by Mark Walters

Shopping for baby bedding can be a fun experience, but many people also find it a bit overwhelming because there are so many choices and they are not sure which items they need and which of the many sub-types of those items are best. If you find yourself being overwhelmed, then you need to get back to basics, and remember that the only really important thing to consider is whether what you are buying is safe for your baby. So long as an item of baby bedding is safe, then it is a good item to buy.

The crib is the most important item of baby bedding. You need to get one that is well made and sturdy and which does not have any rough or sharp edges on it. The bars on it should be wide enough apart for your baby not to be able to get their arms or legs trapped. You will have to buy more than one crib for your baby's early years because they will soon outgrow the first one that you buy.

Inside the crib you need bumpers and blankets. Bumpers are necessary to prevent your baby banging themselves against the sides of the crib, so you will need four of them. They should be able to be firmly attached to the sides of the crib as otherwise they can fall inwards should your baby pull on them. In terms of thickness, they do not need to be more than half an inch.

The blankets that you use should be appropriate your home's temperature. If you buy polyester blankets you may find that they make your baby too warm. Likewise, you may find that acrylic cellular blankets are not a good choice. Cotton is the best choice of materials for baby blankets. As a general guide, a warm room (approximately 75 degrees) will require one sheet. Then, for every drop of 5 degrees, you should add another baby blanket.

Both the blankets and the bumpers that you buy will need to be changed every couple of days, so you should buy at least a couple of sets of all items. Buying machine washable baby bedding will save you a lot of time. As for the washing itself, be sure to only use washing powder that is for babies and / or people with sensitive skin. If you use cheap washing powder then your baby's skin may become red and itchy because of the use of certain chemicals in it.

As for the colors and designs of the baby bedding items that you buy, you can really just use your imagination. There is no need to spend hours finding the cutest items (unless of course you want to) because your baby will not have any idea of whether their bed looks nice or not. So long as it safe, comfortable, clean and the right temperature, they will be happy.

Now Try : Baby Bedding Sets

by Nancy Newell

You have your baby in your arms, she is changed, cleaned and fed, but still crying. This is probably one of the times when you feel frustrated and unable to understand what is going on. The baby is crying and suffering and you cannot do something to make her feel better.

The first thing you should check is if the baby needs to be fed, if the baby is thirsty or if there is something else that causes discomfort. This can be something minor like the clothes being too tight or an eyelash that is in the eye. See that the baby has no apparent reason for crying. Then check if the baby has any signs of illness. Fever, sweat or signs of nervousness might mean that the baby has a cold. If everything seems fin, the baby might have a colic hit. In this case, you should hold the baby in your arms and try to relax her. Reduce anything irritating in the room like bright lights or loud noises. If the baby is scared of something or dislikes company, move to a room that you can be alone and calm the baby down. Make sure the baby understands your presence through cuddling and hearing your voice.

Colic has a way to appear and a pattern that could become evident to you if you notice things. If you breast feed the baby, avoid food that can be irritating as onions, spices, strawberries and grapes. There are also other foods that can be irritating so ask for a list from your doctor. Check if the baby has a minor allergy to milk.

The one thing to do however is to hold the baby in your arms. There are studies that show that babies that are being held several hours a day don't have colic because the presence of the mother reassures them and they develop better. Hold the baby and read a story to allow the baby to hear your voice at a steady pace. Put on some soft music and relax. If your baby likes walks, try to walk inside the room until the baby stops crying.

If your baby has colic, making simple lifestyle changes can help you cope with this situation. Spend time with the baby and avoid letting other people taking care of the baby. Babies that have colic suffer from lack of contact to their parents. Make sure the baby sees you and hears your voice. Hold the baby any time you can. Colic will be reduced if you keep your environment calm and relaxed.

Nancy Newell is a writer for My Baby Bedding Shop. Even though her children are all grown up she still loves giving advice to new mommies. She hopes this article was of some help to you. She would also like for you to check out her Baby Bedding Store

by Byron Jonas

What an exciting time for new parents! Your new baby has arrived and you want to enjoy every moment of his development. Keeping him safe is a big part of that enjoyment. Here are ten tips to help you along the way.

