So what’s a parent to do when, say, your toddler hears you say “no,” but keeps pulling the cat’s tail anyway, or hits a playmate over the head with a toy, or bites, or has a full-on screaming meltdown? Here’s some discipline strategies for ages 1-3.

Time out. Let’s start with this technique because it works for all ages and in most situations, and it’s like grownup life: after all, if adults commit assault or vandalism, they get “time out” in jail. First, at a time when your child is not in trouble, pick your time-out spot. For younger toddlers a playpen or a crib will work, for older toddlers try a step or a special chair. Then when your child misbehaves, first issue a warning. If that doesn’t work, put them in the playpen, chair or spot for one minute per each year of age. To adults that sounds like no time at all, but to a one-year-old, 60 minutes of being away from you, left out of the fun and ignored is long enough to get the message. Set an actual timer that beeps, and if your child gets out of the seat, remain calm, place them back on the “naughty spot” and make a show of starting the timer over. Testing limits is what toddlers do, but remember that as an adult, your greatest advantage is your longer attention span and greater patience– you might have to put them back on the seat a dozen times, but eventually you will outlast them. If you’re out, at the mall or at someone else’s house, try stepping outside and/or use a curb or your car. It’s embarrassing, but other parents will understand.

While some bad behavior is worthy of a warning, when it comes to hitting, biting or doing things that you’re quite sure your child well knows are wrong, react swiftly and decisively to put them in time-out. Explain to your child why they’re being punished. “You’re going in to time out because you kept digging up the plant dirt even after mommy told you to stop,” put them in time out and then proceed to ignore them as best you can for the whole time out. When time out is over, explain to them why they were in time out, or have them explain it to you if they’re old enough to do that.

Offer choices. A lot of tantrums can be prevented or defused by letting a child pick between two things. “Do you want me to wash your face, or do you want to do it yourself?” “I know  you want to stay, but it’s time for us to go. Do you want to walk, or do you want me to carry you?”

Allow expression. Make sure your child knows it’s okay to be sad, angry or frustrated, or to cry, it’s just not okay to take bad feelings out on other people by hitting, calling names or being destructive. In other words, don’t punish your child for having strong emotions, just for their actions. Remember that toddler moods are intense, but they pass quickly and are soon forgotten (by the child, anyway). Often tiredness, hunger or feeling overwhelmed/ or powerless is at the root of a toddler tantrum or bad behavior (though not always).

Never make empty threats. Only issue threats like “stop banging your knife on the table or we’re leaving the restaurant,” or “stop fighting over that toy or we’re leaving the park,” if you’re genuinely prepared to pack up and go. Threats you don’t follow up on will only make your child not trust you, and may even make the behavior worse as they test your limits.

Don’t hit your kids. Not only is the line between physical punishment and abuse really fuzzy, but if you don’t want your kids to hit other people to get their way, you shouldn’t do it either.

Use “no” sparingly. If your child is about to harm himself or others, of course you need to say no, loudly and firmly. But if it’s not an urgent situation, try instead telling your child what you do want them to do– be gentle with the animals, play with toys (not plants), use the potty (instead of your pants). The less you say “no,” the more effective your “no” will be. When you do say no, if you get ignored, make sure that there’s a consequence immediately and every time. For more on saying “no” less, check out this article.

Want to learn more about toddlers? Check out Great Expectations, the Toddler Years.

You’ll change about 2,500 diapers during your baby’s first year.

How many diapers do we need? What size?”

The hospital will send you home with newborn disposable diapers in whatever brand that the hospital has a diaper contract with. Newborn size usually fit babies up to about 10 pounds and have a cutout in the front for baby’s belly-button stump. Size 1 diapers generally go up to about 15 pounds, and size 2 is about 12-18. You can generally expect your baby to double in size from their birth weight by five months. Before you commit to a brand, buy a small package. Some brands (such as Pampers) are scented, some brands will leak more than others depending on your baby’s individual shape, and you may find that the cheaper or store-brand diapers work just as well as Pampers or Huggies.

In the first year, you can expect to change diapers about 5-9 times a day — that’s about 2,550 diapers.

It also makes sense to try some cloth diapers– they’re certainly cheaper over the long haul and good to have on hand even if you use disposables. The only issue is they mean a lot of laundry, and they take a long time to dry.

How do I change a diaper?”

Newborns hate to have their diapers changed. It upsets them. So watch out, there are apt to be howls of protest and chin-quivering cries.

If you’ve never changed a diaper in your life, here’s what to do. (We’ll assume that you’re among the 95 percent of parents who use disposables.)

1. Prepare by getting out a clean diaper and a wipe or two. Usually the design on the diaper will indicate where the front is.

