Most Popular Baby Names

The new list of the most popular baby names has been released! As you can imagine, my world is surrounded right now with baby boy names. Once you have two kids of the same sex, picking that third name is so difficult. Thank goodness a couple people at work-Ashley and Evan- are coming up with new lists of names for me to look at each week. I want something unique, but not weird. That's hard to find!

FROM NBC: Emma ousted Emily as America’s favorite name for a baby girl, according to just-released government data, while Jacob held on to the top spot for baby boy names for the 10th year in a row.

But tradition did not completely hold sway: Each gender got a new addition to its Top 10 list. Alexander joined the boys’ club, coming in at No. 6. Chloe arrived at No. 10 in the girls’ rankings.

Emma — the name of a Jane Austen heroine, the daughter of Rachel and Ross on “Friends,” and, for a certain generation, television’s sexiest spy (Mrs. Peel, played by Diana Rigg on “The Avengers”) — shot to the top after coming in at No. 3 the previous year. The name is based on the German word “ermen,” which can mean “strong,” but is usually defined as “whole” or “complete.”

The No. 1 ranking represents something of a comeback for Emma. While very popular in the late 1800s, the name dipped in the 1970s and fell out of the Top 300. But Emma came roaring back in the past seven years, always finishing in the Top 5. Emily had been the most popular baby girl name since 1996.

Every year the Social Security Administration compiles the rankings based on the names of babies applying for Social Security numbers. (Most children receive their numbers at birth.)
More than 4.2 million births were registered in 2008. The rankings are based strictly on spelling, not how the name sounds. That’s why the names Kaitlin, Kaitlyn, Kaitlynn, Katelin, Katelyn, Katelynn and Katlyn are considered separate entries. (In 2007, Kaitlin ranked Number 421.)

The latest Top 10 names for baby girls, based on 2008 statistics:
Emma
Isabella
Emily
Madison
Ava
Olivia
Sophia
Abigail
Elizabeth
Chloe

The Top 10 names for baby boys:
Jacob
Michael
Ethan
Joshua
Daniel
Alexander
Anthony
William
Christopher
Matthew

The popularity of the name Jacob continues a trend of naming children after Biblical figures: Jacob is the son of Isaac. The name means “heel grabber,” a reference to Jacob’s grabbing the heel of his twin brother Esau at birth. (The Bible notes that God later renamed Jacob, calling him Israel.)The 2008 list varies significantly from the Social Security data 50 years prior, in 1958.

Back then, the Top 10 girls’ names were:
Mary
Susan
Linda
Karen
Patricia
Debra
Deborah
Cynthia
Barbara
Donna

The Top 10 boys’ names in 1958 were:
Michael
David
James
Robert
John
William
Mark
Richard
Thomas
Steven

Political influence?Among interesting facts unveiled in the 2008 survey: First lady Michelle Obama can count her first name as the 103rd most popular among baby girls last year. The names of first daughters Malia (345) and Sasha (363) were fairly popular, too. The family name Obama, however, did not make the Top 1,000 as a first name for boys or girls.
On the other side of the political spectrum, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin may have had some influence; the name Sarah ranked 20th in baby name popularity last year. But Bristol, her daughter’s name, did not rank in the Top 1,000. (Levi, the name of the father of Bristol’s baby, Tripp, ranked 117th.)

Celebrities who gave their children unusual names did not appear to have too much influence on the baby-naming public, however. Apple, the name of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s daughter, did not make the Top 1,000. Neither did Kal-El, the name Nicolas Cage gave to his baby boy as a tribute to Superman, whose Kryptonian birth name it is.For the record, those names just making the cut at No. 1,000 were Yurem for boys and Elianna for girls.

The Social Security Administration limits the list to 1,000 names out of a concern for privacy, not wishing to single out children who may be the only ones in the nation with a particular name. Their list of most popular baby names dates back to 1880, even though the agency was not created until 1935. Earlier name rankings are based on the Social Security applications of older people registering for the first time in the 1930s.

So I have the Social Security Baby Names website as a favorite on my computer. It is such a great resource for soon to be parents. I have used it to decide the names of all my kids. You can see whether the name you like is increasing in popularity or decreasing. And you can see how many different ways people spell it! HERE'S THE LINK!