Inspect the crib for safety

Many hours will be spent in the crib so it is imperative that it is safe. The spaces between the slats should be no more than two and three eighths inches wide. This is about the width of a soda can. Spaces that are wider can allow baby's head to slide through them and become trapped, causing possible strangulation. Also, make sure the crib mattress fits snugly around the edges so that little legs and arms cannot get wedged in between the mattress and the walls of the crib.

Schedule regular visits to his pediatrician

Baby should begin visiting her pediatrician at about two weeks of age. The doctor will check her growth and weight gain as well as physical development. Immunizations will be discussed, as will nutrition.

Heat bottles in warm water, don't use the microwave

Microwaves do not heat evenly. They create hot spots in the formula or breast milk that could scald your baby's mouth and also destroy nutrients. Heat the bottle in tepid water instead. It takes longer but it is much safer.

Don't leave toys in his crib

An infant does not yet know how to move away from a toy that has become pushed up against his face. Although the toy may be soft and inviting, it can cause suffocation. It's best to take them out of the crib, especially when your child is sleeping.

Never turn your back on an infant on a changing table, couch, or bed

When changing your baby's diaper, turning away for even a second can have terrible results. Babies who have not yet turned over on their own can suddenly figure this out and flip before you can catch them. Pick baby up if you have to reach for a diaper or a cotton swab. Don't take any chances.

Use a car seat especially made for infants

New babies should ride in a car seat that is made especially for infants. These seats have proper head support for newborns . It is important that you also face the seat backwards and learn to strap it in correctly.

Make a regular inspection of his toys

Make sure there are no small parts that could break off and become lodged in their throat. Also look for sharp edges and peeling paint. Fuzzy toys can shed and cause fibers to be inhaled, so check the stuffed animals also for shedding fur or loose stitching.

Keep an eye on pets

Pets can become confused when a new little life enters their world. The celebration and changes in their schedule could make them anxious. Never leave baby alone with a pet. Even the most loved and obedient animal can act unpredictably.

Keep small objects out of reach

A baby's natural instinct will be to put things in her mouth. If small items are within reach, this could cause a choking hazard. Watch what she picks up and be prepared to act quickly!

Don't let him wear clothing that is too tight or constrictive

Clothing that is rubbing on soft, tender skin can irritate and cause rashes and discomfort. Little socks can become tight around the cuffs as her legs grow. Check often to make sure there are no tight elastic bands or rough edges on her clothing.

Having a great start in life will be a bit easier if you follow these tips towards the health and safety of your new baby.

by Marcus Freytag

Rainy days can be a real bummer, especially if you are a kid that wants to go play outside. Waking up and seeing that it is going to be a rainy day can be very depressing to little ones. Having some ideas for rainy day indoor activities can brighten the day.

1. A trip to the library can keep everyone busy. Have your kids pick out some books and they will be kept busy enjoying them when they get home.

2. Almost every kid likes to watch movies but choosing the right ones is important. Educational movies are very easily available and will be beneficial to the child and make mom feel good as well.

3. An idea box' is a good plan too. Have the children put activity ideas in the box and on rainy days they can choose a surprise activity to do. Just the thought of this will be fun for the kids.

4. A tea party can be fun on a rainy day too. You can dress up in poodle skirts and both moms and daughters can have a great afternoon of make believe'.

5. Board games are fun too. There are tons of choices of board games out there and would be impossible to not find one to make everybody happy. Puzzles are a great idea as well.

6. A game called reverse writing' is a great challenge for slightly older children. The object is to write a sentence backwards. After writing it in reverse you bring it to a mirror and see how they did. This can provide hours of entertainment.

7. Baking cookies is always fun. Kids love to mix the dough and gather the ingredients needed. It gives a great feeling of achievement to the little ones. The smell of them baking and enjoying the finished product will be a great rainy day distraction.

