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Every parent wants to know that they have a happy baby.

When you see their broad, toothless smile, hear their squeals and see their jubilation when they greet you, it not only melts your heart but signals that you’re doing something right. Your baby is happy, and you’re the reason for it.

With the multitude of things that you need to do, making sure that your baby is happy should be at the top of your list! But how do you make sure that your baby is happy?

If you’re asking yourself this question, you’ve come to the right place. In this article are the 6 ingredients for your happy baby formula.

So, what is the magic formula for having a happy baby? Mix these 6 ingredients to make a truly happy baby.

1. Show Your Baby Love and Affection

We all know about the basics of caring for a baby, but to have a happy baby, you need to go beyond that. Children need love, care, and attention to thrive. Just providing your baby with the basics of feeding, cleaning and putting them to sleep will not make her happy.

In fact, a study that followed orphaned children in Romania who only had their basic needs of feeding, clothing, and cleaning met found that the children had severe emotional and psychological problems because of a lack of love and affection.

Babies need love and affection to thrive. They need attentive and gentle parents who can respond to their needs and be attuned to them. Parents who are attuned to their babies understand that when a baby cries, it’s because they are trying to communicate that something is wrong and that they need attention.

Showing your baby love means having empathy and knowing that attending to her when she cries will not spoil her.

Actions like showering your baby with hugs and kisses will show her that she is loved, valued and precious. This love and affection will help your baby to develop an attachment and bond with you.

Research has shown the positive impact of a loving relationship with a primary caregiver on children’s brain and later development such as better memory, self-esteem, impulse control and emotional regulation.

2. Take Care of Your Baby’s Physical Needs

A healthy baby is a happy baby. A child’s first three years are characterised by rapid growth and development. As such, babies need nutrients to nourish their growing bodies and brains. Poor diet for babies can result in death, malnutrition and stunted growth. Likewise, babies should be fully immunised against harmful diseases and viruses in order to survive early childhood.

You can make sure that you are taking care of your baby’s physical health by following the age-appropriate paediatric recommendations and your national vaccination schedules for infants and young children.

3. Read to Your Happy Baby

Much like everything on this list, reading to your baby is one of the best ways to make your baby happy. Reading is fun and is a major booster for your baby’s brain development, language and reading skills. More than that, reading with your baby is a great opportunity for bonding.

It is a pleasure to find a cosy spot with a great book full of pictures and excitement, and see your baby reacting to the story as the words come alive.

To get your child in the habit of reading and developing a lifelong positive relationship with books, it’s best to start as early as possible. And there is no better time than when they are babies.

Wherever you are on your reading journey with your baby, I highly recommend my recently published children’s book, My Happy Baby.

This book is truly a story of how to have a happy baby. As you read this beautifully illustrated story about a happy baby and her adoring parents, you will see how love can be manifested in your baby’s growth and development.

4. Play with Your Baby

Did you know that play is the work of the child? Through play, babies learn about and explore their world. Play is fun and helps to develop your baby’s brain, encourages creativity and imagination, and is the foundation for learning.

The great thing about playing with your baby is that it doesn’t take much effort. A simple game of peek-a-boo is all you need to get your baby to engage.

However, you shouldn’t stop there because there are many different activities and opportunities for you to engage your baby in play. For example, you can play with your baby during tummy time or bath time by using objects in your environment to create a fun and exciting experience for him.

5. Stimulate Your Baby

Similar to play, providing stimulating experiences for your baby is the key to making her happy. When you stimulate your baby, you are taking part in activities that engage her senses like sound, sight, touch, smell and taste. Infant stimulation can be good for your baby’s sense of curiosity, brain development, memory and attention span.

As your baby grows and develops, you should ensure that she is getting the necessary, age-appropriate stimulation. Some ways to stimulate your baby include:

a. Talk to her as you go about your daily activities. Try to ensure that you use these opportunities to prepare her for transitions. For example, tell her when you are about to change activities, give her a bath or start a new play activity.

b. Get toys that stimulate her senses with bright colours for sight, music and songs for sound and plush animals for touch.

c. For taste, introduce her to different tastes and textured foods at the appropriate times with the guidance of her paediatrician.

