Here is a neat article from CNN.com about what it’s like to be a little baby. Click for their page to open in a new window.

Here are some excepts from the newborn section of the article

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As she picks him up, he’s flooded with her scent and a dim memory of his other world — the place where his body floated and he first recognized the scent that’s hers alone. But now, two weeks after birth, he’s in a vast, dry place called home. She brings him close to nurse and he roots with his mouth, guided in part by the smell of colostrum and the smell from the scent glands on her nipples. Her scent links him to everything he craves: food, warmth, touch. He latches on and the sweetness of the liquid is vaguely reminiscent of the smell and taste of amniotic fluid — both are affected by his mother’s diet. Already, sweet is his favorite taste.
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He cries a high-pitched call for help. As he cries, cortisol, known as the stress hormone, and other hormones, like adrenaline, spread through his body, slightly increasing his temperature and heart rate. His mother lifts him from his crib and encircles him in her warm, familiar arms, and his cries immediately lessen.
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With vision of roughly 20/300 — about 15 times worse than normal adult vision — he sees her as though looking through the thick, curvy glass of a vintage Coke bottle. Even up close, she’s slightly blurry: His eye muscles aren’t able to provide consistent focus. Intuitively, she holds him about a foot away, where his vision is clearest. Even then, what he sees in the blur are movement and contrast, the way her mouth moves to say “Hello” and the way her teeth flash from between her darker lips.

Perhaps it’s for the best that he has limited vision. Perhaps it keeps him from being overwhelmed by seeing every detail of faces, hands, tables, and lamps for the very first time. His eyesight seems to provide just the right amount of stimulation for his developing visual cortex, which takes the images he sees and tries to make sense of them. In the meantime, he is able to see (fairly well) what’s most important in his world: his parents’ faces, his mother’s nipple.

The company blog mostly sticks to company news, but our family was personally touched by this important issue, I want to write by thoughts and I’ll try hard to be brief.

Like many parents, I am feeling very leery of “made in China” lately. It seems as though the recalls are coming down like an avalanche and I wonder if people had ever bothered to test our toys until now. My skeptical self thinks they didn’t just start contaminating them, but that this must have gone on very long under the radar and we only know now because it’s in the news, and companies are feeling pressure to start testing and recalling, both from customers and from their legal counsel. That’s my inner dialog, anyway.

I loved the 11/2 Mormon mommy Wars thread on this topic. It got out lots of good information, and it highlighted the questions that conscientious parents everywhere are asking now. Is this brand safe? Are contaminated toys actually dangerous? If we parents turned out fine, aren’t our kids fine too? Are the European toys durable enough to be worth it?

Here’s my take.

One of my children actually has tested toxic for 3 heavy metals, and so we’ve been rather involved in trying to figure out why that is, and meeting with other parents and Drs who are working to learn more. Our case doesn’t have a simple answer- we have NOT owned any recalled toys and we have no obvious exposures in our environmental history. Presently we are looking for genetic differences, such as an inability to metabolize and reject the toxins that we all encounter in modern life. I don’t worry about his toys, I worry about the times he teethed on my key chain, on my cell phone, or even maybe the pesticides on our food or the dyes on his Made in China pillowcase or WalMart sippy cups. I wonder about when we lived right next to the freeway or how I got amalgam fillings while still nursing him. My message to parents is to NOT live in fear of any of these things, because you can’t possibly live a life escaping every one, and it may be years before science proves which things actually harmed us and which prove safe.

Buy the nicer toys. They feel better, they last years longer, you know you’re supporting fair labor. And keep your babies from chewing on batteries. But what I’m trying to say is, don’t get superstitious, don’t toss out every plastic toy and replace it with USA or European toys and sigh in relief that your child is saved. It’s not clear yet, and in my mind the one part that is clear is that there needs to be more testing and responsibility among the importing companies, who seem to have been totally asleep at the wheel. Let’s speak out for higher standards. As they see we consumers care, they will have to rise to meet standards of safety, environmentalism, or worker conditions. There, that’s my message- don’t panic about what you already own, but do be conscious of who your purchases support from now on. The issue is on the minds of parents and producers everywhere.

we were in this

The CHARGE Study (Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment) is a case-control study of 2,000 children with differing patterns of development. These include children with autism, children with developmental delay but not autism, and typically developing children. Subject groups will be compared with regard to a broad array of exposures and physiologic factors. Autism cases will also be characterized into more homogenous subgroups to determine whether particular genes or environmental exposures are associated with certain subtypes of this condition.

