The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting |
- A new digital diaper tracks your baby's health
- Learn from others' worst child-raising mistakes
- Women who freeze their eggs wished they'd done it earlier
| A new digital diaper tracks your baby's health Posted: A new sensor-embedded diaper tracks not only when it's time for a nappy change but also your baby's hydration and kidney health, and alerts parents when it's time to call a doctor. New York-based Pixie Scientific has developed urine-tracking Smart Diapers, which feature a QR code on the bottom of the diaper that changes colour when your baby has urinated. Parents can then scan the code with their smartphone using a companion app to log the data. The app can then analyse the results to measure the risks for urinary tract infection, dehydration, and kidney problems, and can track health patterns over time. If it detects a problem, an alert lets parents know when it's time to call a doctor. The company launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in order to begin manufacturing its product and is conducting a study with the University of California San Francisco. Pixie Scientific is aiming to secure approval from the US Food and Drug Administration as well. A pledge of US$90 (RM288) will get you a 30-day supply of Smart Diapers, with shipping planned for March 2014. Other savvy diapers in the works include Huggies' TweetPee, which debuted as a test product in Brazil in May. The diapers send tweets via a clip-on monitor to a companion app when they sense wetness in the diaper and can remind busy parents when it's time to buy a fresh pack. - AFP Relaxnews |
| Learn from others' worst child-raising mistakes Posted: Sometimes at a baby shower you might have the opportunity to give a mother-to-be some advice you have learned as a parent from raising your own children. You might be asked to write your words of wisdom in a pretty pink or blue baby gift book. It's a tradition at many baby showers these days. If you get one of these books as a new mum, please understand that this is serious business, not a cute party gift. Do yourselves a huge favour and heed what we have written. Most parents have screwed up in some way or another raising their children, and I, personally, want you to learn from my biggest mistake. I let our son sleep in our bed after he had a short illness when he was a baby. In my defence at the time, he was really sick and my husband and I wanted to keep an eye on him. When our son was in his crib feeling sick, he was crying all the time, and we were going to him every five minutes, if I remember, and no one was getting any sleep. So, I did something that changed my entire future: I took him out of his pretty Pottery Barn-decorated crib in his sky-blue nursery and brought him into our bed for a "few nights" while he recovered. Well, those nights turned into years (more than he would ever want me to tell or I want to admit), and before I knew it I was probably fit to be a guest on the Dr Phil TV show. I imagine he would have asked me, "What were you thinking letting your kid sleep in the bed that long?" Indeed. What was I thinking? After the illness, we tried everything to get him out of the bed. We watched, applied and failed at using Supernanny principles. We let him sleep on a mattress on the floor of our room, but he ended up in bed by morning. We slept with him in his room with him a while until he fell asleep, but nothing worked. He always ended up back in the bed with us. We rationalised this, as many parents do. We read up on co-sleeping and found that children sleep with their parents for long periods of time in other countries. That made it okay with us for a while. Besides, we all slept better when he slept all night, and it was nice and comforting to have him next to me. But if I had it to do over, I would never do it again. My husband seconds that. It was hard to rest with my son's long legs kicking me all night and arms holding onto me, and my side of the bed stopped being my own. Pile on a Siamese and Torti cat and things were beyond crowded. Not to mention it is not best, in my opinion and in the opinion of many paediatricians, for a child to learn to sleep with others. They need to sleep alone to learn independence and how to lull themselves to sleep without the comfort of another. There also are other very good reasons for parents not to have a child in the bed, but I won't get into that here. Thankfully, one day on his own a while back, our son just started sleeping in his room. There was nothing magical about it. There was no screaming, yelling, tantrums or ultimatums – from any of us. I think he was just ready and wanted his own space to stretch out and was ready for his independence. His comfort is our Siamese, Mulan, and she sleeps with him. My hope is that we have not damaged his sleeping pattern for life, but he sleeps all night and shows no signs of insomnia as some co-sleeping children do when they start sleeping alone. How about you? What piece of advice would you give a new mum? - Orlando Sentinel (MCT) |
| Women who freeze their eggs wished they'd done it earlier Posted: A new Belgian study finds that women who freeze their eggs in the hope of improving their fertility later in life often wished they'd done it at an earlier age. "Egg banking," the practice of freezing eggs to circumvent age-related fertility, is becoming a popular trend in many countries, according to the researchers. The study, presented Tuesday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Belgium, involved women who underwent the procedure for "social reasons", such as wanting to delay motherhood until they find the right partner. The study involved 140 women in Belgium averaging 37 years old who had considered egg banking between 2009 and 2011. Some 60% of the women surveyed wound up actually having their eggs harvested and frozen, while the remaining women opted out of the procedure or tried it with no success. More than a third of the women who banked their eggs said they did not expect they would need to use them to have a child, findings showed. But still, more than 95% of them said they would freeze their eggs again, with 70% saying they would do it at a younger age. "Our results indicate that most women who have had oocyte cryopreservation have no regrets about it, but do wish they had done so at a younger age," said head researcher Dr Dominic Stoop. "This makes sense, because the younger the eggs, the better the chance of pregnancy." However Bonnie Steinbock, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at the University at Albany, the State University of New York, in the United States, told LiveScience that she found the findings troubling. Egg banking can be risky and is often very expensive, and frozen eggs are not always successful in terms of producing a pregnancy, she said. - AFP Relaxnews |
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