Web Sites Help New Parents Bring Up Baby

Earlier this year, a Florida woman made news by broadcasting video of her baby’s birth on the Internet. Funny, that never occurred to my wife or me when our baby was born several months ago.

But like many parents, we’ve had a million questions about how to take care of our baby, and though we’re not prudes, searching online for answers to these questions just seemed to us to be a slightly more appropriate use of modern technology.

There’s no shortage of Web sites that offer parenting information and, as usual with the Net, that poses a problem. After all, making sure the information is reliable is more important when you’re getting tips on how to care for your baby than it is when you’re looking up song lyrics or sports scores.

So experts urge caution and critical evaluation of any online source.

“You want to look for a site that’s not telling you what to believe or what to do,” said Josh Lerman, who edits Web site and software reviews for Parenting magazine. “You want a site that provides information so you can make your own choice. There’s too much opportunity on the Web to be handed a bill of goods with an agenda behind it.”

Two of the most popular parenting sites are https:///www.parentsoup.com and https://www.parentsplace.com, both operated by IVillage Inc., a leading online company. Like many sites, they offer an assortment of advice, activities, chat rooms, recipes and shopping guides. They’re bland but useful.

One of my favorite parenting sites is https://www.newdads.com. It is called Boot Camp for Dads and is run by the nonprofit, Irvine-based organization of the same name. It effectively mixes humor and no-nonsense advice. And it seems to be on target in warning men about the issues they will face as new fathers and how they can cope.

In its “trouble-shooter’s guide to crying,” for instance, the site advises dads to stay calm and go down a mental list of checkpoints to see if the baby is hungry, tired, has a wet diaper, etc.

“Keep trying solutions like you do when trouble-shooting a car that won’t start,” it continues. “Check the gas, battery, starter, spark plugs and so on.”

Now, that’s language a father can understand.

Boot Camp is thorough, covering ground many others overlook. One of its lengthiest and most useful sections, for instance, isn’t about caring for baby, but caring for Mom. “Pitch in as much as you can,” it urges. “In the middle of the night when the baby is crying, and both of you are dead tired, reach deep and find the strength to get up and handle the baby. Sleep will do her good.”

Much of the Internet’s value lies beyond the mainstream, in sites that cater to specific groups. Part of the Internet’s magic is in bringing people together who may be miles apart but share common experiences, issues and problems.

There are sites and online support groups for single mothers, working mothers, parents of children with congenital heart defects, and even second wives of divorced fathers. Some can be a bit maudlin. Divorcedfather.com, for instance, features a “quilt” of pictures of fathers with their children. Click on individual pictures for the fathers’ stories and you get laments like “I have a story to tell; I’d be happy to tell it to the media.”

Some government sites are quite helpful. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, for instance, has a well-designed site at https://www.cpsc.gov that is the best place to look for consumer recalls and other product warnings.

There were headlines recently about certain cribs with rivets that could catch a baby’s clothing and lead to strangulation, for instance. The cpsc.gov site has an article about the recalls and, more important, includes a chart listing all the brands and models affected, plus links to pictures of the dangerous cribs.

It doesn’t hurt to use the Web as a medical resource. Typing in “What should I do if my child has an ear infection?” at the https://www.askjeeves.com site, for instance, produced a thorough report on symptoms, causes and treatments.

But medical information online should be treated with particular skepticism. It is no substitute for the advice of a family doctor, or for a handy directory of local emergency phone numbers, pediatricians warn.

Parents also need to be wary of commercial sites run by companies that sell baby products such as formula or diapers. Their sites often mix presumably objective content with advice biased toward their products.

And a surprising number of parenting sites fail to post their privacy policies.

Gerber, for instance, invites parents to enter their names and addresses in an online form to sign up for special discounts and coupons. But it doesn’t say what it will do with that data, much less whether it might be sold to other marketers.

Gerber does, however, have an entire page devoted to its preparedness for the year 2000 computer problem.

Our new baby finds that very reassuring.