twin rates are somewhere between 0.009% and 1.8%, probably closest to 1.25%. Note that twinning is riskier than doing a singleton, but may not be more risky than doing two singletons if properly managed.
I'll break out each specific recommendation in the book here so we can decide what we do and don't want to follow.
Drink lots of pure water.
Drink herbal teas up to one cup of green tea per day.
Avoid juice, soda, and sports drinks.Eat a high-fat diet, especially during pregnancy.
Eat pink salt (Himalayan or Utah).
Avoid normal table salt (sodium + anticaking aluminum).
Drink half a teaspoon of salt mixed in a large glass of water right after you wake up.
Avoid statins.
Cook slowly on low heat.
Don't fry, even panfrying, but especially grilling and deep frying.
Avoid blackening and charring.
Avoid browning (Maillard reaction, or even air-exposed browning like on fruit).
Avoid pasteurization, especially pasteurized dairy products.
Avoid homogenized dairy products.
Avoid even raw milk from Holsteins (most of American cows).Avoid cheese, especially soft and/or pasteurized cheese.
Eat a large percentage of your diet raw.
Don't overheat fats (oxidization) or proteins (denaturing).
Avoid genetically modified foods, usually including canola, corn, cottonseed, soybeans, maltodextrin, soy lecithin; sometimes including zucchini, yellow squash, papaya, rennet, aspartame, and sugar beets. (Eating organic avoids GMO.)
Eat olive oil (and other monounsaturated fats) only unheated.
Cook with butter, ghee, coconut oil, palm oil, lard or bacon fat from pastured pigs, and tallow from grass-fed cows.
Avoid canola, corn, cottonseed, peanut, safflower, soybean, sunflower, and vegetable oils, as well as chicken fat.
Avoid restaurant food that contains bad oils (pretty much all of it). Restaurant fallback: lightly grilled fish or steamed vegetables tossed in butter or real olive oil.
Avoid processed foods and trans fats (anything with any hydrogenated oil ingredient) except conjugated linoleic acid.
Avoid excess sugar and carbohydrate intake.
Avoid fructose (so limit fruit and watch out for HFCS and agave syrup).
Up to 25g of fructose a day in the form of raw honey or fruit are safe and help sleep when eaten at night.
Avoid MSG (common in Chinese food, fast food, and soy sauce).
Avoid aspartame, acesulfame K, saccharin, and sucralose (Splenda).
Avoid all grains except rice, especially wheat and corn.
Avoid legumes (including soy, peanuts, and lentils). Some non-processed, fermented, non-GMO soy products are okay.
Avoid yeast.
Mushrooms: there are many unknowns, so Dave just played it safe and avoided.
Avoid decaffeinated coffee and black tea.
Limit coffee to maybe once every two weeks, organic, low-toxin beans, prepared as espresso. Or just don't.
Avoid garlic and onions; if you do eat garlic, eat it raw.
Avoid mercury-bearing seafood: shark, swordfish, tilefish, king mackerel, catfish, cod, crab, Great Lakes salmon, halibut, lake whitefish, largemouth bass, mahi mahi, marlin, pike, pollock, sea bass, tuna (steaks or canned), walleye, white croaker, and all shellfish (lobster, clams, oysters, mussles, squid, scallops, and shrimp). Lower levels of mercury are found also in black and red grouper, bluefish, bonito, flounder, lake trout, orange roughy, perch, porgy, red snapper, rockfish, sole, and yellowtail.
Avoid farm-raised fish (because they eat grain, soy, rendered poultry litter, GMO, etc.). Only if it says "wild" is it wild, not "fresh".
Eat lots of these wild fish: flounder, haddock, Pacific sockeye salmon, Petrale sole, sardines, wild tilapia, and wild freshwater sport fish like trout.
Where is herring here?
Avoid cured or any precooked meats, including deli meats and hot dogs, because of nitrites, nitrates, or potential Listeria contamination.
Avoid these herbs: barberry, blue cohosh, celandine, dong quai, ephedra, ginseng, goldenseal, guarana, kola nut, passion flower, pau d'arco, pennyroyal, Roman chamomile, saw palmetto, and yohimbe--and probably black cohosh during pregnancy without professional oversight.
Avoid canned foods because of BPA (especially acidic foods) and preservatives. Dehydrated, shrink-wrapped, or jarred foods are better ways to consume preserved foods.
Avoid leftovers--old food can be very easily contaminated with bacteria and mold, especially after being cooked once.
Avoid grocery story leftovers: anything perishable, precooked, prepackaged cooked "fresh" food, unfrozen "ready to eat" food, and any "fresh" meats, cheeses, or other foods that sit in a display case.
Avoid restaurant "leftovers" (most restaurant foods are precooked or prepared as much as several days in advance).
If a food can be frozen, freeze it and use it directly out of the freezer.
If a food must be a leftover, freeze it right away and heat it up directly from freezer, without a microwave.
Avoid non-organic apples, cantaloupe, carrots, celery, cherries, coffee, cucumbers, imported grapes, bell peppers, green beans, kale, lettuce, nectarines, peaches, pears, spinach, and straberries.