2. Lay the baby down on his back on a changing pad or towel, being sure to support the head and neck at all times.

3. Remove the old diaper. If it has Velcro tabs, you can roll it up, and use the tabs to make it a tidy package.

4. Use a damp washcloth or a premoistened baby wipe to clean off the baby, being sure to wipe from front to back, and keep all fecal material out of the urinary tract area.

5. Apply diaper rash ointment or kaolin clay powder if your baby’s bottom looks red.

6. Lift up the baby by the ankles, and slide the new diaper under his rump.

7. Peel off the tabs that cover the tape, pull the diaper firmly around your baby so it will stay on, and press the tape into the soft, patterned area of the diaper. Voilà. You’ll become so expert at it that you can do it in the dark with your eyes closed by the end of the first month (or sooner).

but lack of stools in the first week could mean that he isn’t getting enough milk, so be sure to tell your pediatrician if your newborn doesn’t poop at least once per day in the first week. Dark urine or dryer-than-usual diapers may also be signs that your baby isn’t eating enough, or is becoming dehydrated.

As long as his stools are soft, rather than hard like pellets, everything is probably okay.

Are these poops normal?”

How bowel movements look and smell depends upon whether a baby’s breastfed or bottle-fed. A breastfed baby’s stools are almost liquid (but not the same as diarrhea). They aren’t smelly, resemble small curds, and range from mustard yellow to light brown in color, sometimes with small speckled solid pieces that look like mustard seeds. Breastfed babies will pass stools almost every time they nurse. In the early weeks, that may mean as many as 8 to 10 stools in one day.

A bottle-fed baby’s stools are usually green, but they can be yellow to brown. They are usually firmer than a breastfed baby’s, similar to thick pudding, and they may change appearance if your baby changes formula brands. The stools will have a stronger, more unpleasant odor than those of a breastfed baby. Your bottle-fed baby will pass fewer stools than a breastfed baby, too, and the stools will be larger. Stools may change color temporarily if your baby becomes ill, but contact your baby’s healthcare provider if they turn bright red, are filled with mucus, are white, bloody, or have a coffee-grind consistency. For tips on diaper blowout preparedness, see this article.

Around 4 to 6 weeks of age, your baby’s pooping pattern may slow down, and by the time he reaches a year of age, bowel movements and diaper changes will be much less frequent. By that time, breastfed babies will have about four bowel movements a day, while formula-fed babies will have two a day. Some babies may go three or four days before having a movement and be perfectly normal. If you’re concerned that your baby hasn’t had a bowel movement in a long time, or the stools are hard, then contact your baby’s healthcare provider.

Hi. My baby is eight months old and I’m breastfeeding but I still haven’t lost any weight. What am I doing wrong? What can I do?”

First of all, stay calm and keep breastfeeding. Breastfeeding for more than six months does help you lose weight, and even will help you stay at a healthy weight for life, studies have found. But it might be weeks or months before you see real results on the scale or with your clothes sizes. What happens is that after pregnancy your body holds on to fat stores to help you feed the baby. Starting at about six months, as your baby starts to get more and more calories from solids than from you, your body will begin to let go of those fat stores, and when that happens you may see a dramatic weight loss of a pound or two a week. The solids, by the way, will also help your almost-toddler sleep more soundly through the night, which will mean better sleep for you, which will also mean easier weight loss.

As your baby nurses less and eats more food, if you have a breast pump you can also keep up the calorie-burning effect by pumping extra bottles as you feed on one side.

And, while breastfeeding helps burn 300-500 calories, you also have to do your part by not eating extra calories and by staying active. A simple way to not overeat is to make sure you get your recommended 28 grams of fiber. Make yourself a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, have beans, salads and fruit at your meals, and it’ll be easier to limit sugary and fatty snacks. As far as staying active goes, you don’t need to have a vigorous workout every day, it’s also great just to walk for 30 minutes– that’s just two 15-minute walks, or 15 minutes away from your house and 15 minutes back.

When it comes to being in shape, showing up is what counts– even if you can only walk for 15 minutes one day or you have a day where you eat a ton of junk food, every day you can start over. Simple stuff like routines, a food/exercise journal or even a calendar with star stickers to put on it can go a long way towards getting you back in your pre-pregnancy pants.

I’m 16 weeks pregnant, is it safe to scrub my shower with a cleanser containing bleach, or with bleach spray?”

Cleanser: safe when used as directed during pregnancy.

What you don’t want to do: mix a cleaner containing bleach with vinegar, or with ammonia. Combing these ingredients can release a gas that’s toxic to breathe. Check the labels on cleaners labeled as “multi-purpose” before you let them mix with anything else.

Take a morning walk. Getting baby out in the sunshine will help her brain establish a day-and-night routine. An afternoon walk after lunch will help too. (Plus with two 15-minute walks you’ll also be getting your minimum daily recommended amount of exercise). Feeding the baby, walking, tummy time, feeding again and then nap at around 10 a.m. is a routine a lot of moms report success with.

