Babies Cry in Their Parents' Language

Worldwide, about 1M too-soon babies die each year

(AP) - About 15 million premature babies are born every year—more than 1 in 10 of the world's births and a bigger problem than previously believed, according to the first country-by-country estimates of this obstetric epidemic. The startling toll: 1.1 million of these fragile newborns die as a result, and even those who survive can suffer lifelong disabilities. Most of the world's preemies are born in Africa and Asia, says the report released today. More»

Really, what do they do all day? Not much.

(NEWSER) - When John R. Barry’s sister started a blog for her baby, friends and family looked at him accusingly. “My son has been alive for about 9 months, and I never started a blog in his honor. It never occurred to me,” he writes on Salon . It made him wonder: Does his baby really need a blog? After all, Barry did keep a private diary of his child for a while—and “immediately ran out of things to write about.” More»

Babies subject to the tyranny of Photoshop, too

(NEWSER) - Even babies can't meet the media-industrial complex's exacting standards: Baby photos are airbrushed before making their way to magazines, to tweak skin tone, swap eye color, and airbrush fat lines and creases, reports the Daily Telegraph . While many are riled, to some, this is not news: "You kind of know that they do it because if you look at the front cover of magazines, most of the images don't look really real," notes the mom of a child model. More»

(NEWSER) - If you’ve had a few kids, you know that you don’t need half of the baby products littering the shelves of Babies “R” Us, but new parents are easy prey for marketers. Brad Tuttle offers a list of the silliest, most useless crap in Time:

• Crib bedding sets: The bumper pad and comforter pose suffocation hazards, meaning you pay big bucks to use half a set.
• The Wipe Warmer: “Are wipes really THAT cold?”

Women more likely than men to look away from ugly babies

(NEWSER) - A mother’s love may be “determined by facial attractiveness,” a new study suggests in finding that women were more likely than men to avert their gaze from an unattractive baby. Researchers showed men and women photos of normal and abnormal infants; men and women gave equal attractiveness ratings to the abnormal babies, but women tried harder not to look at the less-cute pictures, HealthDay News reports. More»