You can eat non-organic asparagus, avocados, bananas, broccoli, brussels, sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, domestic grapes, kiwi, mangoes, papaya, pineapple, plums, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and watermelon.
Rough breakdowns: 1-2 servings of fruit, 4-6 servings of animal protein, 5-9 servings of healthy fats, and 6-11 servings of healthy vegetables. (This ends up with about 50% of calories from fat, 29% from vegetables, 18% from protein, and 3% from fruit.)
Eat tons of organic eggs from pastured hens. ("Free-range" is still decent, but "pastured" is worth it.) Eating four eggs a day most days isn't a bad idea, and eating at least two near-daily is strongly recommended. (Choline is very important.)
Eat egg yolks only soft-cooked or raw, not hard-cooked, so as to avoid oxidizing them. That is, the yolks should be runny. The whites should not be crisp or browned at the edges.
Salmonella is incredibly rare (0.005%, and that's including factory-farmed eggs), and even then it's only on the shell. Just don't eat eggs with cracked shells. If you're going to eat raw eggs, wash the shells before cracking them, possibly with a few drops of grapefruit seed extract in a bowl of water.Add raw egg yolks to smoothies.
Cook eggs in frying pan with lots of butter on very low heat until egg white is soft but solid, using culinary torch to cook any still-runny whites while leaving yolk raw, or by very briefly flipping the egg.
Strongly need some coconut oil for MCTs and lauric acid, which MCT oil doesn't have. With coconut oil, MCT oil is good but not necessary. Eating coconut oil, MCT oil, or fresh young coconuts almost every day is a good idea.Coconut oil and MCT oil are good for gentle cooking (not frying), as well as adding to salads and smoothies. 4-6 tbsp per day (not necessarily together) or more is a good eventual target.
Very good to mix different fats, like coconut oil, avocados, beef, lamb, butter, ghee, raw egg yolks, wild caught sockeye salmon, and perhaps fish oil supplements.
When buying coconuts: fresh organic young coconuts in produce section (white-husked, not the brown ones). Organic dried shredded coconut without added sugar is fine, too.
When buying coconut oil: cold-processed (strong flavor) or expeller-pressed (little flavor).Organic extra-virgin olive oil is good for dressing, but never for heating. It lasts a year, tops.
Cook meat to no more than medium. Cooking in oven at 250-300 and taking it out when it's 115-118 inside is good.
It's useful to ask whether a "grass-fed" meat was also "grass-finished", because it's not necessarily so.
Pork, duck, and goose are okay, but it's critical to cook it gently with no charring or crisping (even though you have to cook it thoroughly to be safe). Duck and goose are best when wild game. Pork must be pastured.Avoid chicken and turkey.
Favorite vegetables: raw carrots, broccoli, red and green cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens, kale, radishes, asparagus, artichokes, celery, cucumbers, fennel, green beans, dark green lettuce, parsley, spinach, winter squash (like butternut), and summer squash (like zucchini).
High-sugar vegetables like beets, peas, plantains, potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams, and winter squash should be eaten infrequently, once a day or less, and for dinner rather than breakfast.
Nightshades (eggplant, bell peppers, hot peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes) vary in sensitivity from person to person, so if sensitive, they're worth removing.
Dressing template: one or more healthy fats; vinegar, lemon juice, or something else acidic; an emulsifier (avocado, egg yolk, or non-GMO lecithin); spices and herbs.
Satisfying salad dressing: blend 1/2 avocado, 2 tbsp coconut oil, 3 tbsp MCT oil, 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar, 1/3 medium cucumber, salt to taste, pinch of xylitol, and (fresh cilantro | oregano | sweet or spicy pepper).
Eat sweet potatoes infrequently, with lots of butter or with protein.
Eat vegetables in general with substantial amounts of healthy fat and protein.Salad suggestion: chopped vegetables with salmon, avocado, nuts, and a dressing made with MCT or olive oil.
Eat 75% of vegetables raw.If worried about bacteria on raw vegetables, then soak in water mixed with ~10 drops of Lugol's iodine or GSE for a minute first.
Lightly cooking broccoli, spinach, rhubarb, and tomatoes is good.
Baking, broiling, steaming, and boiling are better than frying, sautéing, or grilling.
Never eat buckwheat greens, cassava, legumes, or parsnips raw.
Eating avocado with salad makes the rest of the salad a lot healthier. Eating one avocado per day is good.
Juicing vegetables is good, but not quite as good as eating whole vegetables because it lacks most of the fiber.
If having problems with bowel regularity (common in pregnancy), taking a dietary fiber supplement like pectin may be a good idea.
Low-sugar fruits are good: lemons, limes, blackberries, cranberries, passion fruit, raspberries, and strawberries.
Average-sugar fruits should be eaten as a treat only once or twice a week: apples, apricots, blueberries, cantaloupe, cherries, kiwi, nectarines, oranges, papaya, peaches, pears, pineapple, and plums.
