Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes (2013)

bbc.com

354 pointsstevekemp262 comments

I love this, especially the inclusion of the book that helps new parents with the basics. Becoming a parent is such an overwhelming avalanche of advice (good and bad) and piles of crap. There is a massive industry dedicated to preying on the paranoia and naïveté of new parents. With that first baby, you're awash in a sea of ridiculous products like microwave baby bottle sterilizers and electric bottle heaters. By the second or third month, you come to realize just how worthless all of this junk is and you toss most of it and go back to the basics--the basics that are included in the Finnish baby box. How much easier it would have been if someone had handed us a box and a book and said, "Everything you will need for the first three months is in here."

Everything you've said is true, however all you've done is given the state the responsibility of deciding what part of the avalanche of advice is good and what part is bad.

Which might be sensible. As OP has suggested, the state may be better than the market at this.

Except when its not. Not talking about Finland here, but the amount of poor decisions in many areas related to welfare would suggest that mor often than not its a pretty bad idea to trust the state.

It requires the ability to govern one's selves effectively, which we in the US have proven beyond all doubt we're not capable of doing.

The state is not out to make a profit.

And you forget that in Scandinavian countries, the state is generally considered to be trusted by the citizens.

Have those governments done more to earn that trust? I'm honestly asking. All I know is that I'm American, and I know mine hasn't.

The United States were born out of inherent distrust of authority. That distrust continues on to the present, at our own peril in many cases (inability to have true national health care for example). Other countries do not necessarily have that same history and so the trust does not need to be earned; it was probably already there in the first place (at least moreso than the US.)

There's a significant fraction of Americans (myself included) who don't want their government to be in charge of healthcare. Don't assume that the lack thereof indicates an inability.

Ninja Edit: I'm not going into the reasons why because that's not what this is about.

In charge of your health care or in charge of health care in general?

Both, probably.

I've heard the argument that because health care (or insurance) is a necessity of life so it should be provided by the government. Why doesn't the same principle apply to food?

> Why doesn't the same principle apply to food?

It does, as well as access to water and shelter. Did you think universal health care was the "final boss"?

Actually... the Government heavily subsidises food and water. They don't go further because that'd be socialism and scare people.

But it does. What do you think welfare is?

We as a country have more than enough resources that people shouldn't have to starve on the streets if they happen to go bankrupt.

So, you will turn down Medicare when it comes time that you can utilize it?

Ideally, we wouldn't need insurance "middleware" of any kind, but when you need some expensive care like a CAT scan or open heart surgery, the expertise and equipment required is simply too expensive for most people to afford without some sort of insurance coverage.

I agree that the government often mismanages large programs such as these, however, other countries with national health care tend to be more satisfied with their health care than Americans. [0]

[0] http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/0...

> So, you will turn down Medicare when it comes time that you can utilize it?

No, and I feel morally justified because I've more than paid into it with taxes. The healthcare isn't free. You just get to pick who pays for it.

Insurance as a way to reduce risk is a great idea. Doesn't mean the government has to do it, though.

I don't live in Scandinavia, Europe, or even the northern hemisphere but we have free healthcare, free accident compensation, and certain types of insurance provided by the state. We also can't buy firearms without a reason (and self defense isn't a reason, a reason is hunting or pest control) and have to have a background check before we can get a gun license.

People are healthy, no one gets shot, the government is held accountable and is relatively corruption free, and taxes are lower than in the US as is state debt.

All in all things are pretty good with a different model of operating.

> free accident compensation

New Zealand?

It's still your responsibility, even in Nordic countries :)

All the state does is run the numbers and make sure the kid has what it needs, even if the parents have problems of some kind or another.

People in the nordic countries including Finland have more trust in government authorities and public administration compared to for example Americans. A government agency given the task to given the task to produce some kind of recommendation of best practices is expected to do so reasonably well.

Nordic countries are the size of American cities, or at least metropolitan areas. I can tell you I have a lot more trust in the mayor and city council than I do in the president and my senators (even though I voted for all of them). If most government functions occurred at a more regional level I'm pretty sure Americans would have more trust too. I think SF (for all its problems) is doing a good job showing what can be done at a local level. It's telling that at least in SF politicians are talking about fixing poverty, while this discussion never really even comes up at the federal level, especially this election season.

