Baby File by Open File

If you haven't yet had a chance to check out this amazing map of baby names, don't miss it.

The folks at Open File, a Toronto-based news site that lets the community contribute story ideas, launched Baby File today.

The work of map guru Patrick Cain, the site lets users search most popular baby names based on postal code. It's cool to enter your digits and see the top 5 baby names for both boys and girls in your hood. You'll probably recognize names you hear fairly often on the playground, or even the name of your own child. (Don't despair: We all try to be original but we're fully up against the zeitgeist. We like what our peers like. It can't be helped.)

Or, you can just choose your city (if your city is Toronto, Hamilton or Ottawa) and click your way around looking at how people on one end of town name their babies compared to those on the other.

In my neighbourhood the most popular girls' names are:

Emma

Isabella

Grace

Sophia

Ella

And the most common boys' names are:

William

Noah

Liam

Oliver

Nicholas

I'm pretty sure I've had kids with almost all of these names over to my house for a playdate or birthday party at some point.

Read about how Patrick made the map here.

Find more on baby names:

Ethan, Olivia top list of most popular baby names in Ontario for 2010

 

Embarrassing ourselves for the babies

This morning three of us from The Star participated in Media Rock Band, the kick-off to a great new family festival in Toronto called Funday Sunday on November 29, 2010.

The event supports causes dear to my heart: Sunnybrook Hospital's Women & Babies program, which specializes in providing care to women experiencing high-risk pregnancies and their babies, some of them premature, and Canadian Hadassah-WIZO, an agency that protects at-risk youth and women in Israel.

The highlight of Funday Sunday will be Toronto's Top Rock Stars, a Canadian Idol-style competition where teams of gaming experts and would-be musicians compete playing XBOX Rock Band. Bands will register in three categories:

• Under 12

• Over 13

• Family

They'll have the summer to practise and to raise funds for Sunnybrook and Hadassah.

This morning's event for a kick off to raise awareness about Funday Sunday.

Yourhome.ca editor Jennifer Wilson-Speedy, rocker Brett Lodge from our graphics department and I formed a team - with one ringer supplied by the organizers (thank you, Phil!), and performed the Blondie hit One Way or Another. Jen is a Rock Star ace but Brett and I were playing the game for our first and second times, respectively. We didn't come ANYWHERE near winning, but it wasn't completely humiliating and we had fun!

Here you can see Jennifer above on guitar and just barely make me out with the microphone.

   

Here's our group shot, left to right, Jennifer, Brett, me and Phil.

And here we are with the rest of the participants, including teams from Today's Parent, CTV, Flow and Sunnybrook. All teams were judged by a panel of celebrities including Erica Ehm of the Yummy Mummy Club. Congratulations to the winners from Flow!

Participating in Toronto's Top Rock Star is not the only way to enjoy Funday Sunday and support these charities. You can also buy tickets to the day-long event, which includes games and activities for kids, a marketplace and an area offering information and tips about family health. Or you can sponsor a team here.

Poor-sport parents? Get a hold of yourselves!

Hockey moms and dads? I've got some bad news. Your kid isn't making it to the NHL.

I know. It's hard. Maybe if you hadn't gotten the mumps in grade 11 you might have made that triple-A team, and who knows where that could have led you. Maybe you could have been the NEXT BIG THING.

But nothing that happens in your child's novice/atom/peewee/bantam/midget game is going to change that.

And whether your daughter is in the starting line or whether your son stays on the pitching mound for the whole ball game? That's also not going to make it any better. And it's going to have ZERO bearing on his or her potential for a professional career.

It's time Canadian parents reexamine their relationship to their children's sporting lives.

What are your expectations and are they realistic?

According to a new Ipos-Reid poll, more than half of Canadians have witnessed abusive behaviour at a children's sporting event. For the purpose of this research, the scope of abusive behaviour at a game was narrowed to physical of verbal abuse of a coach or other sports official. (It didn't even count mouthing off or fighting among other adults on the sidelines!).