High-sugar fruits should not be eaten except in very small amounts: bananas, dates, figs, grapes, guava, lychee, mangoes, melons, persimmon, pomegranate, tangerines, raisins, and any other dried fruits.
Eat whole, organic, raw, and preferrably refrigerated almonds, cashews, chestnuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, and walnuts, and any mold-free pistachios.
Refrigerate your nuts.Avoid roasted nuts, soy nuts, peanuts, corn nuts, and brazil nuts.
Raw almond butter is great.
It's crucial to supplement with hydrolyzed collagen protein, 2-4 tbsp per day, in smoothies or water.
Supplementing with 2tbsp of granular organic or non-GMO soy lecithin is helpful if not eating four eggs a day. Refrigerate, don't cook, and can make any smoothie/salad dressing/coconut-based ice cream thicker and creamier.
It's good to eat fresh organic cilantro. (At least get the baby used to tasting it.)
Ginger decreases nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, and should just generally be eaten: grate ginger into salad dressing, make Thai-style sauces, or make ginger tea.
Other good spices: parsley, oregano, turmeric, rosemary, lavendar, thyme, cinnamon, all-spice, and cloves.
Bad spices: mustard, garlic, onion, black pepper, fermented soy, tamari, miso, nutmeg, table salt, commercial salad dressings, yeast, "spices", "flavorings", MSG.
Organic white rice is the only grain to eat--although it's not healthy, it's the healthiest pure carbohydrate. For starchy carbs, the butternut squash/sweet potato/yam thing is significantly better than rice.
Low-temperature processed, nonhydrolyzed, grass-fed whey protein (or goat whey protein to avoid cow whey allergies) is good, 1-2 tbsp per day, important if not eating meat/eggs/collagen. Add to smoothies or water.
Morning Smoothie with Whey Protein:
To add flavor, use one or more of the following:
Blend all ingredients except the whey and collagen proteins until smooth. Then add the two proteins and blend just until smooth, being careful not to overblend the second time. Overblending can damage some of the delicate whey protein structures. This will make the smoothie less beneficial for you, though not harmful. If you're in a rush and just need to get some protein into your body for quick energy because you don't have time to eat a real meal, put 1 to 3 tablespoons of whey protein in a few ounces of water, add 1-2 tablespoons of MCT oil, shake, and drink.
Eat as much xylitol as desired. Xylitol should come from American hardwood, not corn.
Raw honey is okay sometimes, but xylitol is way better. Most other sugars/sweeteners are really bad.
Eating 45g of 85% chocolate every day is normally great. When pregnant, limit to 2-3 squares of very dark chocolate 2-3 times per week to limit caffeine, or just don't eat.
Pure raw organic cocoa butter (just the healthy fat from chocolate) is great to eat or to shave into hot drinks.
Store chocolate in the refrigerator or freezer after opening.
Eating grass-fed meat once a day is about right.
If you must eat beans, get some lectin-blocking supplements to go with them.
Adding lots of butter to soups, sauces, and gravies makes them delicious.
Eating grass-fed meat once a day is about right.
Eating grass-fed meat once a day is about right.
Avoid oral contraceptives always.
Expect to pay $100-300/mo.
Suggested to work with alternative or holistic doctor or health-care practitioner to measure vitamin and mineral levels and come up with supplementation plan designed to correct deficiencies or excesses.
Recommended brands and doses are on http://www.betterbabybook.com/supplements/. Decide what to take from that list.
Can dissolve a suspect supplement in 99-degree white wine vinegar; if it isn't dissolved in 30 minutes, it's not bioavailable and is a waste of money.
Supplement should ideally be in capsules, so no ingredients other than nutrient blend, gelatin/vegetarian capsule material (MHCP), and magnesium stearate. Avoid sugar, starch, salt, wheat, gluten, corn, colorings like titanium dioxide, dairy products, casein, flavorings, and preservatives.
Eating just one combined prenatal supplement is not enough. Eating 3-5 high quality prenatal supplement capsules and 5-7 multivitamin capsules per day is usually ideal.Garden of Life, Living Multi is a good one (perhaps just for women); 3 in the morning, 3 at lunch, 2 with dinner. (All the other supplements go on top of that, too.)
Test vitamin D levels (25-OH-D); need to be 50-80.Take probiotics (probably just the ones that are on upgraded self); empty stomach.
For minerals, look through this list: http://www.betterbabybook.com/minerals/.
There are some more for brain function and antioxidants: Alpha-GPC, Glutamine, Acetyl-L Carnitine, Phosphatidylserine; Coenzyme Q10, Liposomal Glutathione.
Hormones and pharmaceuticals: progesterone (bioidentical, not synthetic; sublingual; get full hormones measured beforehand), deprenyl, and oxiracetam. Just read (short) Ch. 9 for justification.
Get your mercury (and other heavy metal) levels tested pre-conception to find out if you need to detox.
Test thyroid (not just TSH but also T3 and T4) and supplement with things like iodine and L-tyrosine to fix it before conceiving.
Since diseases can compromise fertility and harm the baby, they recommend for both partners to get complete genitourinary examinations, especially if having trouble conceiving.