That's a two way street.

There's huge parts of the country where government at every level is regarded as corrupt and dysfunctional.

When a higher authority (fed > state > town > individual departments > subgroup within a dept.) has to tell the offending institution to step in line it's usually very welcome. People being screwed tend to place their trust in the other parts of the government stack (the parts that haven't screwed them yet).

Agreed. Take Flint, Michigan for example.

While SF politicians seem to mean well, I have little confidence in the ability of the SF City Council to deliver as it is just a small part of the larger metropolitan area.

Bay Area housing and transport problems can only be solved at a metropolitan level. Compare to New York and London which have political bodies covering the majority of their metropolitan areas. This enables them override the nimbyism and beggar-thy-neighbour policies of most Bay Area municipalities.

Frankly, expectations for what government can achieve just seem far too low here. California seems constitutionally hobbled.

Which works in nations where citizens take responsibility for their politics.

In the U.S., we simply don't do that. ("Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.") To paint with a hugely broad brush, political problem-solving here is frequently about hurting others or the political version of Make.Money.Fast. schemes; in Nordic countries, politics is generally a lot more boring, but focused on actually fixing things.

I'll take the government's advice over the advice of a profit-driven business nine times out of ten.

In the US, these are available from state health departments, although these services tend to be geared to the poor--not that rich babies are biologically different, but the wealthy tend to rely on private resources (because of a predisposition to avoid public health services--and poor people).

http://www.healthyfamiliesnow.net/book-one-pregnancy-through...

I don't have children, thank god, but my brother does, and watching him deal with my nephews was instructive:

Baby #1: aaaargh he's quiet we haven't looked at him for five minutes is he still breathing???

Baby #2: meh, let him play with knives on the kitchen table. If he falls off he'll bounce.

I do think the baby box is a fantastic idea, and I agree with you about the reasons. The reassurance of knowing that that's all you need must make things so much easier.

>Parent #1: aaaargh he's quiet we haven't looked at him for five minutes is he still breathing???

>Parent #2: meh, let him play with knives on the kitchen table. If he falls off he'll bounce.

Is a far bigger problem

Never hear of hyperbole?

Perhaps you missed his modification to the speakers in his quote.

ahahaha

I did. :)

My wife is an A&E doctor, and when she used to work in the children's ward she'd see the same thing.

First time parents were notorious for bringing in children because they'd "sneezed funny", "wouldn't stop crying", and similar things that were entirely normal.

It also helps that the Nordic societies aren't quite as thoroughly consumerized as the US. The advertising is less in-your-face, consumption is regarded as less virtuous, there's less drive to purchase useless junk that only exists to make profit. There's a neologism in Finnish, "turhake", a useless product; the word is a play on "hyödyke", meaning a good (literally: "a thing with utility")

This is a bit of a romantic way of viewing the situation.

This non-consumerization of Scandinavia is not optional or voluntary at the individual level. It is imposed forcibly by the government on everyone, whether a particular individual actually wants to be more consumerized or not. Conformity to the top-down bureaucracy's state declaration of what constitutes "virtue" is mandatory.

For example, outsiders often believe that shops close so early in Scandinavia because the locals just love spending time with their families rather than engaging in evil capitalist pursuit of still more money. Some indeed do; other shop owners would rather stay open late or open on Sundays, but they have no choice. They are legally required to close then, and will be heavily fined if they don't.

Another example: extremely high taxes are specifically designed to make "luxury" items (which is just about anything other than basic foodstuffs) punitively expensive. A simple camera charger that costs $5 or 10 in the US costs €70 to 100 in Finland, due to "luxury" taxes.

Does the government require this arbitrarily, or because that's the will of the people?

Here in the UK, we have Sunday trading laws which limit how long shops can be open on a Sunday. These are reasonably popular (but not unanimously) because they ensure that shop workers have some guaranteed time with their family.

... whether they want to or not.

Whether some would prefer to have Friday, or Wednesday off instead of Sunday is irrelevant. The state has decided that having time off on Sundays is the only acceptable way of organizing one's life, and it is imposed by force on everyone uniformly.

A democracy by definition is the will of the majority, the tyranny of the majority -- not the will of all the people in general.