This survey of 23,351 adults in 22 countries determined that Canada is the fifth-worst country for hot-headed sports parents. It's embarrassing, but sadly not that surprising.

If you're foaming at the mouth because junior got a penalty, I'm afraid you're overdue for a trip to Mrs. McTherapist. Or maybe you need to download some anger-management sessions and listen to them in the van on the way to the game.

Here's a list of jobs for you as a sports parent:

1) Get your child to the game on time (or find a suitably undrunk alternate for same).

2) Bring or buy snacks.

3) Lace up/tape up gear as needed.

4) Shut the hell up.

Of course that's not quite all. You need to sell wrapping paper or magazine subscriptions or sides of beef or whatever. And you need to toss the ball around with your child or take shots on him in the driveway or participate in whatever other kind of practice is required. You need to coach your child on what it means to be a good sport, and mostly you need to do that by example. How can you expect your kid not to punch another child's lights out when you just lost it on Alpha Dad from the opposing team?

And if you can't manage to behave yourself for the sake of the kids or the other adults, do it for yourself!

You could have a heart attack out there, man.

Parenting tip of the day

This is for expectant moms and dads and parents with brand-new babies.

Once all the expectation and anxiety of waiting for baby to arrive has passed, new parents are faced with a metric they probably never contemplated before: monitoring their baby's "output."

Since it's impossible to measure exactly how much colostrum/breastmilk is going into your newborn, we use the rule "what comes out must have gone in" to determine if our wee ones are getting the critical early nourishment they need. Our attentions are now completely captured by how the baby is latching and what is going on the diaper -- the latter part, our gross new reality (don't talk about this with your childless friends).

But diapers are so absorbent it's hard to know for certain if your baby has wet her diaper. A kind woman from La Leche League shared this bit of advice with me when Cameron was just a few days old, and it proved very reassuring:

Place a tiny square of toilet paper of paper in the diaper right over the critical parts. When you check it, you'll know your child has peed if that piece of tissue is soaked. And if it's not, and it's been a while, you'll know to ask your midwife, doctor or nurse for advice.

Where should baby sleep now?

If you have a recalled Stork Craft crib, or you're worried generally about a drop-side crib of any make, where should baby sleep while you sort this out?

I asked Valerie Lee, executive director of the Infant and Toddler Safety Association, whether it's safe to put a crib mattress on the floor and simply not use the frame in the intervening time.

"No," said Lee. "A young baby could roll off. If it's against something they could get trapped and suffocate. If it's an older child they can move around. We can not recommend that that's a safe thing to do."

"The only safe place to put a baby or small toddler down is in a crib that meets standards and is in good condition," she said.

But that doesn't necessarily mean you need a new crib today, or even that your baby won't be safe in the crib you own for some time to come.

Lee advised parents to look carefully at the recall details of the Health Canada recall website.

Before throwing out a crib just because it's has a drop-down side, note that the recall only applies to Stork Craft drop-side cribs (some bearing a Fischer-Price logo) with plastic hardware, said Lee.

If the hardware is metal it is not being recalled.

"If parents have one of these cribs but the hardware is in good condition, it is perfectly safe to use while you wait for the repair kit," said Lee.

"Just check it every time you put the baby in the crib and order the repair kit right away."

To do that, you need to call Stork Craft's toll-free line, (1-877-274-0277), which, unsurprisingly, is ringing busy.

In a letter posted to customers at the company’s blog (storkcraft.blogspot.com), Stork Craft manager Adam Segal said the company is currently "working through the initial surge of inquiries and requests at the moment" and their website is experiencing heavy traffic.

They suggest emailing parts@storkcraft.com with the following information, all of which can be found on the bottom right corner of the mattress baseboard: model number of the crib, date of manufacture and country of manufacture. The company also asks parents to include complete shipping information in order to receive a free repair kit that will modify the cribs so the sides are fixed.You can also get more information by checking the company's twitter feed.

