Babies

The telephones kept ringing with more orders and although Duan Yuelin kept raising his prices, the demand was inexhaustible. Customers were so eager to buy more that they would ply him with expensive gifts and dinners in fancy restaurants. His family-run business was racking up sales of as much as $3,000 a month, unimaginable riches for uneducated Chinese rice farmers from southern Hunan province. What merchandise was he selling? Babies. And the customers were government-run orphanages that paid up to $600 each for newborn girls for adoption in the United States and other Western countries.

Even as the birth of octuplets at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center drew attention and applause from around the country, questions arose Tuesday about whether the mother's doctors did enough to prevent such a risky pregnancy. The chances that the eight babies born Monday were conceived naturally are infinitesimal, infertility specialists and doctors in maternal-fetal medicine say.

The case of actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins, who were reportedly given 1,000 times the intended dosage of a blood thinner at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, underscores one of the biggest problems facing the healthcare industry: medication errors. At least 1.5 million Americans a year are injured after receiving the wrong medication or the incorrect dose, according to the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies of Science. Such incidents have more than doubled in the last decade.

The maker of Simplicity and Graco cribs on Friday recalled about 1 million of the beds after the deaths of at least two infants, including one in California. "Don't take a chance at all," said Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, which announced the voluntary recall by Reading, Pa.-based Simplicity Inc., one of the nation's largest crib manufacturers.

Robert Titzer didn't come to Orange County to be invisible. Before starting his new teaching job at Cal State Fullerton on Wednesday the Ph.D. in human performance was standing in front of a crowd of parents at an Irvine baby store, touting his video "Your Baby Can Read." Copies were available on site, at $13.99 a shot. Unlike most academics, he comes equipped with his own public relations man.

I'm pawing through a wardrobe of matching caps and booties, jumpers and nightshirts to find outfits that will make my 2-month-old twin boys look more, well, infantile. This on the advice of their Hollywood manager, who counsels me to lie about their weight and to dress them to look younger. Hollywood is famously cruel about age and beauty, but things reach a whole new level when you are heading off to a baby casting call.

A highly praised program aimed at getting pregnant woman and new mothers off illegal drugs received good and then very bad news this holiday season. Administrators of the live-in program--which says 155 babies have been born drug-free to women living at its facility--were optimistic only a few weeks ago that federal funding for the program would be continued. That was because of Congress' recent decision to devote more money to drug-treatment programs.

Scientists studying the effects of hormone-mimicking chemicals on humans have reported that compounds called phthalates, used in plastics and beauty products and widely found in people, seem to alter the reproductive organs of baby boys. In the first study of humans exposed in the womb to phthalates, the researchers, who examined the genitalia of male babies and toddlers, found a strong relationship between the chemicals and subtle changes in the size and anatomy of the children's genitals.

Holding a baby barely larger than her hand, Barbara Whitfield coos to the infant, his translucent eyelids fluttering slightly before surrendering to sleep. But in the neonatal intensive care unit at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, it would be difficult to tell just who in this duo is more serene. "How many people get to surround themselves with this kind of peace?" she asked, tightly wrapping a receiving blanket around the 4-pounder. "A few hours here will carry me for the rest of the week."

When it comes to memories of infancy, everyone draws a blank. Hardly anyone can recall those opening pages of life's story, when discoveries write themselves into every newborn's brain. Until recently, brain researchers were convinced that babies simply couldn't make any personal memories that lasted, because almost no one can recollect anything that happened to them before age 3.

The regional director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ventured into the dusty farming town of Kettleman City, Calif., on Wednesday for a three-hour tour that included a trip to a nearby toxic waste dump and emotional private meetings with mothers whose babies had birth defects. The rare diplomatic foray by Jared Blumenfeld came less than a week after he ordered an internal investigation of his agency's oversight of the waste dump and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger directed the state Department of Public Health to conduct a comprehensive study of the community's environmental and health issues.

