Apparently, a newborn can sleep up to 16 hours, even more, with range of 3-4 hours of sleep. Those short stretches of sleep often frustrates parents. However, there’s no need to worry since the habit will change as the baby adapts with life outside the womb.

If you’re in this situation, try to place your baby in the crib before falling to sleep. In that way, you have set up a basic bedtime routine. Any comforting actions carried out consistently in the same sequence will help to establish the routine. Do it every night.

It’s never too early to introduce this routine to your baby and encourage her/him to sleep if they wake up during the night. And hopefully the drill can help you later on as she/he grows older.

Remember not to keep your baby up during the day; hoping that it will make the baby sleep better at night. It won’t work. The fact is, overly tired babies often have more difficulty to sleep compare with those having appropriate amount of sleep in daylight.

A few weeks ago a came across a new so-called “super food”, called CHIA. Well, actually it is not that “new”, as it has already been discovered by the Aztecs. Anyway, I read that the Chia Seed from the Chia Plant, that originated in Mexico, was the highest known plant source of Omega 3 EFA (Essential Fatty Acids), which got me interested, as I am a vegetarian. So I kept on researching and found other very interesting benefits of the Chia Seed:

So I thought, I’d give it a go and went to the shop to buy it. In the shop I found out that Chia Seeds come in two colours. Black and white. You can buy them separate or mixed. There is no difference between them other than the colour. You can just sprinkle the seeds on top of the food or mix it with water or juice to a gel. At home was very excited and curious about mixing the Gel together. All you need is a tablespoon of Chia Seeds and about six time as much Water in a glass or plastic container. Almost immediately after you put the Water together with the Seeds, a gelatin-like substance starts to form. After trying it for a few times I found it worked best to put the seeds and water together, let it stand for a few minutes and then stir it well, let it stand for an other couple of minutes and then use it or refrigerate it.

I used 1 1/2 tablespoons of the Chia Gel for combining with my breakfast cereal. I used the same amount of cereal and milk as I always do. The first few bites felt a bit weired, as I could still feel the gel in the Cereal, which I obviously was not used to. But remembering that it is just seed with water makes you quickly forget about the weired “feeling”. Anyway, I noticed, that I almost could not finish this whole portion, I was already full half way. Great! And what I have read about it was absolutely right, it kept me full for a very long time. So for the last 2 weeks I have eaten the cereal with Chia Seed Gel as my breakfast every day and feel great! I am so pleased about finding this nutritious seed, I will look into more different recipes shortly.

Anyway, as a mother of 2 young children I was also interested in adding the Chia Seed and all its benefits to my kids diet. Having 2 really fussy children, who inspect every meal very closely for any suspicious ingredients doesn’t make this an easy task. I knew that I could not just sprinkle it on top of their food or add the gel, they would not eat it. So my mother in law baked Chia Bread. I was sure, that my kids would not touch it but to my big surprise, they absolutely loved it (and my husband too)! We just never mentioned that the bread contained the Chia Seed super food So it looks like as if I have to start making my own Chia bread for my family for all the nutritious benefits!

I’ll get the recipe of my mother in law and post it here in the next few days!

]]> http://www.babycentral.biz/blog/food-and-nutrition/chia-seeds-the-super-food-for-parents-and-kids/feed/ 0 http://www.babycentral.biz/blog/sport/vibration-training-the-perfect-solution-for-weight-loss-after-pregnancy/ http://www.babycentral.biz/blog/sport/vibration-training-the-perfect-solution-for-weight-loss-after-pregnancy/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:59:25 +0000 admin http://www.babycentral.biz/blog/?p=70 Today I would like to write about how I lost 6kg of my post pregnancy weight in 8 weeks with vibration training.

In my first pregnancy I gained 28kg weight and had an abdominal muscle separation of 8cm. In my 2nd pregnancy I gained a bit less, 17kg. I lost most of the pregnancy weight, but just could not get rid of those last 6kg. No doubt, my body looked and felt a lot different after having the kids, than it did before. Well, a lot of people kept saying “oh, that is just the way it is, once you have children, it all changes, you just have the body of a mother now”. I lived in this belief for a while, I was happy being a mother, but unhappy looking into the mirror or even worse, going shopping for clothes. Nothing quite fit.

In order to loose weight after every pregnancy I bought myself a gym membership, paid a little fortune each month, but did not make it to the gym most of the times for various reasons. Either I was too sleep deprived to even put on some gym clothes, or I did not have someone to look after the kids in this time. Breastfeeding and sport did not fit well together either for me, as my full milk breasts were just too uncomfortable to do much exercise with them.

One day I was surfing through the internet and on one of those social networking websites I came across an advertisement for “weight loss through vibration training”. The vibration training machine shown in the advertisement looked just like an exercise machine my father brought home half a year earlier when nobody was quite sure what it was for as he lost the instructions. I was so excited when I found out that this machine can do a lot more than circulate your blood in your feet

I went back on the internet and researched all sorts of vibration training exercises and even made them up myself. When I started my pregnancy weight loss exercises on my vibration machine, it felt a bit weired as your body needs to get used to the strong vibrations. It feels a bit like a thousand ants in your feet But that goes away pretty quickly.

I found that the most effective way to train on the vibration machine is to bring your body in a certain position, tense the muscle you want to work on and hold that tension for a certain time. That’s all you do. Please, don’t get me wrong, it is quite intense to hold that tension, you will go to your limit. To start with, 10 seconds might be already enough per muscle. But session by session you will improve that.

So one session is about 10 to 15 minutes long and I do all sorts of vibration training exercises like:

standing on the plate with knees bend and thighs and buttocks tensed, or sitting on the plate in a sit-up position with your abs tensed. It is amazing, how my abdominal muscles have recovered from the pregnancy using my vibration training machine. Recently I started to use a stretch band for my bottom muscles, which works fantastic.

In my next post I will write more detailed vibration training exercises for pregnancy weight loss

As I am a tennis instructor (I did not teach for a while because I was far to busy with bringing up the kids) I recently started to make a little tennis class for my 4 year old daughter and her 2 best friends. She was very excited to go to go to “real tennis training” and even more excited that her friends could come too and share the fun. My 2 year old son is participating too, but mainly on the side line collecting balls, but of course with his own raquet

Obviously at this age the ultimate goal should be that the the kids enjoy their tennis class and are not pressured to perform perfect skills. So it is very important to find the right mix of fun games and skill developing to keep the kids interested. I start my toddler tennis lesson with a quick warm up routine with different runnig styles followed by a “run and collect ball” competition.

The next challenge is to toss a ball and catch it again. It sounds so easy, but for a 3 to 4 year old this is a big coordination challange. Most of the times the toddlers and kids find it easier to bounce the ball on the court and catch it then. For the next exercise we grab the tennis raquets and try to balance the ball on it. Some kids will still need both hands to master this task successfully and some of them can even run through a track without loosing the ball. At this point I sometimes get out some balloons, which is extremely popular. Every child can now try to toss the balloon with the raquet as well as trying to hit it over the net. We even play doubles over the net with the balloon, so the kids develop a feeling for the ultimate goal of tennis.

Here is a very interesting article about how to teach tennis to young children.

Good luck and have fun!!