If your child is just about ready for a big-kid bed, you may be thinking of making the switch.

There's no precise recommended age, but Health Canada says your child should be at least two. Readiness depends on a number of factors including size of the child compared to the side of the crib, as well as the child's nature. Yours could be the type of child who is an active explorer, as opposed to one who will call for you in the morning before leaving the bed, explains Lee.

These factors, as well as whether or not your child has figured out how to climb or jump out of the crib, should be weighed in the decision.

What about sleeping with you?

The "family bed" is about as politically charged here as Roe V. Wade. Many families don't use cribs at all. I'm setting aside the debate on the merits and safety issues associated with co-sleeping for today and just relaying the official safety information. Please feel welcome share your thoughts in the comments below.

Today's must reads for parents

Do you own a Maclaren stroller? If so, you need to know about a massive recall of about a million Maclaren umbrella strollers. It's kind of a gruesome story, but in the United States, 12 children have had fingers amputated after getting them stuck in the hinges of the strollers. The distributor there is offering to send parents a special hinge-pad cover to make the stroller safe. Meanwhile, Health Canada is trying to reach the manufacturer in Hong Kong to determine if the strollers sold in Canada also have the same defect. Read more to get the list of affected models, including Volo, Triumph and others.

Here are some other developing news stories parents won't want to miss:

A Catholic school board trustee is offering a "bootcamp" for new trustees to outline appropriate expensing habits, among other things. This follows a spending scandal at the Toronto Catholic School Board that involved trustees charging taxpayers for everything from Dairy Queen treats to holidays.

There are 172 Ontario schools slated for closure due to declining enrolment.Yesterday the advocacy group People for Education suggested the empty school should be used to accommodate all-day learning or turned into child and family resource centres.

Academic Pandemic: Does flu get worse on the day of the test? Education reporter Kristin Rushowy looks at whether schools are sending students home at the first sound of cough or sniffle, and whether kids are taking advantage.

In other H1N1 news, parents may be interested to learn the latest on hospital board members and other VIPs who say they are entitled to their pandemic vaccine shots before children five years of age or more. Better news, Ontario received some new swine flu vaccine yesterday, but clinics haven't been extended to any additional groups, including school-aged children. Here's where you can find the latest on vaccine clinic hours.

Downtown Toronto could become a child-free zone Developers showed up at city hall last week to oppose a regulation that would require them to make at least 10 per cent of new condo units family-sized.

A program to help young single moms graduate high school will soon be out of funding. Catherine Porter explores the unique program in her new column.

Check out our latest on the Santa Claus parade!

How well do you know your sperm donor?

His profile says he's 6' 1", a software engineer who does triathlons and enjoys reading Nietzsche.

But what about his ticker?

A sperm donor passed on a potentially deadly heart defect to 9 of the 24 children he fathered, according to an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The San Francisco sperm bank affected now gives electrocardiograms to all potential donors. The report's authors say the findings point to the need for more rigorous screening.

Read the whole story here.

Pregnant women and swine flu vaccine

Pregnant women who have been struggling with whether or not to have a swine flu vaccine will want to note something mentioned in our latest story on the delivery of swine flu vaccine.

In it Chief Public Health Office David Butler-Jones said pregnant women should consider getting the first available version of the H1N1 vaccine, rather than waiting for the unadjuvanted version to arrive at "a later date."

Pregnant women have been identified as more likely to develop severe complications from swine flu. Women, generally, are more affected by H1N1 than men.

The adjuvant - or additive - in the swine flu vaccine is a mix of fish oil, water and vitamin E. It boosts the strength of the vaccine and makes the available supply of antigen go further, as less is needed for each person. This story addresses the common concerns about the vaccine.

Reminder: Kids older than 10 need 1 swine flu dose; under 10 need 2.

For all the H1N1 updates and resources you need, please bookmark our Swine Flu page.

