How to Transition Your Baby to a Sippy Cup
You think it's time to transition your baby to a sippy cup but you are not sure how to go about it.? Relax, transitioning to a sippy cup is relatively easy and all about physical maturity, fun and a bit of folly too!? The key issue in transitioning your baby to a sippy cup and learning how to use a sippy cup, is the development of a good strong fist grasp and the ability to easily move things from the hand to the mouth.? Ahh, your baby has been moving items from the hand to the mouth for ages now right?? Using a sippy cup requires much more than simply picking an object up and putting it into ones mouth!
How old should your baby be for introducing and/or transitioning to a sippy cup?
The question of when it is a good age to transition baby to a sippy cup and to have baby begin to use a sippy cup has many different answers.? We gave our babies sippy cups from the time they started solids and had a pretty good grasp - around 6 months old.? The sippy cup at that age was just to allow the babies to practice holding and moving the cup around.? Getting your baby acquainted with a sippy cup is a good idea prior to transitioning your baby to using a sippy cup! ?Ensure that baby plays with the cup and does not attempt to whole-heartedly "drink" from it as gas from sucking in air may occur!? Our babies began to actually drink liquids from a sippy cup around 9 months of age.
What do the "experts" say about introducing and/or transitioning to a sippy cup?
The American Academy of Family hysicians notes "The sippy cup should be introduced at six months of age in preparation for weaning from the bottle or breast at 12 months" and further states that "common contributing practices that contribute to infant and toddler tooth decay include the following: propped bottles containing sweetened liquids, frequent consumption of sweetened liquids from infant and toddler-size "sippy" cups, and frequent snacking.
The American Academy of Pediatrics states that you should "Teach your child to drink from a cup as soon as possible, usually by 1 year of age. Drinking from a cup does not cause the liquid to collect around the teeth, and a cup cannot be taken to bed. If you are concerned that a cup may be messier than a bottle, especially when you are away from home, use one that has a snap-on lid with a straw or a special valve to prevent spilling.
Tips and Tricks for Introducing or transitioning your baby to a sippy cup
Offer your baby the sippy cup as soon as baby is able to maintain a good tight grasp.
Choose a sippy cup that is light weight and easy for tiny hands to handle.? The Avent Naturally Magic cup is one that is highly recommended by parents!
Allow your baby to play with and explore the sippy cup - yes, even if it means baby bangs and tosses the sippy cup around!?
Encourage your baby to hold the cup with 2 hands - a sippy cup with liquid in it may be too heavy for baby to hold & maneuver with one hand.
Show your baby how to use the sippy cup by example and help guide the sippy cup up to baby's mouth.
Water in the sippy cup is a great first liquid to add to the sippy cup.? You may also add formula and/or breast milk. Formula and/or breastmilk in a sippy cup however, may not entice your baby with the wonder and excitement of a totally new experience.?
Many parents take introducing the sippy cup as an opportunity to introduce water and juice to their infants (see an article Juice for Your Babyto learn more about Juice and ALWAYS dilute juice!)
Offer the sippy cup during Snack time and/or between feedings.
Do NOT allow your infant or toddler to walk around the house all day with a sippy cup full of water, juice or formula!?
Do not allow your infant or toddler to "fill up" with liquid from the sippy cup.? Your baby still needs the nutrients from breast milk and/or formula and sippy time should not interfere!
We hope that these tried and true tips and tricks will help you with transitioning your baby to a sippy cup!
Natural Family Planning Made Ridiculously Simple
Copyright 2006 David Picella
Natural family planning has been shown to be up to 99% effective when used for the purpose of avoiding pregnancy. It can also be used as a method of assisting infertile couples to achieve pregnancy. Sometimes couples learning the cervical mucus method of natural family planning experience confusion as they attempt to accurately document the signs of fertility. NFPList.org has published a flowchart that demonstrates an algorithm for making cervical mucus observations which can be summarized as follows:
The very first thing that must be done before anything else is to decide if the cervical mucus was lubricative. The lubricative sensation must be obvious. If the mucus is lubricative, it is considered ?peak-type? indicating that it is very fertile. It is still necessary to observe and finger test a lubricative observation so that the characteristics of the peak-type mucus are documented completely. Determining whether or not lubrication is present occurs before any visual observations are made?this is important to remember!
