Category: Babies
-
Maiolica: Renaissance Childbirth Dining Sets
Sources: Met Museum. [They had a large exhibition of maiolica and not just those for use after childbirth.] Open Science Museum. Two ceramic plates with childbirth designs. JSTOR/ARTSTOR. [there are many examples of these dish sets not listed as maiolica in collections all over the world] Philadelphia Museum of Art. Piccolplasso, Cipriano. 1557. Li Tre…
-
The Grandmother Problem
Transcript: Grandmother problems. Do you have them? For example a grandmother unable to let a new parent learn how to take care of their own baby, in their own way. or a new parent using their new role to get back at a mother they think did everything wrong by rejecting all offers of help…
-
Keeping Babies Safe During a Tornado
I’m a bit of a weather nerd and I live in the American midwest where the weather is hostile to human habitation year round. It’s been brought to my attention that a lot of parents don’t know what to do with their baby and little ones when there’s a tornado warning, or what the difference…
-
“Babies Don’t Smother” McCall’s 1952 | History of SIDS Research | Read Along
Read along to this McCall’s article by Edith Sterne about 1952’s latest research on the causes of sudden infant death, long before we had the term SIDS (coined in the 1960s). In particular, that suffocation was not the cause of sudden infant deaths and that stomach sleeping wasn’t a risk factor, a theory which had…
-
Seinfeld & Circumcision in the 1990s
I have been re-watching the Seinfeld series on Netflix. For the young whippersnappers, it was a primetime sitcom that ran from 1989 – 1998. The show was considered revolutionary for being about “nothing”, just the lives of its four main characters who live in Manhattan: Jerry Seinfeld, George Constanza, Eliane Bennis, and Cosmo Kramer. The…
-
The Great Chicago Baby Mix-Up
If you give birth at a hospital how well do you trust that the baby you go home with is the baby you gave birth to? Today most hospitals still rely on name tags, though with some high-tech gadgets like security cameras, bar code scanners, foot and fingerprint readers, and of course there’s DNA testing…
-
The Cholmondeley Sisters | Art History
The painting popularly known as The Cholmondeley Sisters resided at the Vale Royal Abbey in Cheshire, from approximately 1615 until it was sold in 1939 as Two Ladies of the Cholmondeley Family to the Howard Family. It was sold again in 1955 to an owner who presented it anonymously to the Tate Gallery in London,…
-
The Formula Shortage
The ongoing infant formula shortage is history in the making. Events are still unfolding as I write this but I thought the situation merited more than the Rabbit Hole segment from last week. Edit: I’ve decided to add to this post instead of making new ones as I get more information. Table of Contents Unclean…
-
What Did Jane Austen Think About Motherhood | Pt 2.3
In part one of this series, I covered the births of Jane Austen and her seven siblings, and the childcare strategies of her parents in 18th century England. Across the five chapters of part two, I will show that Jane’s attitudes about marriage were shaped– not by her desire to become a published author– but…
-
Can Babies Breathe and Swallow at the Same Time? | Rabbit Holes #Shorts
The theory that babies can breathe and swallow at the same time dates back to the 19th century but is starting to trend again according to a Contemporary Pediatrics article published last week. “The idea that babies can breathe and swallow at the same time joins a very long list of incorrect/dangerous notions developed, often…
The Baby Historian 