Health

When an infant has a cold, you’d do just about anything to get his nose clear so you can all sleep. Up to and including jamming one of those mucus-sucking syringes into his nose while he screams. Only, they don’t work. All they do is make baby cry harder.

NoseFrida works, even though the idea is completely gross. It’s basically a tiny gas-siphoning setup. If you’ve ever hung out with delinquents you’ll recognize it. One end goes in baby’s nose, one end goes in the parent’s mouth, a filter in between makes sure you don’t actually get anything gross in your mouth. Two minutes later, baby’s breathing freely again, and there’s no need to spend the rest of the night in a hot, steamy bathroom.

NoseFrida, $15

Oh, terrible morning (or all-day) sickness! It feels so awful. Why won’t your doctor give you something to help? One word: thalidomide. Ever since, only the ladies with the all-day, nine-month morning sickness get any relief. If you have your garden variety first-trimester sickness, girl, you’re on your own.

Or maybe not. Believe it or not, those acupressure bands (often sold for sea sickness) really do work, on a significant number of people. The bands have nodules on them that bear down on points on your wrist. No worries about hurting the baby, and most users find that their nausea is significantly reduced (worked for me when I was pregnant!).

But traditional acupressure bands are pretty darned ugly: knit bands that look like sweat socks, or like some type of hospital bandage that will make people ask you why you’re wearing them. Psi Bands, in contrast, look like watch bands. No one will notice. No one will ask you about them. You needn’t tell them that the reason you are ill is that every single thing in the world has a smell, and it’s all bad.

Psi Bands can be found at CVS, RITE AID, Whole Food, and other stores, as well as online. They retail for $15.

Your child comes to you with a rather widespread and unsightly rash. You’ve consulted your sister, your neighbor, and the helpful UB online community, but you’re still not sure exactly how to best handle the outbreak. The authors of The Baby Book, which is widely regarded as the “baby bible,” have just published the newest must-have resource for parents and caregivers that can guide parents to help heal and protect their child.

The Portable Pediatrician: Everything You Need to Know About Your Child’s Health by William Sears, MD, Martha Sears, RN, Robert Sears, MD, James Sears, MD, and Peter Sears, MD is an encyclopedia of trusted and accessible information on every pediatric concern, illness, and emergency from birth through adolescence.

A thorough list of topics are arranged alphabetically for quick reference and include:

* acne
* allergies
* autism
* bedwetting
* choking & cpr
* colic
* eating disorders
* lice
* obesity
* sleep problems
* speech delay

Other important information presented in The Portable Pediatrician:

* Choosing a pediatrician
* Getting the most out of every check-up
* The Four things all parents must do to keep their child healthy
* Treating at home vs. Time to call the doctor

This thorough guide is an invaluable resource for parents, grandparents, and other caregivers that comes from years of experience from trusted doctors.

Available at Amazon.com

Evidence has been mounting that sleep seems connected with weight, specifically, if you don’t get enough of it, you gain weight more easily. A new study suggests that little kids who sleep more regularly are less likely to be obese.

Researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Louisville tracked the sleep of more than 300 children aged 4 to 10. They kids wore wrist monitors that watched their sleep patterns. Researchers also calculated the children’s body mass index. Some also got bloodwork to measure their glucose and insulin levels.

The study found that the obese children slept less and had patchier, more irregular sleep patterns. The irregular sleep patterns were particularly associated with a higher BMI, and also an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Also noted: children got an average of 8 hours of sleep a night. Estimates of how much sleep children need vary, but 9 hours is the minimum, and some think that preschoolers need up to 11 hours a night.

Don’t despair if your kids aren’t getting those hours: researchers found that children could catch up on sleep by sleeping in on the weekends. Now, how to keep a three-year-old determined to get up and play asleep in bed, now that’s a subject we could talk about. Light-blocking curtains and a white-noise generator?

