Tag: Babies and Infants

How a Sudden Halt to In Vitro Fertilization Shook Alabama Couples

Leelee Ray and her husband, Austin, have been trying to have a baby for six years, through insemination procedures, two egg retrievals, four embryo transfers, an ectopic pregnancy that could have been deadly and eight miscarriages. With four frozen embryos remaining in storage at a fertility clinic, the Rays, who live in Huntsville, Ala., decided […]

Read More

‘Ballerina Farm’ Gave Birth Two Weeks Ago. Now It’s Time For a Beauty Pageant.

“I am still bleeding a little,” Hannah Neeleman said. She was sitting in front of a glowing ring light in a Las Vegas hotel room, cradling a newborn, as a makeup artist hovered close by, eye-shadow brush in hand. Two weeks after giving birth to her eighth child, Ms. Neeleman, 33, said she no longer […]

Read More

The Quiet Luxury of South Korea’s Postpartum Care Centers

Four mothers sat quietly in the nursing room around midnight, breastfeeding their newborn babies. As one mother nodded off, her eyelids heavy after giving birth less than two weeks earlier, a nurse came in and whisked her baby away. The exhausted new mom returned to her private room to sleep. Sleep is just one of […]

Read More

WIC Food Assistance for Mothers and Children Faces Funding Shortfall

For the first time in decades, many states could begin turning away eligible applicants from an assistance program that provides low-income women and their children critical access to food. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, a federally funded program known as WIC, has traditionally received bipartisan support from lawmakers. But the […]

Read More

Why Some Parents Give Their Children a Last Name Other Than the Father’s

When Judy Pellarin had her daughters three decades ago, she and her husband gave them her last name instead of his. A generation later, her daughters also broke tradition — one gave her daughter her surname, and the other created a new name, a blending of her and her husband’s middle names. Though some families […]

Read More

Tongue-Tie Releases and Breastfeeding: What Parents Should Know

It’s an increasingly common scenario faced by new mothers across the country: A lactation consultant examines their newborn and suggests that cutting a “tongue-tie” may ease their difficulty breastfeeding. The quick procedure, known as a tongue-tie release, involves a dentist or doctor snipping a tight band of tissue connecting the tongue to the bottom of […]

Read More

Tongue Tie Surgery: Inside the Business of Cutting Babies’ Tongues

Later in 2020, Ms. Lavelle also complained to the board, describing how she had been traumatized by her daughter’s tongue-tie release. The lactation board, which reports its disciplinary decisions, has not taken action against Ms. Henstrom. A spokeswoman for the board, Susan Brayshaw, declined to comment on the complaints, citing a policy of confidentiality. “Some […]

Read More

In India, There’s an App for Everything. Even Dream Babies.

Want to raise a child with the business acumen of the industrial tycoon Ratan Tata, the concentration powers of the spiritual guru Swami Vivekananda, the scientific brilliance of the nuclear hero A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and — of course — the patriotic confidence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi? In India, there is an app for that. […]

Read More

UNICEF Chief: Gaza Soon Faces a “Public Health Catastrophe”

It is hard to describe what it means for someone to be “severely wasted,” but when you hold a child who is suffering from this most lethal form of acute malnutrition you understand, and you never forget. In Afghanistan last year, I met a 3-month-old girl named Wahida who was so malnourished I could barely […]

Read More

A Simple Way to Save Premature Babies

How It Works: Doctors wait to cut the cord. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists already recommends delaying clamping by 30 to 60 seconds for both full-term and preterm newborns. Preterm babies are those born before 37 weeks of gestation. In preterm infants, delayed clamping leads to improved circulation, less need for blood transfusions […]

Read More

Infants Are Born With Syphilis in Growing Numbers, a Sign of a Wider Epidemic

The rise in sexually transmitted infections in the United States has taken a particularly tragic turn: More than 3,700 cases of congenital syphilis were reported in 2022, roughly 11 times the number recorded a decade ago, according to data released on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Syphilis during pregnancy can lead […]

Read More

Infant Deaths Have Risen for the First Time in 20 Years

The number of American babies who died before their first birthdays rose last year, significantly increasing the nation’s infant mortality rate for the first time in two decades, according to provisional figures released Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics. The spike is a somber manifestation of the state of maternal and child health […]

Read More

Egg Crack Challenge and Cheese Slice Trick: Are Parents OK?

That is the eeriest part of these videos — the parents are barely interacting with their kids. Instead they are relating to a mirror image of their children that they are spreading online. And they are reveling in their power over that image. Children in crisis have been an onscreen fascination since the beginning of […]

Read More

South Korean Adoptions and a Nation’s Painful Past

Mia Lee Sorensen’s Danish parents used to tell her that her birth family in South Korea had put her up for adoption. According to her adoption papers, she was born prematurely in 1987 to a family that could not afford her medical bills and wished for her to have a “good future” abroad. But when […]

Read More

Why Mothers Feel Touched Out

My husband became an outcast in our own home, second fiddle to me, the primary source of nourishment and comfort, but also to the institution of motherhood, to which my body also now belonged. I sensed his disappointment because a mother, too, is meant to belong to her husband. But I frequently found myself “touched […]

Read More