More mothers are breastfeeding—and breastfeeding longer—than a decade ago.
 Looks like all the talk about breastfeeding is paying off. New CDC numbers indicate that rates of breastfeeding are rising in the U.S., jumping from 70.3 percent in 2000 to 74.6 percent in 2008. And women are breastfeeding for longer, too: 44.4 percent were breastfeeding after six months in 2008, compared to only 34.5 percent in 2000.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, of course, is heartened by the trend. A policy statement on its website (PDF warning) links breast milk with a laundry list of health benefits, including lower risk of serious colds, pneumonia, ear infections, sudden infant death syndrome, Type 1 diabetes, obesity and more. The group recommends that mothers exclusively breastfeed their babies for the first six months, and then supplement breast milk with solid foods for the next six months.
Read more about the research over on the Los Angeles Times.
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Steve's wife is so done with breastfeeding—or so he thought.
 The second time my wife developed mastitis, an infection related to breastfeeding, she sat there shivering on the couch, feverish and chilled, swearing repeatedly, “That’s it. I am so done! I’m weaning. Done. No more breastfeeding.”
I greeted the news cautiously, but after my wife spent the majority of the next 15 minutes dropping “f” bombs on the entire notion of breastfeeding, I chimed in.
“Do you mean it?” I asked. “Are you really done?”
“Hell yes,” she said. “I am sooo done.”
“Good,” I told her, “because I’m done, too.”
At the time, I believed she might actually have reached her breaking point. Her first bout with mastitis necessitated a four-day hospital stay; for months, she endured cracked and bleeding nipples and a stabbing pain that radiated across her entire breast. Every so often, if a few days passed without my seeing her grimace, I’d ask if the pain subsided.
“No,” she’d say, “I’m still waiting for the good part.”
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Yup, technology went there.
Okay, so maybe it’s because I’m running on less sleep and a little too much coffee, but “utterly entertained” doesn’t even begin to cover my reaction to CTA Digital’s newest creation: the iPotty.
This new approach to toilet training, which made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show, gives kids a little bit more incentive to stay put when, um, doing their business. The iPotty looks like a traditional toilet training bowl, with a removable bowl, seat and pee-guard. The difference? A detachable stand designed specifically to hold an iPad, which, ideally, will make the time spend sitting a little more tolerable for toddlers.
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Yes, Robin will tune in and judge these nut-job parents. Won't you join her?
 As mommies (humans?), part of our job is to judge other people’s parenting, as well as lives in general. Disagree with me? Think that you are non-judgmental? Maybe I’m being judgmental, but I think you are a liar. We are all guilty of judging others at one time or another:
Six-year-old kid with a pacifier?
Isn’t he a little too old for that?
Feeding their kids sugary cereals?
No wonder the kid has cavities!
Kid throwing a tantrum in the middle of the toy store?
They probably never say no to their kids. Entitled brat.
Whether or not we ever vocalize these thoughts, they somehow pop up like little mean-bubbles in our overworked mommy brains. We don’t mean to judge (or maybe we do?), but it can’t be helped. I think we are hardwired to, upon witnessing a situation, decide how we would have handled it differently (read: better). It’s just the nature of the parenting beast.
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And other survival tips for dealing with sick kids.
 So, how bad is the flu this flu season? It’s so bad that schools are closing all across the nation. It’s so bad that hospitals are firing workers who won’t get flu shots. It’s so bad, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, that colleges are begging students returning to campus to wash their damn hands.
But you don’t care about any of that, because your gorgeous, beloved toddler is miserable thanks to the good old-fashioned cold. He’s crying, he has a fever, and he’s covered in so much drippy, gloppy green phlegm that you’re debating whether you should break out the ominous-looking nose-suction thingee you got at your baby shower but have never actually used.
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Nothing's more precious than sleep—for parents or for babies. Steve learned that the best way for everyone in house to get some shut-eye is to let his kids cry it out.
I remember the worst of it in painful fragments—blurry shapes, warm babies swaddled up tight and wailing in my arms, the steady throb of a headache that never yielded. Every step felt like a contest between the little strength I reserved and gravity. Several times, I arrived at work, closed my office door, collapsed face first over the desk and sobbed for five minutes or more. On the best of those bad days, I cried carefully, in church tones—a volume so low the sounds could never escape into the hall or adjoining rooms. On the worst of those bad days, I cried unreservedly.
