New device allows parents to feed babies while using smartphones

Virginia, USA, native Tim Causa  found out the hard way that feeding a baby can be quite a handful, especially for parents who are always glued in on their smartphones.

His tough conundrum led him to design a device called Swipe & Feed— a simple clip that is attached to a smartphone at one end, with a perfectly angled baby’s bottle at the other.

“Swipe and Feed is a unique solution to a problem every parent experiences–doing anything while feeding a baby. Now you can catch up on those important work emails, share photos of your baby with loved ones, read the news and even buy diapers and wipes–the possibilities are limitless,” Causa wrote on the product’s website.

According to a Telegraph report, the 34-year-old father came up with the idea after struggling to feed his newborn son, Jack, for 25 minutes every hour, due to an acid reflux problem.

“For 25 minutes at a time, I was in a dark, quiet room feeding my son. It dawned on me that I could do some catch-up work while he fed, but I needed something to help me hold a bottle and my smartphone,” Causa described his frustrations on the website.

“I searched online for solutions, but nothing was on the market.  That’s when I decided to seize the opportunity and solve the problem myself,” he said.

Aside from its unique take at modern parenting, his invention is also dishwasher-safe and is available to fit in various bottle and phone designs.

As expected, his device has already attracted mixed reactions from parents’ groups.

One Facebook user wrote, ”I was just feeding my son and was trying to use my phone when I stumbled across your invention. What a great idea!”

Others, however, were not amused and expressed their disgust on the product’s views on parent-child feeding time.

“This is a very sick project. If a mother or a father are so self absorbed that they can’t spend 5 minutes to bond with their child while feeding then Child Protective Services should remove the child immediately,” one user commented. “Only a bunch of opportunists would even think this is appropriate and only narcissists would buy it.”

As of this writing, Causa is still awaiting donations from the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to be able to release his product to the mass market. It remains unclear how much Swipe & Feed will retail for.  Khristian Ibarrola

source: technology.inquirer.net

Music helps babies learn speech — study

MIAMI, United States — Babies who engage in musical play may have an easier time picking up language skills, suggested a study Monday.

US researchers compared nine-month-old babies who played with toys and trucks to those who practiced banging out a rhythm during a series of play sessions.

They found that the musical group showed more brain activity in regions involved with detecting patterns, an important skill when it comes to learning language.

“Our study is the first in young babies to suggest that experiencing a rhythmic pattern in music can also improve the ability to detect and make predictions about rhythmic patterns in speech,” said lead author Christina Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS).

“This means that early, engaging musical experiences can have a more global effect on cognitive skills.”

The study was small, enrolling just 39 babies and their parents, who took part in a dozen 15-minute play sessions over the course of a month.

Twenty of the babies listened to recorded children’s music while they sat with their parents and helped pound out drum beats to music that included waltz rhythms and tunes like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” a baseball classic.

The other 19 babies also attended active play sessions that used toys and blocks, but without music.

“In both the music and control groups, we gave babies experiences that were social, required their active involvement and included body movements — these are all characteristics that we know help people learn,” Zhao said.

“The key difference between the play groups was whether the babies were moving to learn a musical rhythm.”

When the babies underwent brain scans — known as magnetoencephalography (MEG) — at the end of the month, researchers wanted to see how they differed.

So they had the babies listen to speech and music sounds that occasionally contained a disruption in the cadence, or flow of sound.

Babies in the music group showed stronger brain responses in both the auditory and the prefrontal cortex, which are involved in controlling attention and detecting patterns, the study found.

“Pattern perception is an important cognitive skill, and improving that ability early may have long-lasting effects on learning,” said co-author Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS.

“Schools across our nation are decreasing music experiences for our children, saying they are too expensive,” added Kuhl.

“This research reminds us that the effects of engaging in music go beyond music itself. Music experience has the potential to boost broader cognitive skills that enhance children’s abilities to detect, expect and react quickly to patterns in the world, which is highly relevant in today’s complex world.”

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.

source: technology.inquirer.net

No need to avoid ‘happy baby pose’ in prenatal yoga?

Even though women are often advised to steer clear of certain yoga poses late in pregnancy, many of these moves might not be a problem for women or their babies, a small US study suggests.

