Incentive to bank cord blood? A small pilot study finds that preserved cord blood may be useful as a treatment therapy for children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Though early results do not promise a cure-all, a child’s own cord blood may help preserve the insulin-production capabilities he still has at the time of diagnosis.

Never too late? Controversial cable news personality Nancy Grace revealed that she recently wed an investment banker whom she has known since college, and that the pair are expecting twins, due next January. Ms. Grace, 47, declined to reveal whether or not she used fertility treatments to conceive. Ms. Grace shares that it is never too late to be lucky in love: “Tell women out there that there is hope.”

What’s in a name? Please welcome Autumn Sullivan Corbett Fitzsimmons Jeffries Hart Burns Johnson Willard Dempsey Tunney Schmeling Sharkey Carnera Baer Braddock Louis Charles Walcott Marciano Patterson Johansson Liston Clay Frazier Foreman Brown, daughter of British mommy Maria Brown. The newcomer has 25 middle names, all in honor of prize fighters. This, by the way, is a family tradition. Ms. Brown and her two siblings have 103 middle names among them.

There’s a somewhat snarky article from Friday’s Wall Street Journal about overanxious expectant parents hiring consultants to help them choose baby names that will set their little bundles of joy apart from the pack.

From the premise I was prepared to snicker at this breed of soulless neo-yuppies forking out thousands of dollars to professional baby namers, but for the most part, we’re talking about couples paying $25-50 for some input - not a lot of “there” there. Certainly not how I would use my disposable income, but that’s because 1. I’d rather eat out, and 2. I never wanted input on baby names. Not even from my husband, even though I started thousands of conversations with him on the topic. I pretty much wanted to name our babies all by myself. (But, alas for me, my husband insisted on choosing a label for #2. Good thing he has nice taste.)

Anyway, there are a couple interesting facts in the article. For instance:

In 1880, Social Security Administration data show that the 10 most popular baby names were given to 41% of boys and 23% of girls. But in 2006, just 9.5% of boys and roughly 8% of girls were given one of the year’s 10 most popular names — a combined decline of about 33% from the averages in the 1990s, says Cleveland Kent Evans, an associate psychology professor at Bellevue University in Bellevue, Neb. and a past president of the American Name Society.

The trend is away from family names and ethnic traditions; parents are choosing names that they like, that they feel will set their kids apart without making them seem weird, and in some cases, that are recent inventions:

So while a once-ubiquitous name like Mary has fallen from No. 1 during most of the 1950s to No. 84 last year, many new names are taking off. Nevaeh (heaven spelled backward) ranked No. 43 among the 1,000 most popular names in the U.S. in 2006 and Zayden, another recent creation, was given to 224 boys.

In the US, this is all well and good, but elsewhere, names may fall under government regulation:

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Lotta Babies: An Arizona woman has given birth to sextuplets, three girls and three boys. The babies arrived ten weeks premature, and all but one weighed in at less than three pounds, but their doctor reports he’s pleased with their progress. The parents had tried for years to have children with no luck, so they turned to artificial insemination plus an ovulation-stimulating medication. It appears to have worked. The newcomers are named Bailey Elizabeth, Savannah Jane, Molli Grace, Cole Robert, Blake Nickolas, and Grant William.

What next? Out of the UK, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is advising pregnant women to avoid being in the sun, particularly in those first three months of pregnancy. The reason? A 2005 study found that babies who are exposed to high temperatures in utero early on are prone to low birth weight, which has been linked with lower IQ, learning disabilities, and behavior problems. Apparently, when a woman becomes overheated, her blood vessels contract as her body tries to cool itself; this restricts the flow of nutrients to the developing baby.

Does your mom still dress you? She does if you’re a side-blotched lizard. (Are you?) A new study published in the journal Ecology Letters finds that female side-blotched lizards give an extra helping of hormones to their offspring that gives them either long or horizontal stripes on their backs, permanently, depending on which type the mother senses will help the baby escape winding up as dinner for a snake.

Hear, hear: Whale Rider actress Keisha Castle-Hughes talks about young motherhood in the New Zealand edition of The Australian Women’s Weekly, and on the public uproar her pregnancy inspired: “Absolutely everyone in the country had something to say about it. I thought, ‘At the end of the day, I am going to be the one looking after this baby in the middle of the night and it doesn’t affect you.’ ”

Please wash: A new study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases finds that few patrons of petting zoos follow simply hygiene procedures to protect themselves and their families from disease. Specifically, on average only 30% of people leaving petting zoos washed their hands, which is concerning because hand-to-mouth transmission is the most likely route of becoming infected with illness from handling animals.

Sleep and academic performance: No big surprise, perhaps, but a new study has found that children with symptoms of sleep disorders tend to receive poorer grades in math, reading and writing than their peers. This study looked at 218 second and third graders who completed a brief sleep screening tool.

More on sleep: Research to be presented at the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies finds that premature infants and toddlers who were preemies are more likely to suffer from a sleep-related breathing disorder, characterized by snoring, that can have long-term effects on cognitive development. However, at the same meeting researchers will present findings that breastfeeding may protect against the disorder, or mitigate its severity.