Avoid polluted air.
Get a HEPA air purifier for the apartment.
Drink only purified water (emphasized as important). Tap/well/boiled/filtered/bottled water isn't good enough. Buy either a reverse-osmosis water purification system or a high-end countertop filtration unit (the former requiring lots of plumbing).
Look into Soma and other filtration units to see what we can do here.
Avoiding electromagnetic fields, and do grounding. There's a lot of specific tips if we want to do this.
Reduce ultrasounds: one in first trimester to confirm normal pregnancy, one in second to confirm all organs/limbs have formed properly. (We might get away with fewer, being young).
If you have to take antibiotics (try not to), take more probiotics for a while after you're done.
Buy activated charcoal powder, as fine as possible, and take anywhere between 1 tsp and 1 tbsp of it mixed with cool water 1-3 times daily on an empty stomach for at least a month before getting pregnant.
While pregnant, take a teaspon of activated charcoal with any meal containing foods to avoid or anything else known to be unhealthy.
1-2 tbsp of activated charcoal on an empty stomach when having morning sickness symptoms (nausea, bloating, gas, vomiting, stiff joints, or headache) can help. (Morning sickness is probably the body's attempt to protect the baby from toxins.)
Take 1 tbsp of liquid bentonite clay daily on an empty stomach before and during pregnancy (lower dose of each when taking with activated charcoal).
Take 20-30 tablets of "broken cell wall" chlorella daily for a month for an initial heavy metal cleanse, then take some whenever eating seafood or suspect heavy metal exposure. Don't take it at same time as Vitamin C, because it has lots of iron.
Avoid almost all drugs.Important to lose weight before pregnancy, but don't lose weight during pregnancy (so as to avoid releasing heavy metals in burnt fat) or lose weight too quickly during breastfeeding.Do not strongly chelate during pregnancy--best to do six months before.
Do Hulda Clark's liver cleanse before but not during pregnancy.
Avoid drain opener, toilet bowl cleaner, lawn chemicals, insecticides, pesticides, gasoline, lead paint, asbestos, toxic wood preservatives, or similar substances.
Avoid artifical fragrances in everything.Avoid any kitchenware made of plastic, or even other plastic things including baby toys.Avoid Teflon and aluminum pans.
Avoid dryer sheets.Choose oxygen bleach instead of chlorine bleach.Wash new clothes before wearing them.Avoid sodium laureth sulfate (common in bathroom products).
Avoid parabens (common in bathroom products).Avoid toothpaste with fluoride, SLS, and titanium dioxide.
Avoid deodorants with aluminum.
Avoid any makeup that you wouldn't feel comfortable eating.
Avoid hair dye, or if you must, use one of these.
Avoid sunscreen with camphor or titanium dioxide.
Get lots of sun every day, right up to the point before you'd start to burn (because otherwise the baby can't get proper vitamin D3 sulfate or cholesterol sulfate, even with supplements).
Avoid shaving cream, body soaps with propylene glycol, antidandruff shampoos with zync pyrithone, and all hair spray.
Avoid anything touching the baby's skin that isn't natural and chemical-free.
Choose polyester instead of vinyl shower curtains.Avoid gasoline, diesel, kerosene, fuel oil, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers like Miracle Grow, weed killers like Round-Up, strong cleaning chemicals, hand soaps, and the like.
Install carbon monoxide detectors and smoke detectors at home.
Buy nontoxic furnitures.
Do not breathe in any smoke.
Avoid cat feces, especially from outdoor cats.
Wear gloves when gardening.
Research each vaccine before deciding whether to do it.
Don't do the flu vaccine (instead supplement with D3).
Father must help to create a stable, low-stress, unconditionally loving environment for the mother during pregnancy.
Mother's stress/fear-of-loss mechanisms should be triggered as few times as possible during pregnancy.
Keep general stress levels as low as possible.
"High levels of cortisol in Mom during pregnancy result in lifetime stress for the child", so use that progesterone.
Avoid common sources of stress: unhealthy diet; body toxins; family/relationship/marital problems; financial hardship; legal conflict; grief or loss of a loved one; trouble with communication; pressure to perform at work; addiction; health issues; time management and scheduling; adaptation to change; anger issues; travel or large life adjustment (good or bad); difficult daily routine (like heavy traffic); unrealistic expectations; fear and uncertainty about being pregnant; and sleep quality issues.
Short bursts of stress are natural and not very harmful to the baby--the chronic stress is much worse.
Ask for help and emotional support when you need it.
Sleep enough. Pregnant women often need more sleep, especiall during the first trimester.
Sleep in a pitch black room, or failing that, wear an eye mask.Don't snack before bed, especially high sugar/carbs, except for small amounts of raw honey which is good.
Stop looking at screens an hour before going to sleep.
Don't keep your room too hot, sleep on beds with metal in them, or have a bedtime later than 23:00.
Doing breathing exercises like pranayama for ten minutes a day are recommended.
Meditation is recommended.
HRV training is recommended.
Don't travel, but if you do, minimize jet lag, and wear a surgical mask and moisten it for longer flights.
