infants

In the first two years of a child’s life, parents lose a whopping six months worth of sleep. When they do sleep, most don't stay asleep for more than three hours at a time. Ouch! Once kids are older we can finally start sleeping through the night, right? Uh, not exactly. 

Ahh, summer! What’s better than cookouts, long evenings, fun in the sun, toes in the water and a drink in your hand? Oh wait…you’re pregnant! Go ahead and assume you’ll be one hot mess the whole time.

American men are taking a few more years to perfect their best dad jokes.

For many years, rice cereal has been recommended as a standard first food for babies. It is high in iron, unlikely to cause allergies and can be easily mixed with breast milk or formula. So when our pediatrician suggested several years ago that our infant daughter skip rice cereal entirely, I was more than a bit surprised.

For more than 20 years, countries around the world have been celebrating World Breastfeeding Week as a way to protect, promote and support breastfeeding and its 

Any mom who has breastfed knows that, well, it's not as easy as it looks. In the earliest stages there can be problems with your baby latching on. It takes an enormous time commitment (on top of everything that is new parenthood). It's difficult to breastfeed if you are going back to work (you'll have to pump, and some workplaces still don't have adequate facilities for pumping moms). And you likely won't sleep for more than three hours at a time for as long as you're doing it.

And those are just the practical concerns. Add in society's seemingly endless enthusiasm for judging new and seasoned moms for breastfeeding in public, and you've got the potential for causing some serious pearl-clutching, even if you don't end up on the cover of a national magazine because you dare to breastfeed your toddler, or make headlines because, horror of horrors, you fed your hungry baby in public.

But given all of this, breastfeeding moms are a resilient bunch, and that's a good thing. The rewards of nursing to mom and baby are significant.