Tummy Time is one of baby’s first exercises! It is a crucial exercise for baby’s motor, visual, and sensory development. Baby can begin Tummy Time as a newborn. This can start on your body while you lay down. This can be done in bed, on a couch or in the bathtub! Wearing your baby in an infant carrier or ring sling also counts as tummy time! We’re encouraging baby to use their core strength and rotate their head from side to side. Once baby gets a little bigger and stronger, tummy time can be done on a firm, flat surface. Start with small increments of a few minutes at a time, several times a day. Eventually, try to do longer Tummy Time sessions, eventually building up to a full hour.

• Newborn-2 months old – spend a minimum of 30 minutes per day during awake periods, this can be broken up into multiple sessions instead of doing it all at once
• 2-4 months old – spend a minimum of 45-90 minutes per day during awake periods
• 4-6 months old – spend a minimum of 1-2 hours per day during awake periods
• 6-8 months old – the majority of waking hours will be spent in tummy time or sitting/learning to sit. Babies should learn to sit before they learn to stand.

It’s important to note that babies are not 100% immune to any disease for which they get antibodies via breast milk. Antibodies in our milk to flus, colds and viruses that we’ve been exposed to help reduce the severity and length of time our babies may get sick. When we get sick or get vaccinated against certain diseases, antibodies pass through out milk to provide PASSIVE immunity to our babies. This does NOT mean that our babies won’t or can’t get sick. We still need to take precautions to minimize risk of and exposure to viruses and germs.

If you’ve had COVID or the vaccine, it doesn’t mean baby is automatically immune to getting it. Antibodies passed on via breast milk aren’t permanently circulating in baby’s system to forever protect them against a disease. The antibodies, which are found after a feed in the baby’s mouth, nasal cavity, and gut, are eventually washed away by baby’s saliva, mucus, or gastric juices. Within few hours after nursing, antibodies will have disappeared from the baby’s mouth and nasal cavity, while a small amount may stay in the gut. Antibodies are replenished in your breast milk every time baby feeds. The more often a baby breastfeeds, the more chances they have to get those antibodies and passive immunity. Meaning, a 2-year-old who only breastfeeds 1-2 times a day isn’t going to be as consistently protected as a 2-month-old feeding 10+ times a day. So if you’re thinking about adding in breast milk to your dinner casserole to give immunity to your preschooler, it doesn’t work like that. Partial protection is still better than no protection, so if it makes you feel better, so for it.

A rainbow baby is a child born after a miscarriage, stillbirth, or death in the first weeks of infancy. Although rainbow babies represent joy after a devastating storm, many people expecting a rainbow baby still struggle with mixed emotions including anxiety, excitement, fear, worry, and hope. August 22 is National Rainbow Baby Day and offers families a chance to share their experiences, grieve, reflect, and celebrate the joy for their rainbow babies.

Pregnancy loss is defined differently around the world, but in general a baby who dies before 28 weeks of pregnancy is referred to as a miscarriage, and babies who die at or after 28 weeks are stillbirths. Miscarriage is the most common reason for losing a baby during pregnancy. Estimates vary, although estimates are as high as 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. Every year, nearly 2 million babies are stillborn. However, miscarriages and stillbirths are not systematically recorded, even in developed countries, suggesting that the numbers could be higher.

Peach is my rainbow baby. After two miscarriages within 4 months of each other in 2018, I found out I was pregnant with Peach the day before my mom was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Peach is the rainbow that kept me going through the hardest storm of my life.

Miscarriage and infant loss is something that is not talked about enough even though it occurs often. It can be healing to acknowledge the loss and know you’re not alone as you grieve your loss. Feel free to share your rainbow baby stories here.

Tandem breastfeeding is when two or more children breast/chestfeed or receive expressed milk at the same time.

It is possible to continue to breastfeed throughout pregnancy; however, there are some important things to know. Some may experience nipple sensitivity or a feeding aversion to the point that they want to stop feeding the older. About 1/2 report their milk supply drops, sometimes significantly. This is from hormonal changes and there is little that can be done to prevent this. If the first baby is less than one year old, supplementation may be required until after the birth of the baby. Milk can transition back to colostrum as early as the end of the first trimester. Colostrum is salty and some toddlers not drink it. Colostrum also acts as a laxative to help newborns poop meconium. It may have the same laxative effect on your toddler, so be warned!

Once the new baby comes, some will feed both children together at the same time, rotating which side they start on each time. Others may take turns to feed one child at a time. If the babies are of different ages, they’ll usually feed the newborn first to optimize milk supply. Many tandem feeders say that breastfeeding their toddler helps with the transition of having a newborn.

This is the first generation that has had the luxury of having a freezer milk stash. No other generation had the ease and technology to be able to go back to work and still maintain the breastfeeding relationship while parent and child are separated for 8+ hours a day. In our grandparents generation, you either stayed home and breastfed your baby or formula fed by bottle. There really weren’t other options and breast pumps were not readily available. It was only in 2010 that the Affordable Care Act laws were passed to require insurance companies to cover the cost of breast pumps as part of preventative medicine. With those laws, new breast pumps flooded the market. Before that, there were only a few choices for pumps and people had to buy them out of pocket. Because we have been raised around technology, we still take for granted what our not so ancient ancestors went through. Historically, if weren’t successful at breastfeeding, either some one else breastfed your baby or your baby died.

You don’t have to have a freezer stash to successfully breastfed your baby. If you need a freezer stash because of your circumstances, what an amazing time to be a parent!!! New and better technology is available every day to continue to make the process easier and more efficient. The freezer stash can mean reaching your personal goals as a family. If you have an abundant supply, consider milk donation to help other families reach their goals. What a gift to be able to give back to others.

Do I need to do stretches on my baby’s tongue after a tongue tie release? There are many conflicting answers, and it seems like every dental job or ENT practice has a different answer, which gets really confusing for parents. The biggest concern is tongue reattachment after it’s been released, defeating the purpose of release. For some babies it means needing it released again.

From my speech pathology/IBCLC background, to give one answer to all families is a disservice to the unique nature of each tongue that is released and how each body heals (which is as distinct as the individual). We have to consider that this is wound care and we need to understand what that specific tongue did before and after the revision. When you have a tongue that is strong (good muscle tone) with good range of motion, but was only limited because of the frenulum, the stretches, exercises and wound care management are different than a tongue that is super weak and with disorganized movement. I have found in my practice that tongues that are super strong pre-release do much better post release and tend to need much less wound care management to keep the tongue from reattaching. They also need fewer oral motor exercises to get baby back to breast. The tongue was already functioning as it should, it was just anchored by the frenulum. When you have a weak tongue where range of motion was poor to begin with, they tend to need much more suck training/exercises, and without stretching, the tongue will reattach because of how the tongue rests on the floor of the mouth instead of up on the palate during healing. Body work is essential for these babes as the tension and weakness is usually though the whole system. When prescribing wound care management we need to consider what does the tongue do.
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Here’s a phenomenal video of Dr Chelsea Pinto teaching stretches after frenectomy CLICK HERE

For more information on wound care after tongue tie release, Dr Ghaheri has amazing information and videos. CLICK HERE