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS POST: DO YOU HAVE A CUTE BOYS NAME TO SUGGEST FOR MY LITTLE ONE?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

The National Cancer Institute has discovered a disturbing trend linking women and melanoma: between 1973 and 2004, melanoma incidence among women aged 15 to 39 more than doubled, from 5.5 to 13.9 cases per 100,000. The Skin Cancer Foundation, in an international study has linked melanoma to tanning bed usage.

On average more than 1 million people tan in tanning salons every day in the United States. It is estimated, there will be 116,500 new cases of melanoma diagnosed in the United States this year in people of all ages; 8,420 of these cases will be fatal. Soderstrom Skin Institute will be hosting a Free Skin Cancer Screening from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, May 16, at 4909 N Glen Park Place Peoria. No appointment is necessary. If you can spot it…you can stop it!

Hereditary Trait Overload

Have you ever noticed your child doing something and you can see someone in your family doing the same thing?

"You totally got that from your dad!" I found myself saying those words today. My five-year-old has been making a Mother's Day gift at school all week. Everyday when I pick him up he says, "Do you want me to tell you what it is? Do you want to know? I think you want to know!" I keep saying, "No, I want to wait until Mother's Day. I can wait."

Well, he just couldn't stand it any longer. I was talking to him on the phone and out of nowhere he says, "Do you wanna know? I think I should tell you. I just can't handle it." I knew right away what he was talking about. Finally, I gave in and am looking forward to getting his hand print tomorrow after school. He says he tried to get the teacher to let him use a color, but everyone had to use black.

He is so much like his dad! Kevin has to get gifts the day before. Otherwise, he ends up giving them early. He just can't wait. I didn't realize that was a hereditary trait until this week. Too funny!

What traits have your kids picked up from family members?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

The National Cancer Institute has discovered a disturbing trend linking women and melanoma: between 1973 and 2004, melanoma incidence among women aged 15 to 39 more than doubled, from 5.5 to 13.9 cases per 100,000. The Skin Cancer Foundation, in an international study has linked melanoma to tanning bed usage.

On average more than 1 million people tan in tanning salons every day in the United States. It is estimated, there will be 116,500 new cases of melanoma diagnosed in the United States this year in people of all ages; 8,420 of these cases will be fatal. Soderstrom Skin Institute will be hosting a Free Skin Cancer Screening from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, May 16, at 4909 N Glen Park Place Peoria. No appointment is necessary. If you can spot it…you can stop it!

New Explanation for Autism

This is really informative for those of you with little kids. I wonder if parents will routinely scan their baby's brain to determine autism in the years to come. It's a pretty incredible finding in my opinion! What do you think?

FROM CNN: The size of a specific part of the brain may help experts pinpoint when autism could first develop, University of North Carolina researchers report.Using MRI brain scans, researchers found that the area of the brain called the amygdala was, on average, 13 percent larger in young children with autism, compared with control group of children without autism.

In the study, published in the latest Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers scanned 50 toddlers with autism and 33 children without autism at age 2 and again at age 4. The study adjusted for age, sex and IQ. "We believe that children with autism have normal-sized brains at birth but at some point, in the latter part of the first year of life, it [the amygdala] begins to grow in kids with autism. And this study gives us insight inside the underlying brain mechanism so we can design more rational interventions," said lead study author Dr. Joseph Piven.

A normal-sized amygdala helps a person process faces and emotions, behavior commonly known as joint attention. "When you see a face, you scan it, identify if it's friend or foe and make a decision about whether to move forward or avoid it," said Dr. Barry Kosofsky, chief of neurology at Cornell Medical Center, who was not affiliated with the study.

UNC researchers conducted diagnostic assessments, in addition to the MRI scans, to monitor the children's behavior. They found toddlers with a large amygdala also had joint attention problems. "We would basically try to get the child to look one way, we'd turn and point to a clock and see whether or not the child would notice it," explained Piven. "

The 2-year-olds without autism would see your face, see where you are looking and join you but the children with autism, with large amygdalas, would not."Autism experts agree joint attention difficulty is a key characteristic of autism. It also is the only behavior linked to a large amygdala, according to the study. Researchers found no association between repetitive behavior or other social behaviors and a large amygdala.