To the extent that a democratic society does not wish to be oppressive, its participants ought to choose to maximize respect for individual rights and personal decisionmaking -- not arrogate to themselves a paternal decisionmaking role that dictates moral virtues from above to everyone, whether they like it or not.

Edit: incidentally, Sunday trading laws were not created to give people time with their families; that's a modern leftist retcon of the motive. Sunday trading laws are a relic of the medieval legal system, where they were created so that everyone could be required to attend church and receive moral instruction and sermonizing from a state-approved minister.

> A democracy by definition is the will of the majority, the tyranny of the majority -- not the will of all the people in general.

No, its not. A democracy, by definition, is exactly what it seems by etymology, rule by the people in general.

Pure majoritarianism is one means of operationalizing the concept of "democracy", but its one that's pretty much been rejected as an undesirable means of doing so for, at least, most of the modern era.

Not so. Even in ancient Athens, with direct democracy, decisions were taken through majority-rules voting. Direct democracy itself has not been a feature of any major democratic instance since then.

Nor has any modern democracy (at least one operating at larger scale than your local food co-op) ever rejected "operationalizing" democracy through majoritarianism. The word "democracy" as it is understood by the vast majority of people today, other than a tiny fringe of leftist intellectuals, empirically refers to "majority-rules representative democracy."

The only people who reject majoritarianism are a tiny number of "theory"-steeped leftist academics with little connection to or knowledge of how things actually work in the real world (but have an outsized notion of their own intellectual qualifications to promulgate decrees on how things ought to work.) Such people can be easily detected through the use of pompous neologisms like "operationalize," which are almost exclusively used by that group of people.

> > Pure majoritarianism is one means of operationalizing the concept of "democracy", but its one that's pretty much been rejected as an undesirable means of doing so for, at least, most of the modern era.

> Even in ancient Athens, with direct democracy, decisions were taken through majority-rules voting.

"Ancient Athens", you will note, significant predates the modern era, and illustrates nothing about what has been rejected in that era.

> Nor has any modern democracy (at least one operating at larger scale than your local food co-op) ever rejected "operationalizing" democracy through majoritarianism.

You dropped the word "pure"; yes, most modern democracies incorporate some majoritarian elements, and yet, they almost universally reject pure majoritarianism where policies are decided by whichever preference gains an infinitesimal degree greater than 50% support in the general public.

Indirect democracy itself its a deviation from pure majoritarianism, and most modern democracies operate largely or entirely as indirect, representative democracies.

Bicameralism in which one house has longer terms or indirectly (or un-) elected members, or staggering elections within a single house, is a further departure from pure majoritarianism within an indirect democracy (and some forms of this are quite common in modern democracies.)

The idea of fundamental limitations on the powers of government that require something more than the normal legislative process (which itself usually resembles majoritarianism, within the legislative body) -- whether it is confirmation by additional bodies, supermajority votes within the same bodies, or multiple votes within the same bodies separated by a specified time interval -- is a further departure from pure majoritarianism (and one frequently adopted by modern democracies.)

Representation models that are not strictly tied to population, such as ones where subunits are given equal representation irrespective of population, are another departure from pure majoritarianism.

Models in which officials at any level are elected by an intermediate body rather than the public at large, (and, a fortiori, those where the body itself is not apportioned strictly proportionally to population) -- such as an "electoral college" -- are further departures from pure majoritarianism.

Every modern democracy (on the national scale, at least) departs from pure majoritarianism through some degree of indirect democracy, and virtually all depart from pure majoritarianism in other ways (most adopt some of the departures previously discussed in this post, some -- e.g., the U.S., adopt all of them.)

> The only people who reject majoritarianism are a tiny number of "theory"-steeped leftist academics

This is radically untrue. Rejection of pure majoritarianism is not only not limited to either leftists or academics (much less the intersection of those groups in "leftist academics"), its probably more common and more strong among theorists of the right than of the left.

No claim was made about the motivation for the creation of Sunday trading laws.

A simple camera charger that costs $5 or 10 in the US costs €70 to 100 in Finland, due to "luxury" taxes.

Nonsense.

Also, store opening times are nowadays unregulated in Finland.

It's true.

Source: I went to Helsinki and forgot my camera charger. That's what they told me in the shop when I expressed shock that they wanted over €100 for a simple charger.