Pill popping for a baby boy

I'm pretty clear on where babies come from.

I've had a couple. My parents were very open about "the birds and the bees." And I was schooled in the era of "Guidance" class, where we watched episodes of Degrassi and could scribble questions on little pieces of paper.

In other words, I've had every reason to know exactly how one conceives a boy or a girl, and to take for granted that women around me also know that when sperm meets egg, it's already written in stone. Or at least in chromosomes.

I suppose that's why Raveena Aulakh's series came as a bit of a surprise to some among my Twitter following. It's about the sham salesman shilling fake pills that promise expectant Punjabi moms that their babies will be boys.

Most of us have some notion of the kind of pressure women from such paternalistic cultures are under to give birth to boys. (Don't all of us know someone who has adopted a baby girl from China?) But it's another thing altogether to be confronted with the picture this series paints.

Right here in the GTA, a man will meet an expectant mom outside his newspaper office with a bogus promise of an 85 per cent chance of having a boy and a plastic baggie of unlabelled pills, for which she will part with $750.

Today's story explains Health Canada's response to the Star investigation: There are no approved drugs that influence gender in pregnancy, and no pregnant woman should take medication without consulting a family physician.

The initial story, Desperate Mothers, also touched on the issue of using information gleaned through ultrasound to selectively abort fetuses of non-desired gender.

Some have voiced concern that this sort of story gives fuel to pro-lifers, who'll somehow pile it up in a case against both abortion and routine ultrasound, and imperil the health and choices of women everywhere.

I think the plight of these women - some who are far from their own families and treated in a threatening manner by in-laws - is important enough not to care if it gives a few nutbar anti-choicers a little more to yell about.

It may take generations more to see South Asian bias against girls diminish, and none of us outside that world can claim to have the answer. But meanwhile, let's not assume these women have all the information they need to protect themselves from snake-oil salesmen, or abusive partners and in-laws. Let's let their story be as important as the one about vital access to safe abortion.

One doesn't preclude the other.

Octuplet babies and other curiosities

If you've been following the news at all, you've probably heard a little bit about the California mom with new octuplet babies and six other kids at home. It's been interesting to read people's reactions to this family. The story we have today contrasts this case to other families with higher-order multiples, calling it a PR calamity. Our weekend feature probed the ethical quandaries that surround this sort of mega-high-risk pregnancy.

It seems that while most users who comment on this story find it an odd choice to have eight babies at once when you already have six children at home, there is a furious debate going on among commenters. Many are concerned with the high cost of bearing and delivering the children. Others wonder what fertility specialist implanted that many embryos, if that was in fact the case, or gave her such a high dose of follicle-stimulating drugs, if that was the approach taken.

Naturally, whether or not the woman should have opted to reduce the number of embryos is a hot-button ethical issue. The woman's religion could have made that out of the question for her.

Many others are wondering who is going to foot the bill for raising the children. And one thing is for certain, the public just has not received this California mom with the warm-heartedness usually afforded this sort of brood. Because of that, there just hasn't - apparently - been the windfall of mini-vans, diapers, cribs, formula and other baby supplies.

I'd like to throw it out there that while we may question her sanity - especially those of us getting our butts kicked by having just one or two children, myself included - we can't really know her circumstances or her motivations. At least not until she does a tell-all interview with People magazine or the like.

What do you think?

OTHER MATTERS...

At the risk of making any kind of crass comparison to these eight babies and other parts of the animal world, I wanted to point out a couple of great things on our sites to share with your kids. I am working from home today because one of my children has croup (this oddly Victorian virus - with its conjured notions of mustard plasters and blood-letting - has visited our house twice in two months) and I'm planning to show Cameron this star.com story on a prehistoric snake the size of a T-rex. For the fan of all things outer space, there's also this amazing story about Humber students communicating with the International Space Station. And finally, Google Earth has expanded tremendously, allowing users to dive under the ocean and much, much more. Enjoy!