6. Allow Your Baby to Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is very important to your baby’s development. Sleep recharges the body, supports the immune system and helps the brain to function correctly.

It is recommended that babies 0-3 months sleep for 14-17 hours in 24 hours and 12-15 hours for babies between 3-6 months old. As your baby grows, you can expect that beyond 6 months, he will begin to sleep through the night.

Ensure that you become familiar with his cues that tell you when he wants to sleep which may include yawning, fussing, rubbing his eyes or crying.

To ensure that he is getting the recommended sleep, try to avoid loud noise in the environment that can interrupt his sleep.

You may consider bedtime routines that are a surefire way of putting your little one to bed, like reading a story, singing a lullaby or playing soft, calming music at a low volume.

How do you like our formula for a happy baby?

Tell us in the comments!

The post How to Have a Happy Baby appeared first on Childhood Central.

A team of researchers in Australia may have identified a biomarker for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in new research that was published in eBioMedicine. The team was led by Dr. Carmel Harrington at Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Australia, a researcher and mother whose son died from SIDS 29 years ago.

What is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)?

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is a category of Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI). Although some SUDI can be explained, others cannot. The unexplained infant deaths are classified as SIDS. SIDS is the death of a healthy baby that cannot be determined by post-mortem for a conclusive cause of death and typically occurs during the sleep periods of babies under 1-year-old.

What are the SIDS Statistics?

In the United States, according to the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), every year there are about 3,400 SUDIs. In 2019 there were 3376 SUDIs, of this number, 1248 were SIDS deaths, 1173 deaths were due to unknown causes, and 955 deaths were accidental suffocation and strangulation deaths. 

From the data, it is clear that deaths from SIDS were the highest in 2019 at 37% of SUDIs. This is an improvement from decades ago, as SIDS deaths have been on the decline since 1990, moving from 130.27 per 100,000 live births to 33.3 per 100,000 live births in 2019. The reduction in SIDS is attributed to the release of The American Academy of Paediatrics’ safe sleep recommendations in 1992.

However, despite the progress, CDC data shows SIDS death rates for 2014-2018 were twice as high for American Indian/Native (89.5) and Non-Hispanic Black babies (72.7) per 100,000 live births than for Non-Hispanic White (36.7) babies. Hispanics (20.7) and Asian/Pacific Islanders (13.8) had the lowest rates of SIDS per 100,000 live births.

Overview of the SIDS Research

Dr. Harrington’s research tried to find out if babies who had died from SIDS had different levels of Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) at birth than babies who had not died from SIDS or babies who were alive at the time of the study.

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) is a protein of the cholinergic system which is responsible for regulating brain functions like sensory processing, attention, sleep, and arousal. The reason why this is important is that it has long been speculated that the cholinergic system was involved in SIDS deaths. Since SIDS deaths occur during sleep, the reasoning is that there is a dysfunction in SIDS infants’ arousal system which would stop them from waking up if something is not right. A low level of BChE is believed to impair the functions of the cholinergic system.

To test this hypothesis, Dr. Harrington and her team tested dried blood samples that were taken 2-4 days after birth from 26 babies who had died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS); 30 babies whose deaths were not from SIDS and 545 surviving babies who were born at the same time as the study group. The aim was to see if there would be a difference in the BChE levels of the babies who died from SIDS from the other babies in the control groups.

What did the SIDS Research Find?

The results of the study showed that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) infants had significantly lower levels of BChE than non-SIDS infants and the control group. Additionally, the results showed that lower levels of BChE were associated with SIDS deaths. However, there was no link between lower levels of BChE and non-SIDS deaths.

Why is this Research Important?

This research is important because it is believed that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is caused by a combination of factors known as the Triple Risk Model.