Avoid white-, blue-, and green-spectrum light at night.
Instead of fluorescent lights, go for halogen, LED, or xenon lighting with high-quality dimmer switches; sunglasses, polarized lenses, or glass with built in yoke prisms; full spectrum bulbs instead in the fluorescent fixtures; or NaturaLux filters on the fluorescents.
Nick will not go barefoot outside except on beaches, parks, and nice grass so that Chloe won't be stressed out by his dirty feet.
Get in shape before pregnancy--moderate exercise 2-3 times a week (in which you reach the point of being unable to continue, less than 45 minutes), both aerobic and resistance. Yoga and T-Tapp are good for both. (Chloe will try CrossFit, and failing that, just do her ab workouts. Nick will continue his morning short cycle.)
During pregnancy, do light exercises: prenatal yoga and low-stress exercises like cycling, Pilates, swimming, walking, and T-Tapp are best.
Eat protein within 15 minutes of finishing each workout.Do not hold your breath while pregnant.
Do not do exercises lying on your back after the fourth month.
Do not overheat to where your core temp is above 102.5 degrees.
Do not exercise with persistent bleeding during 2nd or 3rd trimester, multiple fetuses, or a few other inapplicable conditions.
Sperm count should have at least 20M sperm per mL, with 50% motility, and 14% normal morphology.
Use non-toxic condoms.
L-arginine and L-ornithine: former improves sexual arousal and fertility in men and women, latter improves body composition and regulates former.
Supplements for improving sperm quality: zinc (250mg), acetyl-L-carnitine, coenzyme Q10 (100mg twice daily, long-term), lycopene (2000 micrograms twice dail, long-term), and vitamins C, E, and B12, as well as L-arginine and L-ornithine.
Female orgasm (to pull sperm towards egg), finishing in missionary position, and resting with pillow under her hips after sex all help fertility.
Make mother/infant initial eye contact right after birth when infant's eyes are wide open.
Let infant self-attach right after birth by crawling up mother's abdomen to nipple--usually takes around 50 minutes. Mother and infant should both be warm.
Don't clamp umbilical cord until it stops pulsing and infant is breathing, about fifteen minutes--but ideally wait about an hour for blood from placenta to transfuse, too.
Water birth: mother sits in a tub full of warm water during labor, infant is born directly into it and then brought to the surface immediately after birth. (A few seconds in water are fine and actually pleasant for it.)
Squatting or on hands-and-knees may be more comfortable, easier than lying on back.
Avoid caesarian sections except in emergencies.
Home births are actually slightly safer and much more pleasant than hospital births, as long as a professional midwife is present and a medical team is available within 75 minutes (which is the safety margin you have if there's a true emergency).
Do not use epidurals, Pitocin, or intravenous drugs.
Father can catch the infant if desired.
Wait a day (or five) to do the heel prick test.
Sweden starts vaccines at three months or later. BBB recommends avoiding them for first few years entirely.
No need for anyone but father/mother to touch infant for first few hours.
Delay washing/weighing until infant is fully acclimated to life outside the womb.
Breastfeed for at least 12-18 months.
Continue to eat this much fat daily while breastfeeding to ensure enough fat in breastmilk:
When breastfeeding isn't possible, fortify a high-end formula like this:
Bad idea to make own baby formula or create own formula base recipe.
Never feed baby soy.
Avoid comparing your baby to other babies.
Start routine six months before planning to conceive--three is enough for fertiliy, but six is best for detoxing.
Somewhere: drink a full glass of water before each meal to prevent overeating.