I can promise you that there are not ~$100 in taxes on a $5 item, "luxury" or not. There's something else at play there.

That sounds like a clerk who's really not interested in having a long chat about corporate pricing policies with a tourist right now.

Or a clerk who made fifty bucks or more off of a gullible tourist...

That sounds like you got the 'tourist' discount.

Majority of the so called "luxury taxes" (that were really named so) existed maybe one or two hundred years ago, mainly targeted then-existing aristocracy, but most of such special taxes are long gone. (Maybe the after-effects are still showing up in weird places, like your clerk's imagination...) One gem was the literal "tax on fun" (which applied to cinema shows and dance halls), but that was discontinued in the 1950s. I guess only "luxury taxes" that we have now are quite "normal" by Western standards, like sales taxes on confectionery and alcohol and cars.

More recently, a couple of generations ago there might have been import tariffs on consumer electronics...?

I can't think any other tax on the product itself than the regular 24% value added tax. (Of course, the indirect ones, like income tax paid by employees, tax on corporate profit, etc probably show in the final price.)

Foodstuffs do have lower VAT rate (around 10%), so maybe the clerk was thinking about that, but that difference doesn't explain a 5€ -> 100€ hike. Maybe you just managed to wander to the most expensive retail store in the downtown and had an unusual camera model...

Finland is expensive place, but most of that caused by more mundane reasons than special "luxury tax", like indirect taxes, regulation, and shipping costs raising the general price levels.

If anything, it's called "manufacturer brand tax". It's pretty much the same everywhere. You can get cheap knock-offs in Finland too...

>Also, store opening times are nowadays unregulated in Finland.

Well, that was a very recent change. But I don't know if that's very representative of Nordics in general, I know that shopping hours have been deregulated in Sweden for a quite long time.

And by almost all tracked indicators, they are happier and healthier.

> Conformity to the top-down bureaucracy's state declaration of what constitutes "virtue" is mandatory.

It's a democracy, isn't it? Therefore the people have chosen to live this way because the majority believes it gives the collective a better life.

The poor sod in the US who has to pay $15,000 to have a baby or put a cast around a broken leg would probably love to have the problem of expensive luxury goods.

> This non-consumerization of Scandinavia is not optional or voluntary at the individual level. It is imposed forcibly by the government on everyone, whether a particular individual actually wants to be more consumerized or not. Conformity to the top-down bureaucracy's state declaration of what constitutes "virtue" is mandatory.

Thank you for explaining to me how my own society and culture works. "Luxury tax"...

The shops are forced to close to prevent a race to the bottom where everyone has to stay open all the time to stay in business, thereby ruining the free time of small shop owner and causing proliferation of chain stores.

... if one ignores Petterson och Findus ...

I was living in Finland at the time we had our first child, we received one of these. I can tell you from first hand experience that what you've written was precisely the case for my wife and I.

However, there's still plenty of companies there that want to guilt you into buying their stuff at a time when you're especially susceptible to it...

My wife is Finnish so we got one of these boxes. The piece of advice in that book I most liked was not to leave your baby outside to sleep when the temperature drops below -10 degrees C. So apparently at only -9 it's fine.

In nordic countries is common to let babies sleep in the outside, in freezing temperatures. You would think is crazy, but not many seem to die from it.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

Posted because we just received our 2016 box, and I thought it was fascinating to see the contents as a Scottish man:

* http://imgur.com/a/I0NYI

I think this idea is super cool and I have no qualms with my tax money going to stuff like this- it's incredibly welcoming and needed in one of the most uncertain and harshest times in an adult life.

What's interesting to me is that half the book is Swedish and the other half Finnish, I had no idea that Finnish people learned Swedish so early- yet their English proficiency is so much higher.

Swedish is an official language in Finland and the native language of about 5% or so of all Finnish people (think like French in Canada). Especially Åland Islands is heavily Swedish speaking.

Eh, kind of, Canada is 20% native French; there are more French Canadians than Finnish people.

Actually, if you look at Finland and Sweden as a whole, with Sweden having twice as many people, it's more like Finnish is French, and Swedish English.

In this analogy, the Swedish speaking finns are more like anglos living in Quebec.

