Parenting Research
Fever medicine comforts a sick baby but does not shorten the illness or prevent a seizure
In the same month a baby becomes old enough for ibuprofen, a single rectal reading of 38.0°C still overrides how well the baby looks.
No trial behind the “first tooth” rule enrolled a child younger than one
The varnish and supplement guidance rest on the same trials that stopped at age one, where the drops still prescribed to a six-month-old in low-fluoride water now carry an October 2025 FDA warning.
A baby's own flu shot comes due just as the mother's protection fades
The nasal spray with the strongest efficacy is licensed from age two, and the shot a six-month-old can get was measured mostly in older children.
The daycare research settles the infection months and little else
The well-known finding that early daycare guards against later asthma does not survive the cohorts large enough to test it, and what stays firm is a two-year run of extra colds and ear infections.
The dangerous part of teething is the medicine cabinet
FDA case files link infant benzocaine gels to 119 methemoglobinemia cases and four deaths, and drove belladonna teething tablets off the market as a serious health hazard.
Higher vitamin D doses gave breastfed infants more in the blood and no more in the bone
The standard 400 IU drops do the one thing physiology makes plain and the trials can barely count, keeping a breastfed baby out of deficiency, while the case for giving more comes down to where the line for “enough” is set.
Giving iron before anemia shows no measured cognitive benefit
Iron reliably reverses developmental delay once an infant is already anemic, but the randomized trial built to match a healthy, breastfed six-month-old found no cognitive gain from giving it beforehand.
July 2026Nirsevimab cuts a healthy baby's RSV risk by three-quarters, and by four in a hundred
A single antibody shot prevents most medically-attended RSV in infants; for a low-risk baby, that large relative number is a small absolute one.
The trials built to catch sleep-training harm found none, and the benefit faded by six years
Salivary cortisol and the Strange Situation, the standard test of infant attachment, are what the trial built to catch harm actually measured, in infants ages 6 to 16 months.
Early peanut introduction cut allergy risk 81 percent, in the infants LEAP actually tested
Severe eczema or egg allergy already diagnosed was the entry requirement, and the general-population version of the same idea found that adherence, not appetite, decided the outcome.
Timing, not method, is what the evidence on starting solids settles
One New Zealand trial program is most of the evidence on baby-led weaning, and it found the method neither riskier nor better than the spoon.