Safety
Beds, Sofas, and Where Babies Should Actually Sleep
This is one of the questions that comes up at every newborn appointment: where can the baby actually sleep? The internet says the cot. The grandparent...
8 min read
Articles on Baby Health and Development
Expert guides, tips, and insights to help you and your family live healthier lives. From preventative care to wellness strategies, find everything you need to make informed health decisions.
Safety
Beach Days With Babies and Toddlers: What to Plan For, What to Pack, What to Watch
A beach day with a small child is not the same activity as a beach day without one. The water is different — surf, currents, drop-offs at the shorelin...
8 min read
Safety
Bathroom Safety for Young Children: A Practical Walk-Through
The bathroom is the room where the gap between adult-routine and child-hazard is largest. Adults walk in and out a dozen times a day without thinking...
7 min read
Safety
Button Batteries: Why They're a True Emergency, and How to Prevent One
There is a small disc-shaped battery in your house right now — probably in a key fob, a remote control, a kitchen scale, a hearing aid, a light-up gre...
7 min read
Safety
Why the Bathroom Is the Most Dangerous Room in the House
A typical family bathroom is about 4–6 square metres. In that space you have water deep enough to drown in, taps hot enough to burn through young skin...
6 min read
Safety
Bath Safety: How Drowning Actually Happens at Home — and How to Prevent It
The bath is the place where most under-threes drown. Not the swimming pool, not the river — the bath, at home, with a parent in the next room. The rea...
7 min read
Safety
Background TV: Why the One Nobody's Watching Still Matters
The TV in the corner playing the news while the baby crawls around the rug feels harmless. Nobody is *watching*. The damage it does is precisely becau...
6 min read
Safety
Why Back Sleeping Protects Babies: The Evidence and the Mechanisms
The shift from front to back sleeping is one of the few public-health interventions in modern paediatrics where the data is unambiguous and the cost i...
6 min read
Safety
Baby-Proofing: What Actually Matters and What's Being Sold to You
The baby-proofing aisle is designed to make you feel that everything in your house is trying to kill your child and that only buying more plastic will...
6 min read
Safety
Antiseptics and Young Children: What's Safe, What to Skip, and How to Use Them
The first instinct when a child grazes a knee is often to reach for the strongest-looking bottle in the cupboard. Most of the time that's the wrong mo...
6 min read
Safety
How Adults Ensure Child Safety in Public Places
Public places present multiple safety challenges for young children—wandering off, running toward traffic, accessing hazards, or becoming separated fr...
5 min read
Health
Runny Nose in Children: What Causes It and When to Seek Help
Young children get a lot of runny noses. This is not a reflection of inadequate care; it is a consequence of the number of respiratory viruses circula...
4 min read
Family Life
How to Maintain Routines During Holidays and Travel
Holiday gatherings and family travel inevitably disrupt the routines your child has grown accustomed to. Rather than viewing this as a failure of your...
4 min read
Health
Rotavirus in Children: What to Expect and How to Care for Your Child
Before 2013, rotavirus was one of the most common reasons young children were admitted to hospital in the UK. Almost every child contracted it before...
4 min read
Sleep
Room Temperature and Dressing for Baby Sleep: What's Safe
Room temperature and how to dress a baby for sleep are among the most common practical questions parents ask midwives and health visitors. They are al...
4 min read
Parenting
Returning to Work After Maternity or Paternity Leave: The Emotional Reality
The return to work after parental leave is a milestone that most parents approach with a mixture of feelings that are difficult to hold simultaneously...
4 min read
Development
Why Your Child Understands But Doesn't Speak: Receptive vs Expressive Language
"He understands everything -- he just doesn't want to talk." This is one of the most common descriptions parents bring to their health visitors and GP...
4 min read
Play
Reading as a Play Activity for Young Children: How to Make Story Time Work
Reading to young children is the activity every parenting source recommends, and one of the few where the evidence is genuinely strong. What gets less...
6 min read
Family Life
Managing Rainy Days With Young Children
A run of rainy days with young children can feel like a slow-moving disaster — cabin fever sets in by mid-morning, the house gets progressively worse,...
6 min read
Play
Quiet Play Before Sleep: Calm Activities That Help Children Wind Down
Sleep is not a decision a child makes; it is a physiological state that arrives when the conditions are right. The hour before bedtime is when those c...
6 min read