Potty training can be a process of trial and error. It can be both exciting and quite frustrating. Rest assured, eventually your child will be potty trained. There are very few teenagers running around in diapers!

That being said, there are proven potty training strategies that have worked for parents over the years. Let’s take a look at a few of them to make the potty training process as easy and painless as possible.

Wait until your child is ready for potty training before you begin

Many parents, undoubtedly excited to be done with the whole diaper thing, rush potty training. Good intentions aside, if a child isn’t mentally and physically ready to learn how to use a toilet, the potty training process is going to take much longer and be frustrating for the both of you.

Signs your child is ready to begin potty training include:

* Frequent dry or clean diapers
* Curiosity about the toilet
* Communication regarding their potty habits – if a child tells you they just peed or they have to pee they’re ready for potty training.

Make sure you have the right gear

There are a lot of potty training aids available. From small portable potty chairs to floating targets you can place in the toilet to help your little boy aim and enjoy the training process. Getting the gear before you begin training will help you and your child create a structure and a routine around potty training.

It also helps to have potty training friendly clothing. There’s nothing more frustrating than a child who tells you they have to go potty and then having them wet their pants because it took too long to get their clothing off. Slips on pants are the easiest and of course skirts and dresses make it easy for girls.

Have a positive mindset

Mistakes will happen and children will make huge leaps forward only to then have really bad potty training days or weeks. Reward and celebrate successes and stay focused on having a positive attitude. Recrimination, punishment and yelling only makes a child feel bad about themselves, it doesn’t further the potty training process.

Know that it’s much easier for a child to be aware of their body during the daytime and nighttime accidents can happen well into elementary school. Be prepared. Protect your child’s pride and their belongings with a mattress pad, rules about drinking before bedtime and support and understanding.

The potty training process can take a while and each child’s experiences are different. Be patient, be positive and be prepared!

Need extra help - feel free to download the Potty Training ebook - right click on the image and select "save as". It's yours free and no obligation courtesy Just4Families. Do leave a comment when you take it.

I have two ebooks available for free download this week and over the next few weeks I hope to adding more. These ebooks are totally free - you don't have to join a mailing list or buy any products.

The first ebook is a Parent's Guide To Medicine Safety. As parents, we never want to see our children sick. It’s often painful for us to see our children in discomfort and it’s also difficult to comfort them when they don’t understand why they’re sick. Sickness can lead to bad moods and cranky kids, which in turn leave parents frustrated. The end result is that often the whole family gets stressed out when sickness invades the home.

Our first response is usually to find a medicine that will cure the illness. But along with curing whatever ails your child, there are certain dangers associated with medicines, both prescription and over the counter (OTC). The Parent's Guide To Medicine Safety will help you decide if medicine is even a necessary treatment, safety tips to ensure your child gets the correct dosage, natural remedies, tips for when to seek medical attention, and questions you need to ask your pediatrician.

The second ebook available for free download is titled How Brain Friendly Learning Can Release Your Child's Potential. A rather interesting ebook that will at least have you thinking about ways you can help your child to learn new things. I like this statement:

"Walk upstairs, open the door gently, and look in the crib. What do you see? Most of us see a picture of innocence and helplessness, a clean slate. But, in fact, what we see in the crib is the greatest mind that has ever existed, the most powerful learning machine in the universe."

And that really is so true. The more we discover about the universe around us the
more we realize how little we really know. What is true of outer space is also true of inner space - our minds.

To download these ebooks, click on one of the images. It will take you to a download page. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and you will find your download links.

Quote: Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. - Elizabeth Stone

It is not uncommon for you to have mixed emotions when your baby is born as there are many changes to your hormones during pregnancy and for many new mothers it can take some time before they feel a bond with their new baby.

You should not question your ability to be a good mother due to these emotions as it is something that many women experience.

Having an understanding partner or the help and support of friends and family will go a long way to help you get through this period should it happen to you.