"This is a core feature of autism, and it raises a very provocative possibility that if they [joint attention problems] aren't caused by changes in the amygdala, they are certainly associated with it," said Kosofsky. Autism experts say such findings are critical in developing new ways to treat and diagnose autism earlier. "Many studies have observed the brain grows too big in kids with autism, but this study finds that by age 2, the amygdala is already bigger and stops growing," said Kosofsky. "So it tells us the critical difference has already developed. It now poses the question: Are children born with autism or does it develop in the first two years of life?"

Parents cannot run out and ask their doctor to check the size of their child's amygdala to determine their child's autism risk, but researchers hope over time, it can be used as a clinical tool to diagnose the mysterious developmental condition, which affects as many as 1 in 150 children.

"Once we understand the neurological circuits, we may be able to detect if a child has problems in those circuits as early as 6 months of age," said Piven. "If we are able to combine those things, we can better predict and guide interventions. We need to let the pattern of early brain development guide us to predict who is at higher risk and who would benefit from early intervention."UNC researchers are conducting a follow-up to their initial findings. They're recruiting 500 infants who are also siblings of children with autism for national infant brain imaging study."

By tracking the behaviors and brain volume growth from birth in high-risk babies, we can pinpoint when the brain first begins to grow larger than normal and provide therapy or medications to limit the growth or symptoms a lot earlier than we are doing now," said Piven.
Autism is the fastest-growing serious developmental disability in the United States. It's newly diagnosed in 67 children every day. The average age for diagnosis 3.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

The National Cancer Institute has discovered a disturbing trend linking women and melanoma: between 1973 and 2004, melanoma incidence among women aged 15 to 39 more than doubled, from 5.5 to 13.9 cases per 100,000. The Skin Cancer Foundation, in an international study has linked melanoma to tanning bed usage.

On average more than 1 million people tan in tanning salons every day in the United States. It is estimated, there will be 116,500 new cases of melanoma diagnosed in the United States this year in people of all ages; 8,420 of these cases will be fatal. Soderstrom Skin Institute will be hosting a Free Skin Cancer Screening from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, May 16, at 4909 N Glen Park Place Peoria. No appointment is necessary. If you can spot it…you can stop it!

Making Vaccinations less painful

I don't know a parent who doesn't dread the pain the their child endures during immunization shots. The child looks at you with these trusting eyes, then gets stabbed in the leg and you let it happen. You know the poor baby is thinking, "I can't believe you let this happen. I trusted you!"According to this new research, putting the shots in a different order could cause your baby less pain. What do you think about changing the order of the shots?

From ABC: Infant vaccinations an important way to protect young immune systems from serious diseases, but the painful experience can stress out babies and parents alike. However, new research finds there may be a way to minimize infants' pain during vaccinations simply by changing the order of the shots.

Starting at birth, babies receive vaccines to protect them from dangerous infectious diseases such as hepatitis, pneumonia, and whooping cough. To ensure children get all their recommended vaccines, pediatricians typically administer multiple shots in one visit - increasing the chances of pain for the baby. But new research suggests doctors can minimize infants' discomfort by changing the order of the vaccines.

Doctors at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto studied 120 babies. Half received a combination vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, and a kind of meningitis before they received the pneumonia vaccine. The other half received the pneumonia shot first.

Researchers videotaped the babies' reactions - looking for signs of painsuch as crying, squirming, or grimacing - and parents rated their children'spain as well. Results showed the pneumonia vaccine was the most painful for babies, and those who received it lsat had lower overall discomfort. Researchers theorize that giving a painful vaccine first makes the baby more sensitive. They recommend doctors start with the least painful shots and then progress to the more difficult ones.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

The National Cancer Institute has discovered a disturbing trend linking women and melanoma: between 1973 and 2004, melanoma incidence among women aged 15 to 39 more than doubled, from 5.5 to 13.9 cases per 100,000. The Skin Cancer Foundation, in an international study has linked melanoma to tanning bed usage.

On average more than 1 million people tan in tanning salons every day in the United States. It is estimated, there will be 116,500 new cases of melanoma diagnosed in the United States this year in people of all ages; 8,420 of these cases will be fatal. Soderstrom Skin Institute will be hosting a Free Skin Cancer Screening from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, May 16, at 4909 N Glen Park Place Peoria. No appointment is necessary. If you can spot it…you can stop it!