Finns don't really learn swedish, unless one lives in an area with a large swedish speaking population. In total swedish speaking population is only a few percent, but there are areas with a higher concentration. The reason it's bilingual is because swedish is the second official language in finland. Because history (sweden ruled finland up to 19th century, swedish speaking population retained considerable political power even after that).

>Finns don't really learn swedish

Which is funny, considering how many years (6 I guess?) the Swedish language is a compulsory subject for Finnish-speaking Finns.

Just goes to show you can't learn a language unless you use it in real-life.

To retain a language it requires active usage. Swedish has zero utility outside school environment unless someones life is such it includes interaction in swedish. Most people I know are more fluent in english than in swedish. While I personally retain some rudimentary basics, when I need to talk to my swedish colleague, I use english.

To get MSc one must theoretically prove to be able to communicate in swedish but the minimum acceptable level - how to put it - is not very high.

Since the sibling comments already explained the Finland-Swedes, I'll just add a bit of trivia relevant to this crowd: Linus Torvalds is one of them. His first language was Swedish, and apparently he's never spoken Finnish particularly well.

He speaks Finnish fluently, I've videos of his lectures about Linux from the 90s at Helsinki University. Had I not known who he was, I would have not guessed he was of the Swedish-speaking minority (either that or I wasn't paying attention, I saw them ten years ago). You can find some videos on YouTube, no doubt.

Interesting! I'd read an interview where he claimed his proficiency was noticeably non-native[0], but maybe he was just being self-effacing.

[0] http://www.linuxveda.com/2011/11/02/which-is-linus-torvalds-...

Linus has excellent proficiency in Finnish; his intonation is distinctly that of a Swedish-speaking native but that is just a matter of style.

But then there are Finnish rock stars who lived a year in Stockholm and then pretended they've forgotten all about Finnish language. (Andy McCoy of Hanoi Rocks, I mean).

My wife and I our currently expecting and are about to have a baby shower.

For those unfamiliar with the shower concept here in the US we have a party that is generally more expensive then if you were to just buy the baby stuff. We invite people over and they give us stuff off a list that is at a few big box stores.

Registering for the baby shower was my eye opener of what we are getting ourselves into. I actually seriously wondered what we would do if we didn't have friends, family and/or money. I had no clue where to start. I wasn't even sure what car seat we needed (the baby store will tell you).

I have to say though I'm amazed by the quality of the cardboard box stuff. Some of that stuff looks better than the stuff we registered for :).

Congratulations! It's the most rewarding yet terrifying experience that can't be compared to anything else. Nobody is prepared enough to be a parent for the first time, yet somehow it (usually) just works out. A previously unused part of your brain just serms to become available.

If you have friends and/or family, but no money, you rely heavily on hand-me-downs. An example of ours -- although cloth diapers are cheaper in the long run than disposable diapers, the start-up costs are steep. But we've had to buy less than 1/5 of the cloth diapers we've used, because they pass through a loose network of friends.

If you don't have friends or family, the only money saving option really available in the US (that I know of) is used/thrift shops and consignment sales.

A legitimately good part of Facebook is the community driven support groups and swap groups. My wife and I also cloth diapered, we picked up almost all of them through local swap groups and some through ebay. When our son grew out of things we posted these things back to these support groups. My wife organized around 10-15 meetups at a nearby park and made back ~US$300. I think the largest item sold was his infant car seat and stroller combo that went for $65 or $75.

So yea, both coming and going, these local groups were troves of good cheap items.

Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind cloth diapers? Last I checked you are basically dealing with a constant mess and smell, plus another load of laundry where you run the washing machine twice. Everyone I know who has used cloth diapers has spent more money and time than using disposables (around 20 cents per diaper), and their reason for doing it was some vague notion of environmentalism/naturalism.

Costs vary, but you're probably at break-even on your first child and saving money on any further children by using cloth nappies.

I'm not sure what's so vague about preventing kilograms of nappies containing plastics and chemicals from being fed to landfill.

> largest item sold was his infant car seat

watch the expiration dates on those.

How does a baby shower cost the parents money? Every one I've ever been to has been a) Organized by someone other than the parents-to-be and b) Wildly successful in terms of ROI.

Source: Parent of 3 kids, uncle to 4 more.

I would say you would have been correct several years ago but there are many social dynamics going on these days.