The problem was sleep: After my wife and I had fraternal twins boys, Jack and Eli, we regularly subsisted on no more than a few hours of sleep, earned through two or three short naps.
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Sing it with me: we like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananaaaaas.
 • Well, this is a pleasant surprise. A new survey by market-research firm NDP found that Americans are seriously digging fresh fruit these days, so much so that it’s now our #1 go-to snack food, ahead of chocolate and potato chips. As the Los Angeles Times reports, “Over the course of a year, Americans snacked on fresh fruit an average of 10 times more than they snacked on chocolate and 25 times more than they snacked on potato chips.” Snacking apparently comprised 20 percent of our “eating occasions,” according to the survey, while breakfast accounts for 28 percent, lunch for 25 percent, and dinner for 27 percent. Interestingly, we’re now eating more snacks in the morning than we used to, while our afternoon and evening snacking has held steady. Maybe it’s all those reports touting the importance of a.m. meals? Check out a free summary of the NDP report here (PDF alert).
• Yes, Pap smears are uncomfortable, ladies, but they may soon be useful for more than just cervical-cancer detection: in a new study, researchers were able to use a Pap smear to detect uterine and ovarian cancers, as well. So … it’s necessary evil? The New York Times has more.
• Aw, man: Turns out that just because you cut your kids’ screen time doesn’t mean they’ll substitute all that sitting with serious physical activity. New research found that kids who spend less time in front of screens don’t necessarily get more exercise. If only it were that simple! (But really, we all knew it couldn’t be.) More here.
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Robin had it easy with Liv. Then along came Eli ...
 The adorable Raskin kids, Eli and Olivia ]Before I had kids of my own, I can remember spending a day with some friends and their kids. A boy and a girl of similar ages, the girl sat on the couch with us ladies, snuggled up with her mommy, and looked at a book. The boy ran all over the house flipping the light switches on and off for about two hours. I can remember my friends saying that this exemplified the difference between little boys and little girls. Having nothing but this (and memories of my own childhood, which included my very mellow little brother) to base my opinions upon, I had to wonder if this was true. Were little girls hardwired to be chill and little boys to be maniacs, or was it more about genetics?
Fast forward a year and along came Olivia who was, for all intents and purposes, a really easy kid. She slept well. She played well with others and shared. She was affectionate. She was funny and curious and ridiculously adorable (if I do say so myself). People would meet her, then look at my ever-expanding pregnant stomach and tell me that I shouldn’t get used to it, because it wasn’t going to be this easy the next time around. I didn’t believe them. I was holding fast to the belief that if two children came from the same gene pool their temperaments had to be in the same ballpark. Even if number two was a boy (we weren’t finding out), I was sure that he would be similarly mild-mannered and life would move along smoothly.
Hilarious.
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A new study of births after 9/11 highlights the surprising ways in which trauma affects male fetuses.
 For years, scientists have known that large-scale stressors like famines and floods correlate with a drop in the male-to-female birth rate among survivors. Studies of Chilean and Japanese earthquake victims and Swedish moms who were pregnant during natural disasters have shown decreases in the percentage of male offspring to which they gave birth. In the U.S., a nationwide study in 2010 showed male fetal deaths in the month after 9/11 shot up 12 percent—a figure researchers said was probably an underestimate, since many miscarriages go unreported. Even economic troubles and wars lower the percentage of male births among the pregnant population. (Conversely, in times of prosperity, more male babies are born.)
Now, a new study of births in California shows that boys born in December of 2001 are smarter than boys or girls whose moms weren’t pregnant during the Twin Towers attack. What in the world is going on?
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It didn't take long for new dad Steve Volk to realize that this whole parenting thing would be hard—especially with twin boys. In our newest series, he documents the ups and downs of modern-day fatherhood.
 Baby Eli smiles for the camera. I became a new parent last July—twice over, to fraternal twins, Jack and Eli.
I’d been warned, by long-time parents, “You’ll forget the whole first year.” The life of a new parent, particularly with twins, devolves into a timeless haze of diapers, breasts, bottles and burp cloths. I decided to write a column as a way of preserving some trace of my memories, so on Be Well Philly sister site, the Philly Post, I’ve written on topics ranging from breastfeeding and miscarriage, co-sleeping and circumcision. My favorite column remains the one in which I advised a great many people—maybe even you—to shut up.
Now, each week, I’m bringing my posts here to Be Well, where I hope you’ll join me on this new journey. And I also hope you’ll pipe in every now and then with your thoughts and advice—even if we completely disagree with each other.
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