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• Baby-Crying Contest Held in Tokyo

  I’m sure there are oodles of jokes just begging to be cracked about this story. I’m just a little too disturbed to think of them. Yesterday, at the Sensoji Temple in Tokyo, babies faced off in a popular annual contest involving amateur Sumo wrestlers. In case you’re unfamiliar with the sport of “Baby-Cry Sumo,” here’s how it works: parents turn over their infants to Sumo wrestlers, who make the babies cry by gently shaking them and scaring them with their giant stranger faces. The baby who cries the loudest is the champion!    Read More... Posted Apr 28 2008, 11:00 AM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Japan, infants, crying babies, tokyo, sumo, weird japan, baby crying contest, baby-cry sumo, sumo wrestling

• Parenting From the Left Brain

  Since moving to this area of town, I've gotten to know several professors at our two local universities and other assorted academic types. Many of them became parents within a year or two of when we did, and it's been interesting to watch how these very intelligent people approach their parenting.  It seems to be much the way they approached their dissertation -- every decision is backed up with tons of research and is the result of thoughtfully focused inquiry. It's not my way (I'm very much an emotion-based decisonmaker), but it certainly seems to work well for them and their kids, and beats the hell out of clueless apathy. So this article  in the Chicago Tribune piqued my interest. It looks at "left-brained parenting" – the tendency of scientist-parents to approach the usual parenting problems the same way they would a puzzling issue in the lab. Physicist Dan Sisan, for example, Googled "colic and crying"   Read More... Posted Mar 28 2008, 04:34 PM by AmyinMotown with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: parenting, crying babies, science, chicago tribune, left brain

• Tell Us Something We Don't Know: New Moms Often Feel Lonely and Isolated

  More than half of 2,000 new moms polled admitted they feel "lonely and isolated." Also: "Nine out of ten also lament the loss of the social life they enjoyed before baby arrived and around two-thirds say they 'feel cut off from normal life'." Is this news? Not that I mind drawing attention to it, since the first year of motherhood is a bitch-and-a-half in a number of ways, but yeah, lonely. This article points to the fact that nowadays we often live far from family and rarely know our neighbors, and I do think that's a big part of it. The idea that two bleary-eyed people whose lives have just changed dramatically should be raising a kid alone seems silly. And note that I'm avoiding using that phrase about it taking villages. The poll also found that a third felt "tearful"...   Read More... Posted Oct 20 2007, 09:36 AM by Kelly Mills with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: crying babies, new moms, loneliness, isolation, first year, poll

• Tokyo Crying Baby Competition: May the Loudest Bawler Win!

  As far as bizarre human tests of strength and skill go, Japan's creative crazy competitions have everyone beat. From speed drinking to battling large-breasted women to the hot dog-inhaling champ Kobayashi, no one holds a candle to the Japanese. Is it any surprise then, that an annual crying baby showdown would be held in the land of the rising sun? For this competition, unsuspecting babies are pitted against each other sumo-style. After being harangued and tormented scarred for life by a priest (let's just let that marinate a moment...), the first baby to lose their shiznit is declared the winner. Should both babies cry at the same time, the loudest wailer is declared the champ. In the case of the photo to the right, it's not hard to tell who was victorious there. Let's hope that along with the trophy, parents are given access to free counseling services redeemable anytime.   Posted May 02 2007, 10:33 AM by Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) with | with no comments Filed under: Japan, crying babies, kobayashi, competition

• World's Worst Sounds: Surprisingly, My Toddler's Whining Didn't Make the Cut

  Researchers in Britain led by acoustic engineering professor Trevor Cox, have spent the past year trying to identify the worst sound in the world. I am shocked that my two-year-old's endless "Nnnnnno! I can do it mySELF!" rantings didn't take top honors. In fact, it didn't even rank. The top prize actually went to the sound of a person vomiting (realistically recreated by slopping diluted baked beans into a bucket). Second place went to microphone feedback, with crying babies rounding out the top three. Top 10 Worst Sounds in the World 1. Vomiting 2. Microphone feedback 3. Wailing babies 4. Train scraping on tracks 5. Squeaky seesaw 6. Poorly played violin 7. Whoopee cushion 8. Argument in a soap opera 9. Mains hum 10. Tasmanian devil (I'm telling you, "whining two-year-old" should at least be above whoopee cushion. And how come "poo-splosion" is nowhere on the list?) If you care to listen to the worst sounds in the world yourself (or with your family), slap on your headphones (for maxiumum enjoyment), and click here. [via The Guardian]  Posted Feb 13 2007, 05:02 PM by Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: crying babies, funny, humor, worst sound in the world

• A Possible Cure For Colic? Why Didn't You Tell Me Four Years Ago?!?

  File this one under “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this 4 years ago?!” Scientists at the University of Turin, Italy, conducted a study of 83 breastfed, colicky infants divided into two groups: those treated with probiotic, a live culture of a bacteria commonly found in the intestinal tract, and simethicone, a gas remedy.   The babies in the probiotic group, after just one week of receiving five drops of probiotic daily, showed amazing progress.  After four weeks, a phenomenal 95% had responded favorably to the treatment, with no negative side effects, compared to just 7% of the babies treated with simethicone.  The simethicone babies were crying three times as much as their probiotic counterparts at the end of the 28 day study – 145 minutes daily, as opposed to 51.  Read More... Posted Jan 31 2007, 12:32 PM by Alisyn with | with 64 comment(s) Filed under: colic, crying babies, cure for colic, probiotic