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In *my* words:

they’re taking kids 2-5 with all sorts of developmental situations and looking at their environmental exposures back to pregnancy… meds you took, agriculture you lived near, hazardous materials at work, pesticides and paint you used, every time you were sick, ate fish, took a vitamin, gave your kid tylenol, as best you can remember up until now.

they take hair, urine, and spit from the whole family to test genetics and heavy metals and who knows what else. They use baby’s first haircut too.

they collect medical records from everywhere possible, even mom’s dentist and delivering hospital. Questionnaires galore about health/sleep/behavior/eating/…

then they do about 5 hours of developmental / psychological testing on the kid.

the goal is to break “autism” into subtypes. For example, one type could be regressive and caused by toddler heavy metal exposure, another type may be more genetically determined and non-regressive, another type may have more of the immune dysfunction and be triggered by vaccinations, another type may have a certain genetic marker, late regression, and come with a cluster of gut symptoms.

The point of subtypes would be more accurate diagnosis and better fitting a treatment plan to the kid’s situation.

If you’re thinking that looking back and trying to remember what you took for that cold in ‘04 isn’t the very best way to study this, no fear, another current study is actually tracking kids *during* pregnancy and early life.

But 1) you’ve got to get pregnant 2) I think they’re full. It was on 60 minutes last year and the buzz was high.

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So anyway, we finished today. it was really interesting to be involved in. hmmmm, don’t know where to start.
I don’t know if they’re still recruiting. Pay was $250 for about 20 hours work, but if you needed all these reports done, it would be so very worthwhile. At the last visit talking with all the drs about what they’re looking at and where the research is going next, and having this fun day just with E… it was really a great time and well worth it.

There is a new blog post at Sakura Bloom today about how to get started with your sling.

There are so many ways to position a baby in there, what do you try first? what will baby want?

They give a very simple guideline- consider how you hold your baby already and then use the sling just like that! you don’t have to use a sling in some weird new “hold” and don’t get confused by names for different “carries”. Just put the sling on, put baby where you always hold her, and then pull the sling tight to hold her just like that, letting your hands go free.

And as usual, the photo illustrations are absolutely enticing :)

I’ve found playgroups to be so enriching for children and a lifesaver when parenting-at-home starts to feel isolating, and really it’s not too hard to start one. If you just determine to do it, you can get your own going without much trouble and then have one more scheduled activity a week to look forward to.

All you need is some other families, a place to meet, and optionally, snacks or games or planned activities. But seriously, if you just want you get out of the house and help your kid make friends while you associate with grown-ups for a change, all you need are the people and the location. If you can organize that, people will be so happy with you they’ll not notice the rest.

You can volunteer your house, or pick a good park, and you can always rotate it to other people’s houses and other parks. Once it’s going well, you could branch out to outings like the zoo, walks or hikes, fruit picking, children’s museums, library storytimes and such. The social relationships could naturally develop into special occasions like trick-or-treating together too, and networking with parents can help you hear of more community events.

I’ve been in successful playgroups started in many simple ways. Really, the hard part is just deciding to do it and asking people to join. you can do this!

• a neighbor who asked a couple other neighbors plus some families she kept seeing at the park.
• four acquaintances from church agreed to make a weekly playdate and their friendship thrived
• a La Leche League member hoping to make like-minded friends simply announced at each meeting that she always went to a certain park Monday mornings and would welcome anybody to join her.

Sure, you could post an ad on Craigslist, or on a school’s bulletin board, but I’m being realistic here. You’re a busy parent and you’re consciously choosing good influences on your kiddo, and so maybe you feel iffy about putting an ad out to anybody. That’s why it’s so great to start with acquaintances who share a common interest- let the fear go and make that casual contact into a friend!

When our oldest was 3, he was not ready for preschool and I had no desire to send him out of the house, but I heard of something that worked out well and I think, would be of interest to some of you.

A group of local parents of preschool aged kids formed to do a weekly playtime and art class. It rotated through our houses. It was free, the only obligation was that when your turn came, you would plan an art activity and provide a snack and allow the kids to play in your home for an hour or so.

I loved this because it meant my son could do art projects more elaborate (messy) than I would normally suggest at home, and 90% of the time, somebody else was in charge of set-up and clean-up!   And like any group, it gave the opportunity to be exposed to other children and for me to meet new adults. Good stuff.