The Triple Risk Model aims to help researchers better understand the risk factors for SIDS. The model suggests that there are three factors when combined can cause SID deaths. The factors include:

1.  A vulnerable infant with underlying defects or abnormal brain activity
2. A critical development period is within the first 6 months of the baby’s life characterised by rapid growth and development
3. Outside stressors which are environmental, including baby’s sleep position, overheating and second-hand tobacco smoke

Based on Dr. Harrington’s research, the identification of BChE as a possible biomarker or biological indicator for SIDS could be the missing part of the puzzle to answer the question: What makes infants vulnerable to SIDS? That is, BChE could explain the underlying defect or abnormal brain activity that puts babies at risk of dying from SID when the other two factors are present.

Knowing this can help in the development of screening infants for specific risk factors with targeted prevention strategies for SIDS.

What are the Limitations of the Sudden Infant Death Research?

Although very important, this research had a few limitations. Firstly, the sample size of the study was small. The researchers only sampled 29 SIDS infants. This fact makes it hard to generalise the findings to the wider population.

Secondly, the researchers noted that AChE is also a part of the cholinergic system and low levels could possibly be implicated in its dysfunction, but ACHE levels were not tested and compared in the trial.

Additionally, SIDS death rates vary by and within countries. The study did not compare samples from other countries. How could future research address these discrepancies? For example, SIDS death rates are higher in the USA than in the UK.

Further, within the United States, data show that SIDS death rates are higher for Native Americans and African Americans than for other ethnic groups. Are these groups at the centre of the perfect storm of the Triple Risk Model, or is there another explanation? Why are SIDS death rates higher in America than in other developed countries?

Now that the findings of this research have been released, future research will need to address all these questions and more for a better understanding of SIDS.

The post New Research May Have Identified a Biomarker for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) appeared first on Childhood Central.

It is breastfeeding awareness month!

Promoting the benefits of breastfeeding is a shared responsibility as in doing so, we not only benefit babies and mothers, but we also benefit our society.

Like everything else in modern culture, breastfeeding is a hot topic for debate; whether it is about when and where mothers should breastfeed, how long they should breastfeed, or whether can they breastfeed and what that means for them and their babies.

Despite the many conversations surrounding breastfeeding, the general fact is breastfeeding is the best thing for babies and mothers.

Breastfeeding awareness month seeks to promote breastfeeding and support mothers. Research shows that mothers whose partners support them are more likely to breastfeed than mothers who are not supported.

So, in honour of breastfeeding awareness month, here are 7 benefits of breastfeeding.

Resource

Benefits of Breastfeeding

1. Breast Milk Protects Babies Against Diseases

Besides providing the baby with nutrients, breastmilk is the baby’s first line of defence because it is full of antibodies that protect the baby from harmful diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, asthma and others.

2. Breastfeeding Reduces the Risk of Child Obesity

Longer breastfeeding is shown to reduce the risk of child obesity by 12 per cent.

3. Breastfeeding Keeps the Baby Healthy

Babies who are not breastfed are more likely to be hospitalized and need treatment for ear, respiratory and gastrointestinal infections.

4. Breastfeeding is Good for the Economy

Increased breastfeeding means a reduction in health treatment costs. The financial benefits of breastfeeding are clear. According to research, if 90% of babies were breastfed in the United Kingdom, China and the United States, it would save the healthcare systems $29.5 m, $223.6 m and $ 2.5bn respectively.

5. Breastfeeding Makes Babies Smarter

Adults who were breastfed as children score 2-5 times higher on cognitive development tests when compared to babies who were not breastfed.

6. Breastfeeding Promotes Mother/Infant Bond

The psychological benefits of breastfeeding are also evident as longer breastfeeding is linked to infant attachment and responsive mothering.

7. Breastfeeding Protects Mothers Against Breast and Ovarian Cancer

Benefits of breastfeeding statistics show that there is a higher risk associated with ovarian cancer (27%) and breast cancer (4%) for women who do not breastfeed.

Source:

Benefits of breastfeeding NHS

Benefits of breastfeeding UNICEF

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The post Breastfeeding Awareness: What are the Benefits of Breastfeeding? appeared first on Childhood Central.