Wrong Believes and Misconceptions About Infants That Can Affect Their Health

Infants and Children are a beautiful piece to behold. There is this goosebumps that comes with seeing a baby and from their look to the way they sound, it can be very cute and also very attracting that you are drawn to carry them but while babies are beautiful, as a parent or if you have stayed with someone who is taking care of an infant, you must have heard of so many things that are not true and trust me, I have heard a lot of things from numerous grandparents as well as from people who are learned in their own right.

One myth I have always heard from mothers is that it is bad to wake an infant from sleep and they are usually unhappy when a person wakes their infant giving the look that their infant's health have been affected but this isn't true. Actually, it is very good to wake infants up especially when they are sleeping for a very long time. Waking infants up can be for reason such as feeding, and allowing the babies to be able to self-sooth themselves when they are woken up over time.

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While it is important to wake your baby while sleeping, it is wrong to deprive your baby of nap so they can sleep at night alone because you do not want to lose your night sleep. There was a time a person told me that she wouldn't allow her 5 month old baby sleep during the day. She was going to stress her and make her awake all day so she was going to sleep all night thereby allowing her to have a good sleep as well. Allowing your baby to have naps is very good when babies have naps, it helps them improve their mood, help with better sleep at night, improved growth and brain development. A nap deprived baby is an angry baby.

Another myth I have heard from people especially those who are looking to have children that are bright in school is that the type of toy you buy for your baby can make them smart. This is not true because toys alone do not make babies smart rather it is how the parent interaction with the child while playing with the toy that matters. If you give a baby a brick toy, the first thing that comes to mind is to put it in the mouth and until you teach him how to use it to grow things, he will continue to have it in his mouth. It is using parentese while playing with the toys that help them develop and not the toy itself.

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I was talking to someone some time back, I cannot really remember the time clearly but our discussion was around pacifiers (dummy) and honey for babies. She mentioned that putting honey in pacifiers would help the baby grow teeth very fast but this isn't true. In fact, it is dangerous because babies are not to be fed honey in the first year of their lives and remember that teething happens before a child becomes 1 year old. Giving honey to children below the age of 1 year old can lead to infant botulism and while adult immune system can suppress the bacteria, infants cannot and it can lead to paralysis.

One final myth I want to talk about is the believe that Teething causes a baby to run fever. Women around are just so keen to this though that teething causes fever but this isn't true. While teething can make children eat less and become a little fuzzy, it should not come with any health challenges like cough, fever, runny nose, and vomiting. When they do, it means the baby have other infections or in the case of Nigeria and sub-saharan Africa, Malaria.

Reference.

^{https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/infant-and-toddler
https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/resources/wake-my-baby
https://www.mysweetsleeper.com/newborninfantblog/why
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/naps
https://neurosciencenews.com/napping-memory-neurodevelopment
https://www2.hse.ie/babies-children/sleep/naps-babies-and-toddlers/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/articles/zs4g3j6
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/weaning-and-feeding
https://www.gov.nl.ca/healthyeating/baby/offering-healthy-foods
https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/baby-teething-sick}