Happy 9 Months Old My Baby :)

Enjoying your books already :)

I can't believe 9 months just flown by, in the blink of an eye!

9 Months Milestones

- You can stand almost instantly by minimum support, it's good that you know how to drop your little butt down and not get 'stuck' in the standing position and cry for help :)

- Showing your affection with lots of 'wet kisses'. Usually follow by biting attempts :D

- Separation anxiety getting really obvious now that whenever I put you down to playpen or pass you to Po Po, you'll be whining while I turned around. My heart aches when I walked away :'(

- You know where to find Daddy every morning and give him the cutest morning call :)

- Really enjoy riding the baby walker (Yes, Mommy's not suppose to use it!). I only put you restricted in the dining area for a really short while so you can see us nearby when we're busy in the kitchen!

- Understands commands like bye-bye, high-five and gong-xi gong-xi (hand gesture for wishing Happy Chinese New Year) but most of the time you're too lazy to do it!

- Good in socialising with your great 'smile talk'. Spice up the interaction with plenty of babbles and bubbles too!

- Love to stand up in the playpen to look out for us. Tipping your toes to catch us when we playing peekaboo :)

- My heart dropped once you knocked on the wall so hard and screamed on top of your lung. The bump with greenish in the middle immediately grew on your forehead, and lasted a few days :'(

- Our bonding is so obvious now that no doubt Mommy is your favourite person. It's not just you, I'm struggling with separation anxiety too! :'(

- Every morning I'll wake up with the happiest baby with the sweetest smile that makes my day :)

What more in life that I need?

Million kisses,
Sweet Pea Mom
xoxoxo

Breastfeeding May Boost Children's IQ?

Xena (Lucy Lawless) seen here breastfeeding her baby gal for the campaign.

"Suckling at the breast results in changes in the mother's brain—increased blood flow and oxytocin release [a hormone promoting bonding between mother and infant], and probably in the baby's brain."

Children breast-fed longer than six months scored a 3.8-point IQ margin over those who were bottle-fed, according to a seven-year study by researchers at Jagiellonian University Medical College in Poland.

Medical epidemiologist Wieslaw Jedrychowski and colleagues followed 468 babies born to nonsmoking mothers. The children were tested five times at regular intervals from infancy through preschool age. The data showed that cognitive abilities of preschoolers who were breast-fed scored significantly higher than bottle-fed infants, and IQ score was directly proportional to how long the infants had been breast-fed: IQs were 2.1 points higher in children who were breast-fed for three months; 2.6 points higher when babies were breast-fed for four to six months; 3.8 points higher in children breast-fed longer than six months. The results were published in the May 2011 issue of the European Journal of Pediatrics.

This research confirms observations reported 70 years ago by Carolyn Hoefer and Mattie Hardy in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as many subsequent studies. This body of research provides the scientific basis for the World Health Organization's recommendation that all infants should be exclusively breast-fed for the first six months of life. But what is the missing ingredient that undermines the cognitive development of bottle-fed babies?

Chemists searching for a specific compound in mother's milk have been overlooking the obvious difference between breast-feeding and bottle-feeding—something that could easily account for the difference in cognitive development, wrote Tonse Raju, a pediatrician and neonatalogist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the current issue of Breastfeeding Medicine, October 2011. (Raju was not involved in the Jedrychowski study.)

"Sometimes even the most obvious facts need to be reiterated," he wrote. "An infant suckling at his or her mother's breast is not simply receiving a meal, but is intensely engaged in a dynamic, bidirectional, biological dialogue." It is the physical and psychological bonding and interaction between infant and mother during breast-feeding that nurtures development of an infant's cognitive abilities.

Jedrychowski strongly agrees with Raju's statement, and adds: "I believe the IQ effect may in part be explained by this dynamic interaction between mother and child in the breast-feeding process."

Brain bulk and white matter in early life (Continue next page)