For one the baby boomers (parents of soon to be parents) have large financial burdens themselves. They may want to help but lack the funds to do so and/or time (because they haven't retired yet themselves and might even be taking care of their parents).

Second people are having kids much later. I am 35 almost 36 and most of my friends and family are now geographically disparate.

Combined with above and the modern-busy-self-consumed-technology era we live in you seriously cannot rely on anyone organizing an event for you.

I don't blame this on my friends and family. It is just a reality.

Furthermore the expectation and cost to host an event has become far greater over the years.

Maybe it varies for people, but I've usually seen a good friend step in, rent out a spot at a park, get some tablecloths and balloons and things to snack on. They're also starting to be more co-ed, too. If you go all out, maybe $100-$200.

Oh man, just coming out of the dark times (it's hard for the first few months), my little babyface is a bit over 6 months old. Everyone likes to offer un-asked for advice, and I'm no exception, but sleep sleep sleep. Bank it as much as possible before it's gone. Sleep dep is easily the worst part of being a new parent, it makes your brain go funny and makes it hard to cope with things. Be prepared to feel super depressed about your work performance for the next six months. That one actually hit me hard - your brain is how you do your job and your brain doesn't work properly for the first six months, so it's incredibly demoralizing. Lots of rewarding things in there too, but man, there's definitely a trough of sorrow you go through at the beginning!

On my third child, and my ex-wife, and my current wife or I have never had a sleep issue. We made it a point to put them in bed with us from the get go. No crib or sleeper. Breast fed, and we all slept fine with the occasional sickness or hot day making sleep a bit difficult for everybody. The babies tend to sleep better and wake less when they hear breathing and heartbeats nearby is my guess. That and both of my wives were/are very adept at breastfeeding in bed on their sides. I count myself lucky!

It is very dangerous to sleep with your baby. I know that many people in many cultures do sleep with their babies but you should not. There are several ways it can result in the baby dying:

1. You can suffocate the baby by breathing on their face while you are asleep. The baby will not cry and will not wake while this is occurring.

2. You can crush your baby by rolling on to them while you are asleep.

3. Your baby can suffocate from their nose and mouth being covered by a blanket or pillow or even the soft mattress if they are get rolled over.

These very sad infant deaths happen frequently even in the US where co-sleeping is not as common as elsewhere in the world. Here are some recent news articles: http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2016/04/co-sleeping_dea... , http://woodtv.com/2015/06/05/mom-hopes-babys-co-sleeping-dea...

Co-sleeping advocates will tell you "as long as you do it safely you can sleep with your newborn." This is false. There is no safe way to sleep with a newborn. Newborns cannot turn their heads away if you breath on them. They cannot move if you get too close. While, many parents sleep with their babies and the babies do not die that does not mean that it is safe.

Update: The mayo-clinics prevention guide for SIDS: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sudden-infant-... . TLDR; Newborn babies should sleep by themselves on their back in a crib with no stuffed animals, pillows, or "crib pads."

Another note: http://thescientificparent.org/crib-notes-is-cosleeping-real...

You can actually divide the bed into two parts: for you and for the baby, so you don't risk crushing it. The baby still feels the beats and sleeps better.

We always put them between us, and I have always preferred my mattress, or bedding right on the floor since my early 20s.

I've read many reports and studies. My first child was 1997, and my current was born in 2014.

Parenting is a very personal issue, and I am not on a mission to change anybody's parenting decisions. At the end of the day, it is your family business. I have always questioned things, though, and I was very surprised at some of the things I learned when I first looked into co-sleeping and the warnings from mainly US institutions or government. The ads and posters are creepy to an extreme (a sleeping baby next to a meat cleaver!), and betray the scare propaganda vs. data approach [1].

>There is no safe way to sleep with a newborn.

You state this, and yet you list common sense things or precautions to take even if they are in a crib. Why not the same common sense applied to co-sleeping? Firm mattress, on back, no pillow, or headboard they can jam a bodypart through?

"The United States has a higher infant mortality rate than any of the other 27 wealthy countries..." by the CDC [2]. And this is with one of the highest expenditures on health care than other nations. And it gets worse as the baby ages in the postnatal period, so it is not just more premies or bad neonatal care where the US is not as bad.