On the other hand you will also have to attend to the needs of your newborn and having friends and family around too often can actually make it difficult for you to concentrate on developing a relationship with your baby.

A newborns senses and reflexes are surprising well developed right from the beginning of their life. In some circumstances where you and the baby are forced to be apart after childbirth, where there might be some additional care required by the hospital nursing staff and doctors in special care units, you will need time to be with your baby and start developing your bond.

It is a big change to your life to have a newborn baby and such a change can take time to get accustomed to so don't try to rush things along and always follow the advice of your doctor.

Once you start getting involved more in the care of your baby you might find that any strange emotions begin to subside and you will begin to feel the love that you expected towards your child.

You should always feel free to discuss anything that is concerning you and in particular your doctor and nurses as they are dealing with similar situations on a daily basis and it is better to listen to informed advice rather than the opinions of people who might not understand the situation.

Such feelings might not affect you whatsoever but it always good to know the facts in advance should this happen to you as you will be better able to deal with it.

You can help to make the internet a safe place for your child. Taking action today is better than waiting until tomorrow. The longer you wait, the better chance your child has of connecting with those online predators. That’s not something any parent would want to endure.

With the number of children setting themselves up with these strangers on the rise,there’s no doubt that the need for parental intervention is greater than ever. Cyber stalking and cyber abuse by online strangers is no joke. It’s no longer surprising to find out that many young children are succumbing to what is turning into a national epidemic. More children, especially girls, are now more than every getting bolder and taking a chance because they are curious and don’t want to wait to grow up.

Of course, some of them don’t inform their parents because they know the threat of being grounded is real. So is the threat of being snatched away by someone they don’t know. That fact is also very scary for a lot of parents. It’s not something they’d want to think about happening to their child.

The reason most predators choose the online route because it’s easy and no one will see them in person unless it’s the child their trying to get into their good graces. It’s a rarity that they would even think about coming on to a child in person, even though it has happened.

Also, the internet is just an easy medium for people to correspond, even if they’ve never met before. Once the perpetrator has built up enough trust in the child, then they decide to take action.

If you don’t pay attention to this, your child could be in a whirlwind of unknown and dangerous territory before you can blink your eyes. These online strangers are smarter than you think and they always try to stay one step ahead of everyone else.
With parents having all the knowledge and resources about prevention, it’s never too late to intervene in their child’s online life. In fact, the sooner they start the better chance they have of saving their child from destruction and a downhill spiral.

Consistent intervention from you is the key to keep your child and your family out of harm’s way. I highly recommend this ebook and Just4Families is pleased to be able to offer it to you for a measly five dollars (plus, as a bonus, you get two free ebooks that I am sure you will find useful). Click on the image to find out how you can download your copy today.

Are you the parent of a child who has recently decided that they want to use internet chat rooms? Or, are you a parent who has just learned that your child has been using internet chat rooms? If you are, you may be unsure as to how you should proceed. Yes, internet chat rooms are a great way to make new friends online, but they can be dangerous. So, should you let your child use online chat rooms?

When it comes to determining if your child is ready to use online chat rooms, it is best to examine the pros and cons of them. For starters, there are chat rooms out there that are designed for children and teenagers. By visiting these chat rooms, your child should be paired with their peers. They may also be able to make new online friends and communicate with their friends from school easily online.

Meeting new friends online and communicating with current friends over the internet, by way of internet chat rooms, is nice. It, however, is also important to remember that there are dangers to doing so as well. For starters, it is important to remember that anyone can get into a chat room. Just because a chat room that your child uses is designed for kids between the ages of 8 and 15, it doesn’t mean that everyone in that chat room falls into that age range.

As for why it is easy for an adult to get into a chat room and pretend to be a child it is because not all internet chat rooms are monitored. With that said, you should be able to find a number of chat rooms for children and teens that are monitored. This means that an adult will be there watching all conversations to make sure that they are appropriate. Remember though that an adult pretending to be a child may be able to slide under the radar.