The Tummy Tub

FROM MSNBC:

It was bath time for more than a half dozen babies, and not one of them was crying or complaining. That’s because they were too busy discovering the joys of the Tummy Tub, a bathtub for infants that has made a big splash in Europe and has finally found its way to America.

“It’s designed to mimic the mother’s womb,” Janis McKellar told TODAY’s Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry Friday in New York. As she spoke, her 14-month old son, John, sat serenely in his Tummy Tub, flanked by other parents and their babies, who seemed delighted to be bathing in warm water while curled up in fetal position.

Tale of a tub McKellar — who was joined in Studio 1A by her husband, Brent — was expecting her fourth child in November 2007 when she first set about finding a better way to bathe a baby than the standard tubs she had been using. What she discovered not only filled her requirements — it filled up her basement, too.

She found the Tummy Tub, an infant’s bath that looks like a see-through cross between a bucket and a flowerpot. Invented in the Netherlands, it holds an infant in the fetal position, just like in mommy’s tummy. Strangely enough, she found that this trendy infant-care product was not sold in the United States. “They’ve been used in Europe since 1996,” McKellar told TODAY.“They’re used in most countries around the world. The United States is one of the last countries to hear about the Tummy Tub.”

McKellar found the product by doing an online search for baby bathtubs. She bought hers from a dealer in Canada. She liked it so much, she decided to get more to give to friends with infants and as gifts at baby showers. But the Canadian source went out of business and she found herself forced to buy 20 at a time from the manufacturer in Germany.

If she was going to have to buy that many, she decided, she’d buy a lot and become the sole distributor in the United States. That’s how her basement came to be filled with Tummy Tubs and other infant-care products. She sells them through her Web site, bathedwithlove.com.
“I was looking for a washtub that would keep my baby warm,” McKellar said. “I did an online search and the Tummy Tub popped up. But I couldn’t find anyone who sells them in the United States.”

The tub is made of nontoxic materials and has a low center of gravity, so it doesn’t tip over. It requires much less water than traditional infant tubs, she said, and because it has a small surface area, the water stays warm longer.

Unfortunately I did not get to interview this entrepreneur because I have a few questions. If anyone out there has the answers, please let me know!

I really like the concept of this tub, but do you have to wait until the baby is 5-6 months and close to sitting up to use it? If it was a new born that couldn't keep his head up it looks like it would be a drowning hazard. And how in the world do you clean the cracks between baby fat in the lower thighs and buttocks when the child is all squashed like that?

I love that the tub stays warmer longer and it's more comfortable for baby. I am just wondering how long the baby would fit in it and whether you would really be getting the baby clean. What do you think?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

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Swine Flu

Okay if you are really worried about getting this flu and you are taking it extremely seriously, don't read this post. I understand the threat and don't mean to downplay it in any way. I just have to tell you about my morning!

My two-year-old has a respiratory cough and a high fever. I feel so bad for him. He is miserable. I was worried he might be getting pneumonia because his cough was getting pretty wet. So I tried to get him in to the pediatrician-no appointments! I instead take him to prompt care. There are these big signs outside the awaiting room about HINI Flu. If you have these symptoms (the first two being cough and fever) then you must wear a mask. I thought, okay, it's good to take precautions. However, we haven't been around anyone who is sick or anyone who has been to Mexico recently. So, the chances of my two-year-old having it are slim.

You should have seen this waiting room! I mean people everywhere were wearing these blue masks. I about turned around and left. I eventually got to check in. Of course, my son refused to put on the mask so I took him outside. We waited, and waited and waited. Finally, we get called back and then wait for another 1/2 an hour inside those tiny rooms. My son is about to go nuts at this point. The doctor walks in, checks his throat, chest and ears and sends us home empty handed.

Now I hate the swine flu. I hate it because it's hurting people. I hate it because it makes people freak out about a little cold! I hate it because I am sick of hearing about it. I hate it because it makes waiting to see a doctor ridiculously long.

In conclusion, I spent 2 hours, 36 minutes and 5 seconds at the doctor's office today with a 2 year old. Can anyone relate?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Afraid to wear shorts? Do you have unwanted hair? Embarrassed by unsightly varicose or spider veins? NOW is the time to get your legs ready for summer! You don’t have to be afraid to wear shorts because of unwanted hair or unsightly varicose or spider veins.

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