Infants

A few years ago, when some of Seoul's leading obstetricians noticed that boys significantly outnumbered girls on school playgrounds, they quietly undertook a survey of births at seven of the city's large hospitals. They found that for every 100 girls born in 1983, there were 109 boys born. The next year, 110 boys were born for every 100 girls. Normally, according to the World Health Organization, male births outnumber female births by no more than 106 to 100 in any country.

In 2005, leaders of a gang that sold crack and other drugs near MacArthur Park decided to add a new business venture: extorting the vendors who crowd the streets each evening, selling clothes, pirated DVDs and electronics to supplement a hardscrabble existence. The new effort led to a bloody consequence in September 2007, when an 18-year-old tasked with gunning down a defiant vendor accidentally shot to death a 3-week-old infant. The baby's death triggered a large-scale crackdown on the clique that culminated with a two-month trial that began in March.

Giving acetaminophen to young children is not as straightforward as parents might think, or hope. So on Tuesday and Wednesday, federal officials will weigh whether to add new dosing information to Tylenol and other over-the-counter acetaminophen medications. The Food and Drug Administration committees will consider instructions for children under age 2 as well as instructions based on weight, in addition to age, for children ages 2 to 12. Currently, instructions on acetaminophen packages say to consult a doctor for children under 2. But that advice might not match reality, according to an FDA background package on the meeting: “Despite the fact that over-the-counter (OTC)

Reporting from San Diego -- An attorney who once was prominent in adoption circles was sentenced Friday to five months in federal custody and nine months of home confinement for her guilty plea in what prosecutors called an international "baby-selling" ring. Theresa Erickson, whose law firm was in Poway, had pleaded guilty to wire fraud for her role in a scheme that involved hiring surrogates to carry embryos to term and then arranging for the infants to be adopted. The "intended parents" often paid more than $100,000, according to the plea bargain signed by Erickson.

The joy of a new baby starts wearing a tad thin when the little bundle is still waking three or four times a night at 9 months of age. In fact, your infant may be toying with you. A new study shows that infants have the ability to sleep "through the night" by 3 months of age. Most textbooks, and pediatricians, will tell parents that infants should sleep through the night by 12 months of age. The new study investigated whether infants really could...

Solid foods should not be given to infants before 4 months of age, according to guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics. A new study lends support to that advice, especially for bottle-fed infants. Those who were introduced to solid foods before 4 months of age had a six-fold increase in the odds of being obese at age 3. Child obesity is an alarming problem in the United States. Recently, the U.S. Surgeon General issued recommendations to encourage breastfeeding for the first six months of life.

A meningitis vaccine already in use has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children as young as 9 months old.  The two-dose vaccine, Menactra, which produces antibodies against a strain of meningococcus bacteria, was approved in 2005 for 11- to 55-year-olds and in 2007 for 2-year-olds. Though meningitis cases are relatively rare - about 1,000 to 2,600 cases per year - the disease can be deadly. The FDA announcement states: “Meningococcal disease is a life-threatening illness caused by bacteria that infect the bloodstream (sepsis)

Bravo to Orangewood and other shelters that receive with love the abandoned babies, and a curse on society's hypocrites who see the mothers (and sometimes fathers) of these infants as "pigs" and drive them underground when they become pregnant. When these girls and women are treated with even a fraction of the reverence shown to women who are married and expectant, then we might see an end to the abandonment of helpless infants by their equally helpless mothers. JAN KNOWLTON Anaheim

Graco Children's Products Inc., a unit of Newell Rubbermaid Inc., is recalling about 2 million baby strollers sold before 2008 at major U.S. retailers after four infants died of strangulation. The news of the recall of the China-made strollers comes less than three weeks after Mattel Inc.'s Fisher-Price recalled some 10 million toys and other items, renewing concerns about safety standards of infant products, many of which are made in low-cost centers like China. "We have taken appropriate reserves and do not expect a material impact on the company," Newell Rubbermaid spokesman David Doolittle said.

In response to "Study Calls Welfare Plan a Peril to Infants," Sept. 9: There are several faulty assumptions with Stanford professor Michael Wald's report. First, although all child development professionals concur on the importance of bonding during the first year, a compelling body of research also exists on the non-deleterious effects of day care on infants of working mothers. Further, it is ludicrous to assume that relatives and neighbors cannot provide adequate or even exemplary infant care when mom is working.