Beware the dreaded mini-nap. Babies have this strange ability to fall asleep for 10-15 minutes, then be wide awake as if they’d slept for an hour. So if you know your baby was up a lot the night before and he usually enjoys a 10 a.m. nap, try to get any car or stroller chores out of the way early in the morning to increase the odds that baby will still be awake for a naptime you both can share. If baby falls asleep in the car seat, consider putting down your seat for a quick rest yourself.

Expect night-time wakeups for the first six months. Until your baby starts to be able to digest solid food (which happens at about six months, even if you start solids earlier), one, two and even three wakeups a night are normal and to be expected. Typically a baby will go to sleep at 7, wake up for a feeding at about 12 or 1, then wake up again at 3 or 4 a.m., and is up for the day not too long after that. Formula-fed babies do sleep more and for longer stretches on average, though interestingly, studies have found that formula-feeding moms actually sleep fewer hours. All the bottle-washing, maybe?

Have a go-to-sleep ritual. Feeding, bath, putting on PJs, singing the same song, rocking, dimming the lights, reciting the same poem or prayer… whatever steps you come up with, incorporating mini-routines in your daily schedule will help baby relax because he knows what to expect next.

After about six weeks to four months, it’s okay to let the baby cry himself to sleep when it’s bedtime. You’ve had plenty of activity and fun all day, he’s fed and cleaned, songs have been sung and stories read– if he cries a little bit before he drifts off to sleep, do not feel bad about this. If he cries for more than an hour, check his diaper and make sure he’s fed, but don’t feel bad about putting him down if it’s bedtime. If he persistently has a problem settling down to bed at night, try cutting out after-lunch naps and moving bedtime to a little earlier and checking your caffeine intake if you’re breastfeeding.

Sample 1-4 Month Baby Schedule

Like this article? Check out our book Great Expectations: Baby Sleep Guide: Sleep Solutions for You & Your Baby

Q: I have a 4-month-old. I’m against making the baby cry himself to sleep and my husband agreed he was too. But today I fed the baby, went to run some errands and when I got back four hours later my baby was crying in the crib, my boobs started leaking everywhere and my husband said she’d been crying for an hour. She fell asleep but I still feel like I want to throw up, I am so mad at him. Will this damage my baby? Please tell me how to deal with this.”

I feel your pain, really — I remember coming home from a similar grocery-store trip. Please, pump a bottle and relax. Now think: what exactly would you have wanted your husband to do? Give her formula? Pumped milk? Walk the baby all over the neighborhood? For how long? Write it down, and before you leave the baby with your husband (or another caregiver again) and talk about your expectations. If you want him to try specific soothing methods, or feeding her pumped milk, or if it’s okay to give her formula, tell him so (a guide on how much to leave is here). But if your partner isn’t endangering the baby, and putting down a healthy, clean and fed crying baby to go to sleep will not damage her– at a certain point you have to trust him and give him space to find his find his own style for caring for your baby.

Most babies go through a phase starting at about four weeks where their sleep hormones are adjusting. They will tend to get these horrible crying jags in the afternoon that gradually ramp up staring at birth and typically peaking at about six weeks. While three-week-olds cry an average of 1.7 hours per day, 6-week-olds cry 2.2 hours per day. The “six week crying peak” seems to coincide with the baby transitioning to the 60-120-minute sleep cycles of the third trimester and newborn stages to a more adult-like day/night sleep cycle. If your baby’s been crying for a solid 20 minutes or more, she’s fed, diaper’s clean, she doesn’t have a fever, you’ve walked, talked and sang and tried all of your other tricks, then putting her down in a safe sleeping place and walking away is a better idea than driving yourself into exhaustion. As every experienced parent knows, sometimes babies get overtired, overstimulated, and need some time to settle themselves, and if that’s the case, putting them down and walking away is the best thing you can do for both of you. If you do this, have a snack, drink some water, stay away from the sound for 30-60 minutes. Give her a real chance to settle and calm herself into sleep before you intervene.

Babies also have a phase of sleep from about 15 minutes after they close their eyes before they’re really in deep sleep. If you opt to rock or nurse the baby to sleep, you’ll need to hold her for about 15-20 minutes after her eyes close and/or she stops nursing before you try to put her down. A test of this is if her arm flops down if you pick it up and let go. If you make a mistake and put her down too soon and she starts crying in the crib, let her settle there instead of re-stimulating her by picking her up for another nursing/feeding singing/pacifier routine. Odds are she will be asleep in her crib in 30-60 minutes and wake up happy with no damage done.

Like this article? Check out the Great Expectations Guide to Baby Sleep.

I’m 27 and I’ve been dating my boyfriend for three years. He just told me he’s not sure if he wants kids or not– we’ve never really talked about it. When I thought about it I realized I’m not sure either. How long until we have to decide? Is waiting until 35 a big deal?”

