Saturday, March 11, 2017

Sleep Rules for Daylight Savings!

Daylight Savings – Spring Forward!


WooHoo - Daylight Savings Starts Sunday, March 12, 2017 at 2:00am


     The thought of something messing with a good thing is super duper stressful.  If your babies and kids are good sleepers we, of course, want to keep it that way and not allow something like DAYLIGHT Savings  ruin it.  It doesn't take much, sometimes, to throw off a baby rhythm, and send us spiraling into an "OH NO NOW WHAT" situation.  Here are Mimi's Rules for Daylight Savings.

     Do not play around with bedtime on Sunday following SPRING FORWARD even though we are
losing an hour. If you’ve been putting child to bed at 6:30 still put child to bed 6:30 on Sunday night.

For children:
• For children older 2 years old you may be able to follow the adult directives of putting
them to bed earlier each night. For younger children make sure they are well napped on
Saturday and go to bed on the earlier side.
• When your child wakes up on Sunday morning (any time after 6am) make sure she gets
some sunlight first thing in the morning. Do this on Monday also – it will help her reset
her internal clock. This will help you too! “Spring forward” can help some children who
are having early rising struggles (waking before 6am) which is great news!
• Schedule your next day’s meals and activities according to the new clock time.
• Your bigger challenge will be to help your child get to the new (later) bedtime without
being overtired! That means you have to make naps an absolute priority. Watch sleep
windows, have a comforting pre-nap routine and get child down for a good, restorative
nap or two (depending on age). An earlier bedtime will help if you are not able to get
decent nap/naps.
For adults:
• Go to bed 15 minutes earlier than usual tonight.
• On Friday go to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual (beginning to see the pattern?).
• On Saturday try to go to bed 45 minutes earlier than your usual bed time.
• Eliminate all caffeine before 1:30 p.m. this week in order to make it easier to go to bed
earlier.
• Avoid alcohol this weekend which negatively effects sleep.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Speech Development Begins in the Womb!


I recently read about a study from 2013 in which researchers aimed to identify if a baby in utero would react to songs played during the last trimester and if those babies would also react to the same songs after birth.  It is fascinating, they determined through an extensive study, that babies in the womb could not only hear and process the songs but that 4 months after they were born they had a continued increased reaction to the same songs.  This study was conducted at the University of Helsinki.  The main goal of the study was to map out associations with sounds in the womb as they may play into speech development as a baby grows.

Long story short, not only are they listening during your pregnancy but this listening may play a HUGE role in speech development later on.  Just another example of how your baby is NOT born a blank slate and how the cause/effect relationships with babies are not always quick an easy to figure out.  Have you ever chatted with a toddler who had an particularly extensive vocabulary for their young years?  Maybe you've even had the awe inspiring experience of a conversation with a 3 year old who is clearly able to articulate well beyond his years.  Perhaps, just maybe, these babies were exposed; either on purpose or quite by happen-stance, to music, songs and singing.

So I say...grab your karaoke machines, turn up the volume and sing to your baby who happens to be listening and learning!Read more about the study...

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Basic Breastfeeding Supplies


There truly isn't much you need to buy to be successful with breastfeeding, afterall, you were born with TWO of the most important pieces of the puzzle!!  There are a handful of things that will help make the process a bit easier; things to have on hand in the event you have struggles.  Join Alisa Underwood, RN, BSN, IBCLC as she reviews breastfeeding supplies.


Check out our latest episode!