Reporting from San Diego -- Poway attorney Theresa Erickson was a star in the complex, competitive, and sometimes lucrative business of helping childless couples adopt babies. She was a frequent guest on national TV shows; she self-published a book on "assisted reproduction," and she presented herself on her website as a tireless, fearless advocate for adoption. Eager to expand her business, she was looking to attract gay clients. A different Erickson will appear for sentencing Friday in San Diego federal court: an admitted felon, the alleged ringleader behind an international scheme to pay surrogates to carry embryos to term so the babies could be placed with couples throughout the United States.

Worrisome levels of arsenic have been found in two infant formulas that contain organic brown rice syrup as a main ingredient, researchers reported Thursday. Arsenic was also found in some cereal bars that contain organic brown rice syrup. The toxic element is a known contaminate found in rice because the crop absorbs arsenic from soil. According to the authors of the study, from Dartmouth College, the type found in the food products has been identified as a human carcinogen. Arsenic can also cause skin, lung and intestinal irritation as well as miscarriage and infertility.

Wal-Mart is recalling a single batch of the powdered infant formula Enfamil Newborn, sold in 12.5-ounce cans, as a precaution after a Missouri infant died of a rare bacterial infection. The 10-day-old Lebanon, Mo., baby died Sunday of Cronobacter sakazakii, which can come from powdered infant formula. The source of the infant's infection is still unclear, but Wal-Mart choose to remove the batch with the lot number ZP1K7G from its 3,000 stores nationwide as a precaution. The baby's family purchased the formula at Wal-Mart.

Two babies who rank among the smallest in the world are healthy and have normal motor and language development, researchers reported Monday. But the paper is not meant to celebrate the ability of high-tech neonatal medicine to save babies born midway through a normal pregnancy. Instead, the authors note, severe prematurity often leads to death or disability. The babies whose fates are reviewed in the piece are exceptions. Madeline Mann was born at Loyola University Medical Center in 1989 weighing 9.9 ounces.

At a time when government agencies are hard-pressed to find the money to serve all the genuine needs, First 5 LA has had its own peculiar problem: a nest egg of more than $800 million that it has hoarded instead of reaching out to more babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Funded by state cigarette taxes, First 5 LA is an independent county agency that provides various programs for children from birth to age 5, including preschool and health, safety and family literacy services.

Infant weight and height are faithfully charted at each pediatrician's visit to make sure the child is growing properly. But nowadays doctors are more likely to see babies who are growing too fast rather than ones lagging behind. A new study shows that rapid growth on these charts foretells obesity in childhood. Researchers looked at the weight-for-length charts that show how a baby's weight compares to that of other babies of the same length. For example, babies on the 5th percentile growth line have a weight that puts them among the smallest 5% of all babies their length.

Smoking early in pregnancy increases the risk of having babies with heart defects, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. Women who smoked any time from the month before pregnancy to the third month are more likely to give birth to infants with congenital heart defects than those who didn't smoke, the CDC said. Heavier smoking was associated with higher risk. Congenital heart defects, which are flaws in the structure of the heart, occur in eight to 10 of every 1,000 live births in the U.S., and many of the infants die in the first year of life.

An Orange County man was charged Friday with attempting to murder his 2-month-old son after he was captured on videotape swinging the boy by the neck with a noose-like blanket and repeatedly punching and shaking the baby, prosecutors said. Joshua Robey, 24, is charged with attempted murder, torture and child abuse. He lived with his girlfriend and her mother in Anaheim until three weeks before the Oct. 18 incident, at which time he moved to a Costa Mesa motel. Prosecutors said Robey went to his girlfriend's home to baby-sit his son. Without Robey's knowledge, his girlfriend set up a hidden camera to record him because she believed that he was cheating.

He killed her, Joshua Stepp admitted. He slammed the face of his 10-month-old stepdaughter into a carpeted floor, roughed her up as he changed her diaper, stuffed wet toilet paper down her throat, and soon she was dead. But Stepp, a 28-year-old former Army infantryman who saw combat in Iraq, insists that he is not guilty of first-degree murder. His post-traumatic stress disorder left him incapable of premeditating the killing of tiny Cheyenne Yarley in November 2009, he and his lawyers say. Because of his severe PTSD, Stepp was not able to "form the specific intent to kill," his attorney Thomas Manning said.