I have two lovely daughters now both grown up (and married recently to wonderful guys). There remains nothing so delightful as hearing them chatting together and screaming with laughter. Sometimes it’s watching a video of me falling over or trying to walk through a glass door, and sometimes they are reviewing the movies they made of each other as teenagers.The most important ingredient of childhood, after safety, shelter, food …. is laughter. Keep it light, keep it quirky and don’t take life […]

TThere was a recent paper in the journal Pediatrics which suggested that parents who, in the first six months of their baby’s life, cleaned their baby’s pacifiers (dummies) by putting them in their own mouth and sucking them, had babies with a decreased incidence of allergic disease, such as eczema, later.

This is not the first time that it has been suggested that challenging babies with germs from the environment at an earlier age decreases their likelihood of allergies as they grow. Poverty, overcrowding, large families, animals in the home, and early exposure to germs in food have all been shown […]

Q:  “A question re carriers and hip dysplasia-my 2 week old daughter has been in a von Rosen splint since day 2 for left hip dysplasia and I am hoping she is in it for no more than 6-12 weeks. When she comes out do you have any thoughts re whether any particular baby carriers are best-I currently have a Baby Bjorn which I didn’t use much for my first two children but had been thinking I might use it more for my third…I know there is talk that Baby Bjorns aren’t good for hips but is this actually true? […]