The sharp difference is in disadvantaged or uneducated groups. A poor person's baby in another wealthier nation has more of a chance than one in the US, and that is the key to the disparity.

In one of your links they cite a waterbed! I think if co-sleeping deaths are lower elsewhere than in the US it is for lack of education, common sense, parenting knowledge or all three. I am from the US. I raised my first two there, and now I live in a very poor village in East Java, Indonesia where most of the houses have dirt floors. All of the families in this village co-sleep as far as I have seen or had answered to me. I still apply the same common sense guidelines we both have listed in our replies.

For me and my family, we feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. We kept the newborns flat on their backs with no loose sheets to entangle them, or other accessories. We have always had fairly firm mattresses. We don't drink alcohol, and we are not hypermobile sleepers. We are also strangely aware of where the baby is, and we still manage to get more sleep distributed across the night between smaller, more frequent feedings.

I loved waking up to watch my little ones' chests rise and fall! I'd say we were more diligent and aware and monitoring them against SIDS than if we had them in a crib in another room with audio monitor, across the same room, or at the bedside.

The US report which cites deaths from co-sleeping didn't bother to check or factor in drugs or alcohol. There is also the potential of the horrible MBPS (Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome) not discovered in some cases.

The article of the Arizona parents that left their 2 year old in the house alone, only to be discovered walking outside while they were gone for two hours playing Pokemon speaks to the level of idiocy of some parents, so I am sure in a country of 320 million you will have some numbers to cite if that is the sample population.

SIDS is said to increase with co-sleeping, although again, the studies are not too detailed, and the same recommendations then go on to say SIDS decreases when it's a bassinet opened to the bed as opposed to in another room or across the room.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/co-sleeping-ad-baby...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/29/our-i...

As I said, it doesn't happen to everyone, it doesn't happen to most. But is does happen. Here is someone who it happened to in Cleveland: http://www.ideastream.org/news/be-well-why-do-babies-die-in-... . Note, not on drugs, not high, not drunk, doing the "right things." Had researched co-sleeping safely etc... I head her talk on the radio about it. The cause of death was determined to be her breathing on her child's face while they were both asleep. This just isn't the kind of risk I would be willing to take.

Life is never a zero-risk game, and you need to put things in perspective with numbers, not scare stories. You do this every day when you choose to hop on a bike, get in your car or on a train and go to to work.

Parenting is personal, very personal, so do what you feel is right for yourself and your child.

Yes, infant deaths are horrific, no matter the cause(s), and make for emotionally compelling reports.

Do you have numbers on infants who die while in a crib in the same room? Another room? Bedside bassinet?

My current wife, myself and my ex all had agreed that we prefer to be more responsive to our children. My wives both are light sleepers, and woke to the slightest disturbance to check, but went right off to sleep at the all clear. I also developed this sense. A cough, a wheeze, and somehow my brain triggered me to pay attention, but not routine noises.

I never fall out of bed, never have, and neither do the majority of the population. NOTE: I prefer a mattress on the floor anyway, so even if I did, it is 7 inches to the ground. We are aware of our surroundings when we sleep. The babies have always slept between us.

Of course there are exceptions: Drugs, alcohol, people with sleep disorders like 'night terrors', hybermobile sleepers, PTSD-affected people and so on. Again, reason and education.

I will look into the 'breathing onto the face of the baby' bit, since being a technical diver, CPROX-certified and aware of related things, I would think you would have to have your exhaling nose or mouth right up against your baby rather than at breast height where they normally sleep. Ambient air usually is around 21% O2. It would take a high concentration of CO2 to displace the ambient air and to develop right at the nose or mouth, and babies tend to breath twice as fast as parents, so it doesn't seem to add up. I'd like to find numbers on that one.

Again, in the US I kept an old drafty house with lots of air exchange by default, not the typical modern American construction which tends to seal and caulk everything and keep closed doors. This keeps harmful off-gassing products trapped in your breathing space. I also didn't use much energy, since I prefer it a bit chilly vs. toasty, so the drafts and fresh air were welcomed.

It's the reason Radon remediation saw people adding active ducts to remove it from basements and such. Too tightly sealed, no air circulation. Radon is naturally occurring, and it is only when you trap the radon progeny that attach to surfaces or dust that it becomes a respiratory/radiation health concern.