Yoga can have many benefits during pregnancy, including helping women maintain flexibility and muscle tone and develop breathing techniques that may be useful during labor. But late in pregnancy women are often warned against poses that require them to lie on their backs, such as "happy baby pose" or "corpse pose," and inversions such as "downward facing dog" that might reduce circulation to the fetus and contribute to a spike in fetal heart rate.

To see how much caution might be warranted, researchers monitored fetal heart rate while a group of 25 healthy women in the final weeks of pregnancy tried 26 common yoga poses.

Fetal heart rate remained normal through all of the poses, and none of the women reported decreased fetal movement, contractions, fluid leakage or vaginal bleeding in the 24 hours after their yoga sessions, researchers report in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

"Though this is a preliminary study, I found there were no adverse changes in maternal or fetal wellbeing in the 26 studied poses," said lead author Rachael Polis, who conducted the research at Jersey Shore University Medical Center and is currently with Kosair Children's Hospital Gynecology Specialists in Louisville, Kentucky.

"Postures suspected to be contraindicated—e.g. downward facing dog, child's pose, happy baby and corpse pose—were also well tolerated," Polis added by email.

None of the women in the study had a history of hypertension or other complications during pregnancy, and none of them had any medical conditions that required them to avoid exercise.

The women were near the end of their third trimester, at about 35 to 37 weeks pregnant. Ten of the 25 participants did yoga regularly, while eight were familiar with yoga and seven had never done it before.

Each woman completed a one-on-one yoga session with a certified yoga instructor, with an obstetrician and a medical resident in the room. They had stress tests before going through the poses and again afterward.

Given the size of their bellies, they didn't do any yoga poses lying on their stomachs. They also avoided complete inverted poses such as hand stands or head stands. To avoid falls or other injuries, they could modify poses by using blocks, chairs or the wall for support.

Beyond the small size of the study, other limitations include yoga sessions that might not match the duration or intensity of a typical community yoga class, the authors concede. The women in the study were typically of a normal healthy weight, too, while more than half of pregnant women tend to be overweight or obese.

It's also possible that women might encounter poses not covered by this experiment that could cause problems during pregnancy, noted Kathryn Curtis, a researcher at York University in Toronto who wasn't involved in the study.

"I encourage pregnant women to seek out studios that offer specialized prenatal yoga classes that are taught by teachers who have prenatal yoga training," Curtis said by email.

"Women should practice hatha based, restorative practices with breath awareness components, rather than heated or strength focused practices, for safety precautions for both the mother and baby," Curtis added.

In a separate study reported in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 52 pregnant women who had never tried yoga were randomly assigned to either participate in a one-time, one-hour yoga class, or to attend a one-time, one-hour PowerPoint presentation about exercise, nutrition, and obesity in pregnancy.

In this study too, there was no significant change in fetal blood flow immediately after the moms did yoga, according to Dr. Shilpa Babbar of the University of Missouri Kansas City and colleagues.

"Yoga can be recommended for low risk women to begin during pregnancy," Babbar's team concluded. —Reuters

Curious Prince George revels in royal play day in New Zealand

WELLINGTON - Britain's baby Prince George hosted his first official function on Wednesday -- maintaining a regal calm on a play date with a group of New Zealand toddlers, even as some of his tiny guests burst into tears.

The play session at Wellington's Government House was organised by non-profit childcare group Plunket to give Prince William and Kate a relaxed start to a three-week tour of New Zealand and Australia after their arrival in the capital on Monday.

Formalities were cast aside for the occasion, with the eight-month-old prince crawling on the floor alongside 10 local babies while his proud parents looked on.

George, who was born on July 22 last year, looked comfortable in the spotlight, playing with a purple tambourine and exercising his royal prerogative at one point to snatch a doll from the mouth of a little girl.

Wellington photographer Grant Collinge, whose eight-month-old Lukas was among the babies, said George showed an inquisitive nature and it was clear he "was his own little man."

"He took control and went into the middle of the circle of toys. He hunted out the biggest toy, propped himself up and owned the place, basically," Collinge said.

