Thanks for writing this 🙂 I found value in it. I’d like to write more acknowledging the valuable parts, but due to limited time and energy, I’ll only be mentioning the following parts. I hope it’s constructive though!
This article ( https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-brain-caffeine-utero.html ) claims “Investigators analyzed brain scans of more than 9,000 nine and ten-year-old participants in the ABCD study. They found clear changes in how the white matter tracks—which form connections between brain regions—were organized in children whose mothers reported they consumed caffeine during pregnancy.” I haven’t looked into this / am not personally knowledgable about it, but the uncertainty has made me hesitant towards caffeine in utero, during breastfeeding, and even the young toddler phase. Although it’s quite possible that if this is even is an example of causation and not correlation, that the effect only happens with caffeine exposure that is earlier in life than the breastfeeding stage.
White noise may be harmful for babies’ development as well. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and general science/health communicator who runs a lab at Stanford talks about it here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRyzYB9JSY&t=3350s ) Andrew isn’t always the highest signal to noise ratio in terms of true information, but high enough that I have found a lot of value from his podcast especially as a source for leads for further investigation. Again, I haven’t looked into any of this / don’t have high confidence one way or another.
With keeping the temperature above 70 F, beware of faulty space heaters (if you look at Amazon reviews for space heaters, there are many pictures of burnt marks on electric outlets, etc), and also high (abnormally high?) temperatures are supposedly/apparently correlated with SIDS.
I haven’t looked into this / am not personally knowledgable about it, but the uncertainty has made me hesitant towards caffeine in utero, during breastfeeding, and even the young toddler phase.
Do you have a causal mechanism in mind through which maternal caffeine consumption could be bad even after breastfeeding has ended?
I would like to push back on the points in your comment. I think parents in this forum are familiar with the concept of weighing a for sure benefit against much more uncertain risk. Caffeine, White noise, and temperature control can have a very significant and immediate benefit to parental and child well-being. For caffeine, I think most parents would report that it helps for thinking straight and staying calm to have that kind of cognitive boost in the morning. Maybe things would be different if we were 50 years into the future, and caffeine became a scheduled drug based on its addictive properties, but given that caffeine usage is so common, and the benefits are so great, I don’t think it makes sense to be advising parents to avoid caffeine at this time—It’s not going to make your kid worse off than other kids in any meaningful way (unless you are having an unreasonable amount of caffeine). If you are worried about your child’s brain development, there are many other interventions that have much less of a negative effect on the parent that I would advise doing instead, like iron and vitamin D fortification, and filtering flouride out of tap water. Similarly for white noise and temperature control. If baby is not sleeping that’s probably much worse for their development, and also much worse for everyone’s well-being, than any risks associated with white noise and temperature control.
Overall, I would say that this level of worrying and research about these kinds of details is counter to my parenting goal of trying to enjoy the experience of being with my kids. Anything you Google related to parenting will come up with risks. The only reliably helpful parenting advice I’ve found is stuff by Emily Oster, an economist who looks at the data and writes about what is actually worth worrying about, and what isn’t.
Thanks for writing this 🙂 I found value in it. I’d like to write more acknowledging the valuable parts, but due to limited time and energy, I’ll only be mentioning the following parts. I hope it’s constructive though!
This article ( https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-brain-caffeine-utero.html ) claims “Investigators analyzed brain scans of more than 9,000 nine and ten-year-old participants in the ABCD study. They found clear changes in how the white matter tracks—which form connections between brain regions—were organized in children whose mothers reported they consumed caffeine during pregnancy.” I haven’t looked into this / am not personally knowledgable about it, but the uncertainty has made me hesitant towards caffeine in utero, during breastfeeding, and even the young toddler phase. Although it’s quite possible that if this is even is an example of causation and not correlation, that the effect only happens with caffeine exposure that is earlier in life than the breastfeeding stage.
White noise may be harmful for babies’ development as well. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and general science/health communicator who runs a lab at Stanford talks about it here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRyzYB9JSY&t=3350s ) Andrew isn’t always the highest signal to noise ratio in terms of true information, but high enough that I have found a lot of value from his podcast especially as a source for leads for further investigation. Again, I haven’t looked into any of this / don’t have high confidence one way or another.
With keeping the temperature above 70 F, beware of faulty space heaters (if you look at Amazon reviews for space heaters, there are many pictures of burnt marks on electric outlets, etc), and also high (abnormally high?) temperatures are supposedly/apparently correlated with SIDS.
Do you have a causal mechanism in mind through which maternal caffeine consumption could be bad even after breastfeeding has ended?
I assumed they were talking about situations where the young toddler was being breastfed still.
I would like to push back on the points in your comment. I think parents in this forum are familiar with the concept of weighing a for sure benefit against much more uncertain risk. Caffeine, White noise, and temperature control can have a very significant and immediate benefit to parental and child well-being. For caffeine, I think most parents would report that it helps for thinking straight and staying calm to have that kind of cognitive boost in the morning. Maybe things would be different if we were 50 years into the future, and caffeine became a scheduled drug based on its addictive properties, but given that caffeine usage is so common, and the benefits are so great, I don’t think it makes sense to be advising parents to avoid caffeine at this time—It’s not going to make your kid worse off than other kids in any meaningful way (unless you are having an unreasonable amount of caffeine). If you are worried about your child’s brain development, there are many other interventions that have much less of a negative effect on the parent that I would advise doing instead, like iron and vitamin D fortification, and filtering flouride out of tap water. Similarly for white noise and temperature control. If baby is not sleeping that’s probably much worse for their development, and also much worse for everyone’s well-being, than any risks associated with white noise and temperature control.
Overall, I would say that this level of worrying and research about these kinds of details is counter to my parenting goal of trying to enjoy the experience of being with my kids. Anything you Google related to parenting will come up with risks. The only reliably helpful parenting advice I’ve found is stuff by Emily Oster, an economist who looks at the data and writes about what is actually worth worrying about, and what isn’t.