It’s a girl: Access Hollywood host Nancy O’Dell and her husband welcomed a baby girl, Ashby Grace, yesterday. The little one weighed in at 7 lbs, 9 oz. Ashby is named for Ms. O’Dell’s late grandfather.

Back off, Big Brother!  An education reform panel of the Japanese government has scrapped a proposal that would have urged mothers to breastfeed their babies and sing them lullabies, to limit their children’s exposure to television, and to teach age-appropriate morals.  Critics found the plan “beyond intrusive”.

Grandma Invasion?  A researcher out of Bowling Green State University reports�that many young, low-income expectant fathers who are not married to their babies’ mothers run into “fatherhood barriers” that inhibit them from�playing an active role in preparing for the newcomer.  One common barrier:  The maternal grandmother, whose involvement in her daughter’s pregnancy can create “boundry ambiguity”.

Finally!  The Social Security Bureau has updated its baby name index to include 2006.  Here are the top 10 for boys and girls:

Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Ethan, Matthew, Daniel, Christopher, Andrew, Anthony, William

Emily, Emma, Madison, Isabella, Ava, Abigail, Olivia, Hannah, Sophia, Samantha

Triple A: The Netherlands’ Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima welcomed a baby girl, their third daughter, last Tuesday. Baby Ariane joins big sisters Amalia and Alexia.

The Future of Fetal Monitoring? British researchers have developed a portable fetal heart monitor, about the size of a cell phone, that they say could be used by women with high-risk pregnancies as a way to help reduce the number of stillbirths among this group.  The women could wear the device while going about their regular business and be monitored remotely. Bedrest would not be required.

Pre-E Clues? A Swedish study finds that pregnant women who were low-birthweight babies are more likely than the general population of women to suffer from pre-eclampsia, a pregnancy complication marked by high blood pressure that can be dangerous to mother and baby. At even greater risk are women whose mothers had pre-eclampsia when they were pregnant with them.

Baby Name Trends: BabyCenter has its list�of the most popular baby names as reported by more than 370,000 registered users. The top ten girls: Emma, Madison, Ava, Emily, Isabella, Kaitlyn, Sophia, Olivia, Abigail, and Hailey. For boys: Aiden, Jacob, Ethan, Ryan, Matthew, Jack, Noah, Nicholas, Joshua, and Logan.

Ahh, the name game. This is perhaps one of the most fun things about having a new baby as well as one of the most frustrating. Do we use a name from his family? Can we combo it with one from mine? What if s/he hates it? Is it better to go with names like John and Mike or branch out and try something exotic?

In Daisy Carrington’s “Baby Names Get Weird,” published in the New York Observer, she explores the explosion of unusual and downright strange names popping up on the streets of New York.

In a city where you can’t control which preschool your kid attends, or even the size of her bedroom, this is one way you can try to influence her destiny and show how clever you are in the process. Why have a Sophia when you could have a Zosia? A Zeus could take down a Jack in the sandbox, no? And one figures an Aoife might have a better chance of getting into Horace Mann than a Grace as long as she can spell her own name, that is.

As one of two, three, or sometimes even four Melissas in my grade-school classes, I can accept and fully understand parents’ desire to set their kid apart. I hated being one of several in my class, and ended up going by a shortened version of my name in high school as a desperate attempt to stand out. So maybe picking a name at the very top of the hot lists isn’t the best way to go - but is it really necessary to completely reinvent the wheel?

I like unusual names - to a point. Barney may never be able to separate himself from images of the big purple dino, and Zoe may never be the only one in her class, but Thijs (pronounced “Tice” - the actual name of Matt Lauer and Annette Roque’s third son) is headed for a potentially larger set of problems. Can you imagine having to spell out and/or pronounce your name for almost everyone you ever meet? Suddenly “Melissa” doesn’t look so bad to me.

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A North Dakota couple was prepared for one big baby, but instead they got three little ones. 

How could this happen?  Well, the midwife heard only one heartbeat, and the mom didn’t have an ultrasound.  She went into labor last November and out came Marissa, Silas and Anna.  The girls were fine, but Silas had to be hospitalized for a few weeks for breathing problems, but now he’s home and healthy. 

The three join older siblings Christopher and Abigail.  Family and friends are helping out the busy parents, and the couple says they’ll have more children, and will use the same midwife.

The odds of having natural triplets are 1 in 8,100.  These days, in the developed world, I can’t imagine what the odds are of having surprise triplets.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Note to self: Yelling doesn’t work:  A study published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics finds that about a third of all parents surveyed believe that their approach to discipline is not particularly effective.  In addition, 38% noted that they use the same discipline techniques their parents did.  Interesting note:  There was an inverse relationship between self-report of using yelling at children and perceived effectiveness of discipline.

Baby for Gish:  Annabeth Gish (of Showtime’s Brotherhood) and her husband, a martial arts expert, welcomed their first child, a boy, Cash Alexander, this past Friday. 

Adoption News:  Assistant Secretary of Consular Affairs Maura Harty is warning Guatemalan officials that they must do a better job regulating adoption procedures or the U.S. government will stop issuing visas to Americans for Guatemalan babies they hope to adopt.   Under the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, set to be ratified later this year, governments must take measures to make sure that babies put up for international adoptions are not stolen or bought.