It’s no secret that we’re an unhealthy land and children in this country continue to suffer the consequences. In 2008 Jessica Seinfeld showed us how to hide healthy ingredients in kid-friendly foods to help boost their daily intake of key nutrients with her book Deceptively Delicious.

She has found her way back to the kitchen to provide healthy and satisfying recipes for the whole family. Double Delicious!: Good, Simple Food for Busy, Complicated Lives provides guidance and inspiration to busy families who want to make their meals both nutritional and appealing.

The book includes an aisle by aisle guide to making better decisions at the grocery store to boost the nutrients in our daily food. “When faced with hundreds of products on the supermarket shelves - many outright unhealthy and some masquerading as healthy - smart shopping becomes almost like a search-and-rescue mission.” She enlists the help of Lisa Sasson, a nutritionist in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, to develop shopping guidelines that are easy to understand.

She provides many inventive recipes including these that we can’t wait to try: Salmon Burgers, Creamy Whole-Grain Risotto, Scrambled Egg Muffins, Caesar Dressing, and Doughnut Cookies. Recipes are complete with nutritional information, estimated preparation times and nutritionist Joy Bauer contributes helpful tips throughout the book.

Start with the Chicken Cannelloni and Frozen Banana Pops, your family might actually thank you.

Available at Amazon.com

With all its pageantry, color, sound, and motion, you would think Disney would be out for kids with ADHD, autism, sensory processing issues, and other disorders. But surprisingly, for kids who can handle a lot of sensory input, Disney can actually be a wonderful vacation spot, particularly since the Disney parks make a concerted effort to reach out to the disabled.

With a doctor’s note, parents can visit a Guest Relations window at any Disney theme park and get a Guest Assistance Card or a Special Assistance Card. Either one of these cards entitles you to special consideration at any Disney park. You will often be permitted to go in through the exit of rides, or the disabled entrance, avoiding much of the line-waiting that drives special needs kids to act out (on some rides you will still have to wait in line). While you are getting the card, be sure to pick up the Guidebook for Guests with Disabilities, which spells out where the special entrances are on each ride.

Have more questions? The unofficial Disney planning mega-site AllEars has a great overview of Special Needs at Disney.

We are parents and by design, we worry. Our days are infiltrated with media warnings on hidden dangers in our products and homes. The constant stream of updated information regarding the health and well-being of our families can be overwhelming and confusing. What is the truth and what is merely the latest neurosis based on suspicion?

In her new book, Worry Proof: A Pediatrician (and Mom) Explains Which Foods, Medicines, and Chemicals to Avoid to Have Safe and Healthy Children, Cara Natterson, MD works to break through the conflicting reports and deliver direct answers on hot-button issues like sunscreen, cell phones, and cough medicine.

“Dr. Natterson’s sage and reasoned advice will dispel the perils that plague your daydreams, while making clear what you should, in fact, be concerned about. It will, quite simply, calm you down and thus ruin your neurotic day.” – Ayelet Waldman, author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.

Now we can get back to worrying about their education and the economy.

Available at Amazon.com

When you’re pregnant, there are things that happen to most people: like having a keen sense of smell or being suddenly turned off by a familiar food. Then there are things that happen to lots of people, but not everybody, like your feet staying a larger size after pregnancy, or morning sickness. Then there are things that you’ve probably never heard of. Unless they happened to you. Such as:

Fun With Hair: Along with the well-known hair-thickening properties of pregnancy (which occurs because hair on your head ceases to fall out), your hair can change texture, from curly to straight or vice versa. Hair can suddenly spring up where it never grew before (hello new moustache!), or it can virtually stop growing: many pregnant women notice they no longer need to shave their legs as often to keep them hair-free.

Leg cramps: Waking up in the middle of the night with screaming charley horses? Try adding more potassium to your diet (bananas, oranges) and drinking more. Which will be followed by more waking up to pee in the night. You can’t win. There’s another disorder called Restless Leg Syndrome that is exactly what it sounds like, and disproportionately affects pregnant women.