For most women, fertility — meaning how easy it is to get pregnant, and then to stay pregnant until a baby is born– peaks in their early 20′s, and then begins to decline a little bit with every cycle.

Thirty-five is not a magic age, it’s just cited a lot because it’s the point where the risk of complications from testing via amnio (1 in 250) is equal to the risk of having a child with Down syndrome (also 1 in 250). So doctors used to suggest amnio for women over 35. These days, health care providers will more often tend to offer a “menu” of tests to women of all ages. A multiple-marker blood test in early pregnancy will be able to give you a risk ratio based on measures of protein in your blood, your age and ultrasound measurements.

Between 35 and 40 most women not using any kind of birth control will have only about a 10 percent chance of conceiving every month, with about a 30 percent chance of miscarriage. By 40, the risk of miscarriage goes up to 50 percent, and you also have higher odds for a stillborn baby.

So bottom line, there’s no deadline for when to have a baby, but waiting could make it more difficult for pregnancy to happen. Ask yourself, how much risk are you willing to take on? How many children do you want to have? Ten years from now would you be happy with kids or not? Tough questions that only you and your partner can answer.

• Check your perineum to make sure any tearing or incisions have healed
• Check your abdominal incision, if you’ve had a cesarean
• Examine your breasts for any lumps or other signs of a clogged duct or infection.
• Feel your stomach to make sure that your uterus has returned to its normal size
• Give you the go-ahead to resume exercising (or not). Ask if you need to restrict or modify your activities for any reason. Your care provider may also be able to suggest local postpartum exercise classes.
• Give you the go-ahead to resume sexual activity (or not).
• Discuss birth control options. Don’t leave your healthcare provider’s office without a plan to prevent pregnancy until you’re sure you are mentally and physically ready for another child. Most health care providers recommend waiting at least 9 to 12 months before trying for another baby. Note that some birth control pills aren’t recommended for breastfeeding mothers. Other options include an IUD, diaphragm, or condoms.

My best friend just had a miscarriage. I have no idea what to say to her, or how to help. I don’t want to ignore that it happened, but I feel really awkward bringing it up, too. What should I say? Anything? How can I help?”

If you’re a partner, relative or friend it can be tough to know what to say to someone who’s had a miscarriage. On the other hand, you certainly don’t want to carry on like nothing’s happened, or avoid a person because you feel awkward. Some ideas:

• “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

• “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here for you, please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

• “Can I babysit/ help clean house/ run errands while you rest?”

• “Do you want to talk about it? If you ever do, please know I’ll always be here to listen, even if it’s 3 a.m.”

• Check back in. The pain doesn’t go away in a few days or weeks. The baby’s due date can be an especially tough time, as can the anniversary of the loss.

• Avoid at all costs saying any of the following: “but you can have more,” “one miscarriage isn’t so bad, so-and-so has had three,” “at least you weren’t that far along,” “it wasn’t meant to be,” “it was God’s plan,” “the baby probably had some kind of defect and wouldn’t have survived anyway,” “you need to ___ “(fill in the blank: “cry,” “cry less,” “move on,” “try again,” “focus on the kids you do have,” “take a class,” or any other unsolicited advice on how to grieve).

Know that while some people might want to talk, others will need space, and it’s okay and normal if your friend or partner doesn’t want to talk about it, or even cuts you off if you bring it up. Everyone mourns in a different way. Often the most and best you can do is to let someone know you care about them and you’re there for them and willing to listen and help, if needed.

The odds of having one increase as you age: studies have found that about 9 percent of recognized pregnancies for women ages 20 to 24 ended in miscarriage. The risk rises to about 20 percent between ages 35 to 39, and to more than 50 percent by the age of 42.

Most of the time, for no reason other than the bad luck, some chromosomal or genetic information from the sperm or egg is lost during conception. When the needed genetic information isn’t there at the developmental stage that the fetus needs it to continue growing, you will miscarry. Certain infections also appear to play a role in some miscarriages.

For women with no vaginal bleeding, most estimates suggest that the odds or having a miscarriage after seeing a heartbeat are about 4 percent. For women with vaginal bleeding but also a detected heartbeat on ultrasound, risk of miscarriage is about 13 percent according to one study.

Many women miscarry more than once in their lives. About 1 in 36 women will have two miscarriages due to nothing more than chance. Most often they are unpreventable, and no cause is found.

Once a miscarriage is underway, unfortunately, there is not anything to be done to stop it. If you do experience any kind of bleeding or spotting during pregnancy, though, call your health care provider right away. If you worry that drinking, smoking, eating hot dogs or staying out late caused your miscarriage—don’t. Unless you’re a chronic alcoholic, crack addict or smoke a pack a day, your behavior is unlikely to be the cause.