mygofer baby products infographic
use this for bantling naming: Voyager
check out baby signs (but the book isnt' worth it)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/57456895?book_show_action=true He offers "cuddle cure"... 5 steps done in sequence to calm a baby and simulate life in the womb: Swaddling (firmly), Side/Stomach, Ssshhhing, Swaying, Sucking. They are combined and should match the VIGOR of any crying to immediately pacify the baby. Actually... this all made sense to me and most importantly.... IT WORKS! Author: Harvey Karp Publisher: Bantam Dell Copyright: 2002 Genre: Parenting/Childcare Pages: 260 Date Read- 5/21/09 to 5/26/09 p.100 The FASTEST way to succeed in stopping your baby's cycle of crying is to MEET THEIR LEVEL OF INTENSITY. Only after your screaming baby pauses for a few moments can you gradually slow your motion, soften your shushing and guide them from frenzy to soft landing. The best colic-calmers say that soothing an infant is like dancing with them in the lead. These talented people pay close attention to the vigor of ther 5 "S's" p.125 1st S- Swaddling This TURNS on the calming effect by stopping the Moro reflex (hand jerking/flailing) that helps them to pay attention to the other S's. 2nd S-Side/Stomach Lay your child on their side or place them in your arms on their stomach. This prevents them from feeling that they are falling. 3rd S- Shhhh You have to do it as LOUD AS YOUR BABIES CRY and close to their ear. It stimulates the sound of the womb. It can be replaced by white noise. 4th S- Sway Support your babies head and neck and wiggle their HEAD with fast, tiny movements (like you are shivering). Once they are entranced, you can move to a slower swinging motion. 5th S- Sucking This works best after the other S's have calmed. A finger or pacifier work and can be eliminated after the 3rd month. p.195 Baby Massage. In a 1986 study by Tiffany Field, massaged babies gained 47% more then babes who did not have the same touch. The same babies had higher IQ's a year later. 1. Prepare for pleasure. Warm the room, dim the lights, play soft music. 2. Bring Yourself to the moment. Sit comfortably, take 5 slow deep breaths and allow yourself to be present for the experience. Its an exchange of love in one fleeting, tender moment of time. 3. Speak to your baby with your hands. Always try to keep one hand in contact with the skin and talk to them about what you are doing and what your hopes are for their life, or sing a lullaby. Let your massage strokes move in synchronicity with your calm breathing. 4. Reward your babies tummy. Bicycle their legs then firmly push both knees to their belly and hld them there for 20 seconds. Massage the tummy in firm, clockwise, circular strokes - starting at their right lower belly, up and across the top of their tummy and ending at their left lower side (this traces their colon and intestines) 5. Follow you baby's signals. p.245 Top 10 survival Tips for Parents of New Babies 1. Trust Yourself. You are the Latest in the Unbroken Chain of the World's Top Parents. 2. Lower Your Expectations. 3. Accept All the Help You Can Get 4. Get Your Priorities Straight: Should You take a break or do the dishes? 5. Be Flexible. It is better to bend than snap. 6. Know Thyself. Share how you are feeling. 7. Don't Rock the Cradle to Hard. Know when to take a break. 8. Keep Your Sense of Humor Handy 9. Take Care of Your Spouse 10. Don't Ignore Depression.
Students turn to cheating because they haven’t developed a strategy for handling failure. The problem is compounded when a parent ignores a child’s failures and insists he’ll do better next time. Michigan scholar Jennifer Crocker studies this exact scenario and explains that the child may come to believe failure is something so terrible, the family can’t acknowledge its existence. A child deprived of the opportunity to discuss mistakes can’t learn from them. In prepubescents and grownups, when it gets dark outside, the brain produces melatonin, which makes us sleepy. But adolescent brains don’t release melatonin for another 90 minutes. When she lets subjects sleep, but interrupts them with gentle door knocks just loud enough to keep them from passing into the slow-wave stage (without actually waking the subjects), their hormone levels respond in a way that’s akin to a weight gain of twenty to thirty pounds. As previously noted, children spend over 40% of their asleep time in this slow-wave stage, while older adults are in this stage only about 4% of the night. Children categorize everything from food to toys to people at a young age. However, it takes years before their cognitive abilities allow them to successfully use more than one attribute to categorize anything. In the meantime, the attribute they rely on is that which is the most clearly visible. It’s possible that by third grade, when parents usually recognize it’s safe to start talking a little about race, the developmental window has already closed. The same way we remind our daughters, “Mommies can be doctors just like daddies,” we ought to be telling all children that doctors can be any skin color. It’s not complicated what to say. It’s only a matter of how often we reinforce it. Shushing children when they make an improper remark is an instinctive reflex, but often the wrong move. Prone to categorization, children’s brains can’t help but attempt to generalize rules from the examples they see. It’s the worst kind of embarrassment when a child blurts out, “Only brown people can have breakfast at school,” or “You can’t play basketball, you’re white, so you have to play baseball. ” But shushing them only sends the message that this topic is unspeakable, which makes race more loaded, and more intimidating. Harris-Britt warns that frequent predictions of future discrimination ironically become as destructive as experiences of actual discrimination: “If you overfocus on those types of events, you give the children the message that the world is going to be hostile— you’re just not valued and that’s just the way the world is.” And they saw that Santa was black. Voice pitch, pupil dilation, eye tracking, lack of sensory details, and chronological storytelling are some indication of lying in adults. In Talwar’s peeking game, only a third of the three-year-olds will peek, and when asked if they peeked, most of them will admit it. But over 80% of the four-year-olds peek. Of those, over 80% will lie when asked, asserting they haven’t peeked. By their fourth birthday, almost all kids will start experimenting with lying. In studies where children are observed in their homes, four-year-olds will lie once every two hours, while a six-year-old will lie about once every hour. Few kids are an exception. In these same studies, 96% of all kids offer up