If the mucus is not lubricative, then it is necessary to determine whether or not anything can be lifted from the tissue or stretched between the fingers. If there is no ?lift? AND there is no lubrication, then the observation is essentially dry (see flowchart). If the mucus can be lifted, then the finger testing procedure must be performed.
When lifting mucus, if it is either stretchy (1 inch or more) or at least a portion of it is clear (meaning that it looks like saran-wrap and you can see through it), then it is considered peak-type mucus. If non-lubricative mucus is not stretchy AND it is also not clear, then it is considered non-peak mucus. It should be noted that non-peak mucus is also fertile meaning that intercourse on a day of non-peak mucus would be expected to lead to a pregnancy.
This brief algorithm for making cervical mucus observations is obviously not meant to substitute for proper instruction with a certified natural family planning instructor. Similarly, without proper instruction, natural family planning cannot be expected to be as reliable as has been shown in published studies. While there are multiple methods of natural family planning that rely on the observation of cervical mucus based on very similar decision making strategies, they may not all be exactly the same.
If this article has peaked your interest in natural family planning, then perhaps now is the best time to find someone in your area who can introduce you to a this wonderful, safe, effective, and low cost way of understanding and learning to live in harmony with your fertility. What are you waiting for?
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NFP and Infertility: http://www.majella.us
Pregnancy calculator: http://picella.com/tools/pregnancy-date-calculator.htm
David Picella, NP, is a PhD student at the University of Milwaukee Wisconsin.
Pregnancy, the first trimester: What you can expect
Copyright 2006 WomanCentric Inc.
In the first trimester, you and your baby are going through a lot of changes. Your body has just received the egg through the fallopian tubes and has nestled into the lining of the uterus, ready to grow and develop. You might have the classic signs of pregnancy ? nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and breast tenderness. But all of these signs are a good thing, showing you that your body is indeed changing hormonally to support that new life in you.
But what is your baby going through? In these first 12 weeks, the baby is growing rapidly, developing the amniotic sac that it will rest in to the placenta, even growing fingers and toes. Within a couple of weeks, the new little egg is known as an embryo and it's growing rapidly. During this time, it is crucial that you're taking care of your body, feeding it right, and making sure to eliminate as much stress as you can.
By the eighth week, the embryo is considered a fetus and it's beginning to look like a baby human. The fetus is becoming very active in the womb, though it's only three and a half inches long, so the mother may not feel anything from the baby. Even the sex organs of the child have now developed and you can find out the gender of your child during a doctor's visit. The placenta is in place to nourish the baby and the umbilical cord is working to create a link between mom and baby.
While many mothers find that this is the most tiring time for the pregnancy, it's only because the child is developing so quickly that it needs more resources from its mom to maintain its growth. By the second trimester, things are beginning to slow a little and you'll begin to feel a bit more energetic.
Even though this first trimester may seem difficult it is still a great time to be excited about the pregnancy. It's time to start caring for this little life inside of you. You want to begin reading as much as you can about fetal development and pregnancy in order to learn everything that you can. At times, all of this information will be overwhelming, but it's good that you start to educate yourself outside of the doctor's office. When you have questions, don't be afraid to call your doctor, your mother or your best friend for help.
And start taking care of your new life by eating right and exercising moderately. If there was ever a time to make sure that you're getting the right fruits and vegetables in your diet, this is it. Start drinking more water and take the time to rest when you get tired. If you're suffering from morning sickness, you might want to talk to your doctor about ways to alleviate the symptoms naturally ? motion sickness bands and ginger might be some suggestions that you receive.
But before you start to delve too much into your pregnancy, tell someone! This is your time to celebrate your becoming a mother. Talk to your family, your friends, and whoever else will listen about your pregnancy. You will find that you will have an easier time in pregnancy when you tell more people as they can give you advice as well as a person to talk to if things become difficult.
Pregnancy is a joyous time that's also filled with responsibility. For you and your unborn child, you need to begin to take care of yourself immediately. In fact the end of the first trimester is a perfect time to pick out the colors for the nursery.
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http://www.earlysignofpregnancy.net is the most recent women's resource site from Jacqueline Flynn. She is the founder and President of WomanCentric.com.
http://www.WomanCentric.com is the webs first FREE women's home business community.