As previously stated, an adult could easily pretend to be a child, enter a chat room for children, and target those in the room. This is easy for many internet predators to do because the internet makes it very simple for children to be targeted. A whole new, false identity can be created and you and your child may never know until it is too late.

Despite the fact that there are a number of cons or downsides to letting children and teenagers use internet chat rooms, many parents still let their children do so. If you want to be one of those parents, that is fine, but be sure that both you and your child know the dangers that lurk. Make sure they know not to give out personal information in a chat room because the person on the other end of the computer may not be who they say they are.

Also, for your child’s protection, find internet chat rooms for them to use. Even if your child knows that dangers lurk, they may still opt for the most popular chat rooms, even if they aren’t very safe. When searching for safe chat rooms for your child to use, start with a standard internet search. Next, look for those that have staffed monitors, as well as those that do not have private messaging features.

For added safety and security, have your computer in a well trafficked location. This is likely to reduce the amount of time that they spend in a chat room, as they may feel like they are being watched. You can also limit the use of chat rooms unless you are home or in the same room. Of course, you can ban your child from visiting online chat rooms if you wish, as you do have the right to do so.

As a reminder, be sure to talk to your child or teenager about the dangers of communicating with strangers on the internet. Having online friends are nice, but make sure your child knows that they should stay just that “online,” friends.

It’s that time of year again here in Australia: flu season. Each year, millions of people hunker down in the autumn to prepare for the annual onset of influenza outbreaks. With the season comes an onslaught of visits to, at best, pediatricians’ offices and, at worst, hospital emergency departments by worried parents and their ailing children. Now that you’ve got a newborn, you want to be prepared.

So how do you keep your new baby healthy this winter?

While you cannot inoculate your baby, there are steps you can take to keep them healthy during flu season – many of them common sense.

What is the flu?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the flu is a contagious respiratory ailment caused by a group of viruses known as influenza. It strikes an average of five to 20 percent of the U.S. population each year, causing symptoms that range from fever, headache, dry cough, sore throat, runny nose, and muscle aches to nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Complications associated with the illness include bacterial pneumonia, ear infections, sinus infections, dehydration, and worsening of chronic medical conditions. Here in Australia, the statistics are quite similar.

Young children, the elderly, and people with chronic health conditions are at particular risk for serious flu-related complications.

How do I avoid getting the flu?

The CDC recommends getting a flu shot as the number one way to avoid getting the flu. If possible, get a flu shot in February or March here in Australia (October or November in the US), although you can still be vaccinated into April and May (December in the US).

Parents, siblings, and caretakers of young children should be vaccinated. The American Academy of Pediatrics revised its recommendation in 2006 to include flu shots for children as young as six months and up to age five years. The CDC also recommends that pregnant women be vaccinated. Studies suggest that maternal immunization may help prevent the flu in young infants. Breast feeding can also help by passing on some antibodies.

While your newborn is too young to safely receive the vaccine, and whether you were or weren’t vaccinated while pregnant, he can’t catch the flu, if he does not come into contact with the virus.

Other simple preventatives include covering your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze, washing your hands with soap and water – often, avoiding close contact with those who are sick, and keeping your baby out of crowded public places. The flu is spread through contact with the respiratory droplets of an infect person, primarily from coughing and sneezing, so be alert and act accordingly.

What to do if you or your baby get sick?

If you think you have the flu, minimize contact with your baby as much as possible. Drink plenty of fluids and rest. Take fever-reducing medications, as necessary, and contact your physician if your condition worsens. You can try one of the many face masks now being sold, however, their is still doubts to their efficacy, besides, who wants to spend all day wearing a mask?

If your baby becomes ill, ensure that he continues to nurse often to prevent dehydration. Call your pediatrician immediately if your baby has trouble breathing, is not feeding adequately, seems less responsive than usual, or his rectal temperature rises above 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Influenza is a serious concern, especially for parents of newborns. But simple, common sense strategies can help you keep your baby healthy throughout the flu season.