lies. But children don’t start out thinking lies are okay, and gradually realize they’re bad. The opposite is true. Kids don’t even believe a mistake is an acceptable excuse. The only thing that matters is that the information was wrong. Meanwhile, hearing George Washington and the Cherry Tree reduced lying a whopping 75% in boys, and 50% in girls. What really works is to tell the child, “I will not be upset with you if you peeked, and if you tell the truth, I will be really happy.” Encouraged to tell so many white lies, children gradually get comfortable with being disingenuous. Insincerity becomes , literally, a daily occurrence. They’ve learned that nine out of ten times a kid runs up to a parent to tell, that kid is being completely honest. With disapproval in my voice I asked, “Did you draw on the table, Thia?” In the past, she would have just answered honestly, but my tone gave away that she’d done something wrong. Immediately, I wished I could retract the question and do it over. I should have just reminded her not to write on the table, slipped newspaper under her coloring book, and washed the ink away. intelligence test scores before children start school, on average, had only a 0.40 correlation with later achievement test results. Third grade, yeah, second grade, maybe. Testing younger than that, you’re getting kids with good backgrounds, essentially. IQ tests given in middle schools are actually very good predictors of academic success in high school. the correlation between emotional intelligence and academic achievement was only 0.10. while the behavior ratings topped out at an 0.08 correlation. From age 3 to age 10, two-thirds of children’s IQ scores will improve, or drop, more than 15 points. sibling relationship quality is remarkably stable over the long term. Unless there had been some major life event in the family— an illness, a death, a divorce— the character of the relationship didn’t change until the eldest moved out of the house. For the most part, the tone established when they were very young, be it controlling and bossy or sweet and considerate, tended to stay that way. The most common reason the kids were fighting was the same one that was the ruin of Regan and Goneril: sharing the castle’s toys. Almost 80% of the older children , and 75% of the younger kids, all said sharing physical possessions— or claiming them as their own— caused the most fights. was just unproven theory. Kramer found that every single parenting manual recited the psychodynamic paradigm, that sibling resentment stems from a loss of parental attention when the younger child is born. older siblings train on their friends, and then apply what they know to their little brothers and sisters. Darling found that permissive parents don’t actually learn more about their child’s lives. the type of parents who are actually most consistent in enforcing rules are the same parents who are most warm and have the most conversations with their kids,” Darling observed. They’ve set a few rules over certain key spheres of influence, and they’ve explained why the rules are there. They expect the child to obey them. Over life’s other spheres, they supported the child’s autonomy, allowing her freedom to make her own decisions. Really, to an adolescent, arguing is the opposite of lying. parents rate all the arguing as destructive, while teens find it generally to be productive. she now makes them write down a plan for how they’ll spend their two hours, to teach them to think proactively. When they get distracted, she refers them back to their plan. She no longer simply corrects children’s grammar mistakes in their homework; instead, she first points to the line containing the mistake , and asks the child to find it. This makes them think critically about what they’re doing rather than mechanically completing the assignment. With kindergartners who are just learning to write, Ashley has them use private speech as they form a letter, saying aloud, “Start at the top and go around….” I use similar techniques with my daughter. Every night, she comes home from preschool with a page of penmanship, filled with whatever letter she learned that day. I ask her to circle the best example on each line— so she’ll recognize the difference between a good one and a better one. At bedtime, she and I do a version of buddy reading: after I’ve read her a book, I hand it to her. Then she tells the story back to me, creatively narrating from the illustrations and whatever lines she remembers verbatim. Occasionally, when she and I have the whole day together, we write up a plan for what we’ll do. (I wish I did this more, because she loves it.) I also give her prompts that extend her play scenarios. For instance, she loves baby dolls; she’ll collect them all, and put them to bed— this might take five or ten minutes. At that point, she no longer knows what to do. So I’ll encourage her to wake the babies up, take them to school, and go on a field trip. That’s usually all it takes to spark her imagination for over an hour. The more educational media the children watched, the more relationally aggressive they were. the typical married couple was having about eight disputes each day, according to the moms. (According to the dads, it was slightly less.) What this means is that parents who pause mid-argument to take it upstairs— to spare the children— might be making the situation far worse, The more time peers spend together, the stronger this compulsion is to rank high , resulting in the hostility of one-upmanship. Therefore, one day it’d be no dessert; the next day the silent treatment; the third it would be a threat of no allowance if the infraction happened again; the fourth it’d be psychological criticism meant to induce guilt. He’s always trying something new, and caving at the wrong time. This inconsistency and permissiveness led to a surprising result in Sullivan’s study: the children of Progressive Dads were aggressive and acted out in school nearly as much as the kids with fathers who were distant and disengaged. Kuhl and other scholars had determined that, at birth, babies are sensitive to any language’s phonemes— unique sound combinations that make up a word. (Each language has about 40 phonemes, such as “kuh” or “ch.”) Once babies are around six to nine months old, they gradually lose that generalist sensitivity. Their brains become specialized, trained to recognize the phonemes of the language (or languages) they hear most. babies’ brains do not learn to recognize foreign-language phonemes off a videotape or audiotape— at all. They absolutely do learn from a live, human teacher. In fact, babies’ brains are so sensitive to live human speech that Kuhl was able to train American babies to recognize Mandarin phonemes (which they’d never