Over decades now, infertility or the simple desire to offer a child the chance for a better life has sent would-be parents to China in search of a baby to adopt. For so many, it was the perfect match. On one side of the Pacific were well-to-do couples yearning to share their love and good fortune; on the other were a plethora of little girls abandoned by impoverished parents in need of a son to support them in old age, or in violation of the country's so-called one-child policy. No one liked to think of adoptions in unseemly market terms, but in fact this was a case of supply and demand.

The telephones kept ringing with more orders and although Duan Yuelin kept raising his prices, the demand was inexhaustible. Customers were so eager to buy more that they would ply him with expensive gifts and dinners in fancy restaurants. His family-run business was racking up sales of as much as $3,000 a month, unimaginable riches for uneducated Chinese rice farmers from southern Hunan province. What merchandise was he selling? Babies. And the customers were government-run orphanages that paid up to $600 each for newborn girls for adoption in the United States and other Western countries.

Birth weights in the United States are on the decline, a study has found. The report found a small but significant decrease in average birth weights from 1990 to 2005, for reasons that scientists say are unclear. The numbers, published in the February issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, mark a shift from earlier reports that noted a rise in birth weights in the latter part of the 20th century. They also seem to go against conventional wisdom, experts said. In recent years, women have gotten larger, are smoking less and are older when they have children, all factors that contribute to higher birth weight in offspring.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Tuesday announced the recall of about 635,000 cribs after the death of a 6-month-old child and dozens of reports of safety problems. The cribs, distributed by Barbados-based Dorel Asia, feature hardware that can fail, causing the drop-side to detach from the crib. When the drop-side detaches, it creates a space in which an infant or toddler can become trapped and suffocate or strangle, the agency said. In addition, the cribs can pose an entrapment and strangulation hazard when a slat is damaged.

A private prison housing mothers with infant children is responsible for providing the babies with necessary medical care, a state appeals court has ruled. The ruling last week by the 4th District Court of Appeal also held that California might be liable if on-site state employees are negligent, as alleged in the case of a 5-week-old girl who suffered permanent lung damage when jailers refused to take her to a hospital for more than a week after she developed breathing problems. Six privately run facilities for incarcerated mothers house about 150 children under age 6, but half of them were created without specific provisions obligating the companies managing them to provide healthcare for the children, said Carol Strickman, staff attorney for Legal Services for Prisoners With Children.

They may not be old enough to talk, but babies less than a week old know how to cry in their native language. Researchers have known that infants have the ability to mimic speech starting around 12 weeks of age. Babies also show a preference for spoken language that mirrors the rhythm, melody and intensity patterns of their mother tongue. But when they're too young to control their vocal cords or the muscles that shape the mouth to make specific sounds, how can babies demonstrate that they're tuned in to the chatter around them?

You sit down to write a novel, and soon the characters are crowding around demanding attention with the urgency and self-obsession of 3-year-olds. A few weeks in, and you can no longer shake them. In fact, nothing shuts them up until the manuscript is ripped from your hands on deadline, when you go from total control to utter powerlessness with one click of the Send button. Goodbye! Good luck! After that comes the weird silence of the empty nest, with its combination of freedom and loneliness.

Nearly 1 in 10 of the world's babies is born prematurely, and about 1 million infants die each year as a result of premature birth, according to a report released Sunday by the March of Dimes. The problem is concentrated in poor countries, with the vast majority of the nearly 13 million preemies born each year in Africa and Asia, the report says. Although Africa has the highest rate of premature births, North America isn't far behind. Why? "That's the 13-million-baby question," said March of Dimes epidemiologist Christopher Howson, who headed the project being debated this week at a child health meeting in India.

Want to put a pillow on your relationship and smother it? Or maybe hit an extended snooze on that incessant biological clock? Grab your Apple iPhone: There's an app for that. Girlfriend Keeper Price: 99 cents What it is: For some reason, that David Lee Roth song "Just a Gigolo" from the '80s kept playing in my head when I set this one up. The app's name might be ironic. The app is either a fun, lighthearted take on flirtation or the lazy lover's crutch to communication.