The babies mingled in a room with a large portrait of George's great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II looking down from the wall, with cushions and toys scattered on the floor, including a giant blue teddy bear.

Tears and joy

There were tears from some of the other infants as introductions were made but George, dressed in navy-blue dungaree shorts and a white t-shirt, appeared calm even after dropping a toy to the floor.

He was content to chew Kate's hair as his mother gently bounced him in her arms while chatting to his playmates' parents, pausing occasionally to wipe a spot of drool from the royal chin.

Kate wore a knee-length black and white Tory Burch dress, while William opted for an open-necked blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up as he sipped a soft drink.

Plunket said the babies were all roughly the same age as George and were born to first-time parents, just like William and Kate.

They were also selected to reflect the diversity of New Zealand society, including various ethnic groups and a same-sex couple.

Gay dad Jared Mullen, father to nine-month-old Isabella, said the royal parents were "lovely" and shared their tips on raising George.

"As first time parents, in many ways they are in the same boat as all of us trying to get used to it," he said.

"The whole day's been a privilege, just to share our babies with the Duke and Duchess (of Cambridge) and to have them share their beautiful one with us."

The prince's play time is expected to be his last public appearance in New Zealand, where he will remain based in Wellington under the care of Spanish nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo as his parents make day trips around the country.

The New Zealand Republic lobby group said any of the 10 Kiwi babies at Government House would be better qualified as the country's head of state than George, who is third in line to the throne in both Britain and New Zealand.

"Baby George is as cute as any other baby... but unfortunately he cannot be New Zealand's future head of state, not unless he one day migrates to New Zealand and becomes a citizen," it said.

But opposition Labor party leader David Cunliffe, an avowed republican, said the question of whether to retain the monarchy should be put on hold while the royals were visiting.

"I actually don't think that's an appropriate conversation for now," he said.

The visit takes a sombre tone on Thursday, when William will lay a wreath at a war memorial in the South Island town of Blenheim. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

'Cry analyzer' helps detect health problems in babies

Your baby's cries may mean more than "Feed me" or "Change my diapers" – they could also contain crucial clues of possible health problems.

Working on this theory, researchers at Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital have developed a tool that analyzes babies' cries.

"Slight variations in cries, mostly imperceptible to the human ear, can be a 'window into the brain' that could allow for early intervention," Brown University said.


The new tool will perform "finely tuned acoustic analyses" of babies’ cries.

"With the tool, the team hopes their baby cry analyzer will lead to new ways for researchers and clinicians to use cry in identifying children with neurological problems or developmental disorders," the university said.

Stephen Sheinkopf, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown, who helped develop the new tool, said babies' cries contain subtle clues to their condition.

He said birth trauma or brain injury stemming from complications in pregnancy or birth, or extremely premature births can have ongoing medical effects.

"Cry analysis can be a noninvasive way to get a measurement of these disruptions in the neuro-biological and neuro-behavioral systems in very young babies,” he said.

Sheinkopf said he plans to use the tool to look for cry features that might indicate autism.

“We’ve known for a long time that older individuals with autism produce sounds or vocalizations that are unusual or atypical. So vocalizations in babies have been discussed as being useful in developing early identification tools for autism. That’s been a major challenge. How do you find signs of autism in infancy?” he said.

The cry analyzer breaks down recorded cries into 12.5-millisecond frames, and analyzes each frame using at least 80 parameters.

“It’s a comprehensive tool for getting as much important stuff out of a baby cry that we can,” said Harvey Silverman, professor of engineering and director of Brown’s Laboratory for Engineering Man/Machine Systems.

Silverman and his graduate students Brian Reggiannini and Xiaoxue Li worked with Sheinkopf and Barry Lester, director of Brown’s Center for the Study of Children at Risk, on the project.

Lester, who studied baby cries for years, says this research may trace its roots to the 1960s with a disorder called Cri du chat (cry of the cat) syndrome.

Cri du chat stems from a genetic anomaly similar to Down syndrome, and babies who have it have a distinct, high-pitched cry.

“The idea is that cry can be a window into the brain,” Lester said.

“Cry is an early warning sign that can be used in the context of looking at the whole baby,” he added. — LBG, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com