heard before) from just twelve sessions with her Chinese graduate students, who sat in front of the kids for twenty minutes each session, playing with them while speaking in Mandarin. By the end of the month, three sessions per week, those babies’ brains were virtually as good at recognizing Mandarin phonemes as the brains of native-born Chinese infants who’d been hearing Mandarin their entire young lives. Studies have repeatedly shown that seeing a person’s face makes a huge difference. Babies learn to decipher speech partly by lip-reading: they watch how people move their lips and mouths to produce sounds. One of the first things that babies must learn— before they can comprehend any word meanings— is when one word ends and another begins. Without segmentation, an adult’s words probably sound about the same to an infant as does his own babbling. At 7.5 months, babies can segment the speech of people they see speaking. However, if the babies hear speech while looking at an abstract shape, instead of a face, they can’t segment the sounds: the speech once again is just endless gibberish. (Even for adults, seeing someone’s lips as he speaks is the equivalent of a 20-decibel increase in volume.) How often a mother initiated a conversation with her child was not predictive of the language outcomes— what mattered was, if the infant initiated, whether the mom responded. through this call-and-response pattern, the baby’s brain learns that the sounds coming out of his mouth affect his parents and get their attention— that voicing is important, not meaningless . Second, a child needs to associate an object with a word, so the word has to be heard just as an infant is looking at or grabbing it. While the child won’t be able to make the next-stage sound for several months, there’s still a very important interaction with parents going on. They basically take turns “talking,” as if having a mock conversation. The baby coos, and the daddy responds, “Is that so?” The baby babbles again, and the daddy in jest returns, “Well, we’ll have to ask Mom.” Parents find themselves talking to their baby in the singsongy cadence that’s termed “parentese,” without knowing why they’re strangely compelled to do so. They’re still using English, but the emotional affect is giddily upbeat and the vowels are stretched, with highly exaggerated pitch contours. It’s not cultural— it’s almost universal— and the phonetic qualities help children’s brains discern discrete sounds. Around five months, a baby has gained enough control of the muscles in the vocal tract to open her throat and push breath through to occasionally produce “fully resonant” vowels. “To a mother of a five-month-old,” Goldstein said, “hearing a fully resonant sound from her baby is a big deal. It’s very exciting.” If her response is well-timed, the child’s brain notices the extra attention these new sounds win. At this point, parents start to phase out responding to all the old sounds, since they’ve heard them so often. That selective responsiveness in turn further pushes the child toward more fully-resonant sounds. To some degree, Goldstein’s research seems to have unlocked the secret to learning to talk— he’s just given eager parents a road map for how to fast-track their infants’ language development. But Goldstein is very careful to warn parents against overdoing it. “Children need breaks for their brain to consolidate what it’s learned,” he points out. “Sometimes children just need play time, alone, where they can babble to themselves.” He also cites a long trail of scholarship, back to B.F. Skinner, on how intermittent rewards are ultimately more powerful than constant rewards. His first concern is that a parent, keen to improve his response rate, might make the mistake of over-reinforcing less-resonant sounds when a baby is otherwise ready to progress, thereby slowing development. This would reward a baby for immature sounds, making it too easy for the baby to get attention. Babies learn better from object-labeling when the parent waits for the baby’s eyes to naturally be gazing at the object. The technique is especially powerful when the infant both gazes and vocalizes, or gazes and points. Ideally, the parent isn’t intruding, or directing the child’s attention— instead he’s following the child’s lead. When the parent times the label correctly, the child’s brain associates the sound with the object. Some parents, in Goldstein and Schwade’s research, make these mismatches of speech 30% of the time. “Beh” gets mistaken by parents as “bottle,”“blanket,” or “brother.”“Deh” is interpreted as “Daddy” or “dog,”“kih” as “kitty,” and “ebb” as “apple.” In fact, at nine months old, the baby may mean none of those— he’s just making a canonical syllable. For instance, when adults talk to young children about small objects, they frequently twist the object, or shake it, or move it around— usually synchronizing the movements to the singsong of parentese. This is called “motionese,” and it’s very helpful in teaching the name of the object. Moving the object helps attract the infant’s attention , turning the moment into a multisensory experience. But the window to use motionese closes at fifteen months —by that age, children no longer need the extra motion, or benefit from it. Just as multisensory inputs help, so does hearing language from multiple speakers. Until children are eighteen months old, they can’t make out nouns located in the middle of a sentence. The word frames become vital frames of reference. When a child hears, “Look at the ___,” he quickly learns that ___ is a new thing to see. The cousin to frames are “variation sets.” In a variation set, the context and meaning of the sentence remain constant over the course of a series of sentences, but the vocabulary and grammatical structure change. For instance, a variation set would thus be: “Rachel, bring the book to Daddy. Bring him the book. Give it to Daddy. Thank you, Rachel —you gave Daddy the book.” However, shape bias is teachable. In one experiment, Drs. Linda Smith and Larissa Samuelson had seventeen-month-old children come into the lab for seven weeks of “ shape training.” The sessions were incredibly minimal— each was just five minutes long and the kids learned to identify just four novel shapes (“ This is a wug. Can you find the wug?”). That’s all it took, but the effect was amazing. The children’s vocabulary for object names skyrocketed 256%. only 25% of language acquisition is due to genetic factors. Does being an early talker really mean the child will be a better reader, in elementary school? Or do other kids quickly catch up, once they hit the language spurt, too? Scientists tend to say that both are true. The advantage is real, yet many kids do catch up, and show no long-term consequences.