Category archive: newborn

September 12, 2004

George of Jungle has Monkey Baby

Hats off to Brendan Fraser, whose wife Afton gave birth to their first second son. As befits someone who played an apeman, the kid has a monchichi-size mop of hair. To ensure that he will run away from boarding school,...
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August 16, 2004

From Poo Pockets to Photoshop: Looking into Japanese Diapers

I've got a few Japan-related posts in me: We started out admiring Japanese Pampers for their thinness and their convenient "Change me!" indicator strip, which would change from yellow [heh] to blue as the diaper filled up. But we came...
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July 24, 2004

Kangaroo Care: skin-to-skin bonding

Kangaroo care is the slightly goofy name for holding your diaper-only baby on your bare chest for significant amounts of time (e.g., 20 minutes at a time). It promotes parental bonding (what doesn't, right?), but it also helps kids regulate...
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July 8, 2004

SmartKlamp for, excuse me?? Automatic Circumcisions??

WHOA. If you're on the fence about circumcising any boys about to be born in your vicinity, Gizmodo's got a review of a penis clamp that just might make your mind up for you. My wilfully uneducated guess is, the...
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Micro-preemie Resources?

Kids born at the extreme edge of viability--24-26 weeks, or at a little more than 1 lb birthweight--are called "micro-preemies." Personally, I prefer "extreemies," or "X-treemies," which sounds tougher, and tough is what these kids have to be. They basically...
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July 6, 2004

Congratulations, Jon Stewart

He's a new dad. Ralph Nader, of all people, talking to Steven Colbert, just mentioned on The Daily Show that Stewart & his wife Tracey McShane had just had their baby. No word on whether we need to book the...
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June 30, 2004

Jew Havin' A Baby?

ChosenCouture.com, the makers of the Yo Semite! and Jews for Jeter t-shirts, also offer a few gift ideas for the new dad. You don't need to be Jewish to appreciate them (although for one, you do need to be a...
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June 24, 2004

Be down with EBB: Managing The First Few Weeks

On page 37 of Be Prepared, Gary Greenberg & Jeannie Hayden's excellent guidebook for new dads, are four policy suggestions for dads dealing with PPMS (Post-Partum Mood Swings. If you don't know yet, don't worry.). The other three--listen, ignore occasional...
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June 20, 2004

US Marines, New Dads

MarineParents.com, a support and community site for families and spouses of US Marines, posts announcements and photos of kids born after their fathers have deployed. Happy Father's Day, guys. Come home safe and soon....
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Baby Formula Taste Test

What does baby formula taste like? Do the major brands taste different from one another? What are you feeding that kid? In the interests of science, and because we felt vaguely uncomfortable feeding this foul-smelling concoction to our precious little...
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June 4, 2004

Urbanbabywatch: What Daddy doesn't know

Reading UrbanBaby's acid-filled message boards, so you don't have to:"Husband's self-centered, clueless and useless" I just had an epiphany about what it means to be a mother versus a father. A mother will set aside her wishes and whims of...
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May 24, 2004

Because You Asked For It: Trixie Tracker

By popular demand, Ben MacNeil has introduced Trixie Tracker, a hosted version of Trixie Telemetry, the intensely analytical, easy-to-use baby management software he developed to pass along his daughter's daily activities after his wife went back to work. It rolls...
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May 17, 2004

Coldplay's Daddy Video: The Nappies

When they have a baby, some musicians get their friends together and make silly T-shirts. Others get their friends together, put on silly wigs, and make silly videos. Coldplay, it turns out, falls into the latter category. To celebrate the...
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May 13, 2004

Reporter takes kid for the day, lives

They say you never forget your first time. But what they don't tell you is, when you're a reporter, you publish a minute-by-minute account of your first time for everyone's inspiration and amusement. And, of course, to score macho points...
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May 12, 2004

Entry-level Diaper Advice

1) You should change every diaper you can from as soon as you can. It's called division of labor. Especially if your womenfolk (or in the case of non-polygamists, womanfolk) are breastfeeding every couple of hours, they may feel somewhat...
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May 9, 2004

Mom's Abacus

Bebesounds, "the juvenile products division of Unisar, Inc.," makes the best argument for dads to be involved in child care. While Ben MacNeil is writing software to take parenting into the 21st century with TrixieUpdate, Bebesounds launched a new product...
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April 22, 2004

Week 8: Don't Hate My Sleeping Child

If there's anything X-Men 2 taught us, it's that it can be hard for parents to accept their mutant children. Even if her mutant power is sleeping through the night. Maybe it's just a phase, we thought. Or is it...
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April 13, 2004

Baby Blues, Daddy Depression?

The National Health Service in the UK will roll out an anonymous helpline for fathers dealing with Post-Natal Depression (PND); the service has the so-upbeat-it's-disheartening title, "Fathers Matter." Although some psychiatrists--and at least one cranky farmer--dismiss the idea of PND,...
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April 1, 2004

Sign Language for Babies

We just received this great-looking book from some forward-thinking friends. Turns out sign language for hearing babies is quite a cottage industry. [Kindersigns is just one of many programs online.] The basic concept: babies as young as 6-7 months...
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March 29, 2004

Drownproofing? Don't.

I was going to post some references for drownproofing classes, teaching babies to swim/float enough not to drown if they fall in a pool. But then I found the American Academy of Pediatrics website, which recommends against teaching kids younger...
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