Your ladyparts turn dark: Nipples, areolas, labia, all can change from light pink to deep brown. An increase in blood and blood vessels is the culprit; “deep wine” is usually the description for the labia of a woman who is pregnant or has given birth. They may revert back to their old color or not.

Skin problems: Oh, so many things can happen. Your palms and feet can turn red and itchy. You get skin tags, you get freckles, you get moles and age spot. Maybe you’ll get a pregnancy mask, and maybe it’ll go away and maybe it won’t. You get zits, you get spider veins, you get varicose veins — sometimes even in your labia! Oh, good times.

What am I, Pinocchio?: Your nose can grow during pregnancy. Sometimes it reverts to its old size after you give birth, other times, not so much.

Image source: Flickr member ulybug under Creative Commons

A Nightline report on a controversial condition known as “food neophobia” (a.k.a. pathological pickiness) has parents talking today, arguing over the condition is a real problem, or just a new name for a normal childhood phase.

This goes way beyond ‘Eat your carrots,’ says host Cynthia McFadden, before introducing the family of Erin, a seven-year-old who is literally starving herself due to her fear of new foods. The report shows her struggling through dinner, plowing happily through breakfast, and then, heartbreakingly, taking place in a five-day Duke University eating disorders clinic with one simple goal: to be able to eat pizza.

The list of foods Erin will eat will sound familiar to parents: breakfast foods (pancakes, French toast), apples and a few other fruits, grilled American cheese sandwiches (prepared a certain way), chips, fries, crackers, and peanut butter (but only if it’s creamy, and only certain brands). No meat. No vegetables.

“People say that I’m making her special meals all the time for her and it’s my fault,” says Erin’s beleagured-looking mother. “It’s because I’m catering to her whim, and if I would show her who was boss, she would eat. And the fact of the matter is, she won’t.”

Nightline also interviewed Nancy Zucker, who studies eating disorders at Duke University and runs clinics for those with eating disorders severe enough to negatively affect their lives.

“Every kid goes through food fads and phases,” says Dr. Zucker. “Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches day after day after day, macaroni and cheese. That’s just normal. A picky eater is one for whom that variability just doesn’t shift.”

On the boards, posters vacillated between mockery and sympathy. “Why are we so obsessed with labels?” wondered one poster. A mom who related to the Nightline story said “It’s hard—everyone accuses me of giving him junk food and/or not really trying to offer new things. And we have tried it ALL.” A poster responded “put food in front of him (food you think is right). Don’t give snacks/junk. Wait. He won’t starve himself.”

When does pickiness cross the line into an eating disorder? And what can parents do if their child has an issue?

If making your own baby food sounds a bit more homegrown and hippyish then you are used to, there is a new cookbook that might make you think again. Consider this—nutrients in jarred baby food can be  depleted when cooked at high temperatures during the preservation process. Jarred baby food can also be much more expensive.

When chief Washington correspondent and anchor for MSNBC Norah O’Donnell watched her husband Chef Geoff Tracy easily whip up nutritional baby food for their own children, she was amazed at how simple it could be. Baby Love: Healthy, Easy, Delicious Meals for Your Baby and Toddler was born out of their desire to share tips, techniques and recipes to help families build a foundation for a lifetime of healthy living.

Baby Love includes:

- More than sixty gourmet-inspired recipes from Chef Geoff
- Tips for quick and nutritious preparation
- How to make two weeks worth of meals in less than one hour per week

Norah O’Donnell learned a lot about nutrition as she prepared this book and believes that what you feed your baby now will affect the rest of their lives.

We can’t wait to try: butternut and cranberry risotto, feelin’ peachy smoothie, and baby guacamole.

“We believe the time is ripe for change and look forward to a great baby food revolution.” -Norah O’Donnell

Available at Amazon.com