For the past year, I have been living in a house in East Java, where I can see daylight through the roof tiles, and the room is very airy due to the night breeze. We sleep on a mattress on a floor, and the rice fields and trees are all around us with a volcano 13 miles due SSW (Now, that could be a risk!).

[UPDATE] Here's an interesting take from a pediatrician for 35 years, who co-slept with all 8 of his children, and wrote 2 books on the subject regarding Sids[1].

Obesity is also a barrier to co-sleeping, and usually carries other issues like sleep apnea. The US doesn't practice co-sleeping anywhere near the numbers in Asia, and I think the obesity problem is well-known.

[1] http://www.parenting.com/article/ask-dr-sears-co-sleeping-a-...

This simply isn't true for most people. If a normal person rolls over on something they will feel it and wake up.

Do you typically fall off the bed? No? Why not? It's because you retain awareness while you sleep.

People who should not cosleep include people on medications, extremely heavy sleepers, sleepwalkers, and the very overweight.

For most people it's just fine. You go to sleep knowing "there is a baby here" and you will be aware of that all night.

>For most people it's just fine. You go to sleep knowing "there is a baby here" and you will be aware of that all night.

Hmm. I go to sleep knowing "my wife is there" and I've still elbowed her in the face countless times accidentally.

That's why I made the remark about drugs, alcohol or hypermobile sleepers. My current wife, myself and my ex-wife never had an issue before babies, during and after.

It's actually not something I do while _asleep_, but when groggy. If I wake up in the middle of the night and decide I want to sleep on my side now, my sense of spatial awareness is pretty poor. I believe people can get by without issues, just thought I would pop in with an amusing anecdote :)

My ex and I had friends, and the wife always complained of her nose's appearance, but said she would never get a nose job.

We didn't hear from them for two weeks once, and when we saw her next, she had her nose all in white gauze and tape.

They said she tried to wake the husband and he hit her square on the nose, and since it was broke, they went for the rhinoplasty!

I hope they never read this :)

I'm not sure about their story, but I believe you! I know there are some people who are more physical sleepers. I don't think it is most people.

There is no safe way to sleep with a newborn.

And yet, Japan where co-sleeping is the norm, seems to be tied with the Netherlands for lowest rate of sudden infant death syndrome. Tatami might be a good idea if you want to co-sleep (softer bedding increases risk).

Glad that worked for you, but bed or not, there's a ton of fussing that's going to happen. Maybe your kids were different, but in my experience the bed just means they fall asleep faster (which is nice, not going to argue that), it doesn't prevent your baby from waking up every 2 hours all night.

Yes, the bed was quick, and in the first six weeks there is some fussing, but the pattern gets established quickly if it is routine. I may have been lucky with all three; we never had so much fussing.

Waking up every 2 to 3 hours, but mildly and not turning on lights or getting up for a diaper change.

My son was only one who really cried, but usually during the day when overtired, or gas, or whatever. He didn't cry when in bed at night.

There doesn't seem to be much evidence that you can bank sleep effectively for anything but very short term deprivation, and even that is a bit mixed. Your points about the effect of sleep dep ring true. Maybe the effective message isn't "sleep now" but "if you can, do anything now that will be mentally taxing, and avoid it in the next 6 mo or so"

Trading sleep-in days on the weekend helps. And split the night up.

Some people both get up every single time the baby wakes up, and don't do sleep in days on the weekend. I think these people are insane.

We now have a good rhythm - wife lets me sleep through the night and I get up at 5:30am with Felix and let her sleep for another couple hours. Didn't really work great at the beginning.

> (the baby store will tell you)

Won't they be very biased?

Most of the major stores are like Best Buy... they don't get commission.

...but yeah if you go to some small boutique in NYC that might be the case I suppose.

My sister was a stay at home mom and her husband in the air force when they had kids. My wife mailed her boxes and boxes of stuff she got at garage sales. I wouldn't necessarily buy a crib or a baby seat at a garage sale unless they were less than a year old due to increasing safety standards and recalls. But anything else you don't buy new anyway (bottles, nipples, etc) is perfectly fine to get used. Baby doesn't know and doesn't care if it's wrapped in a onesie from Walmart or Baby Gap.

> Baby doesn't know

Why do some people say 'baby' without any article? Shouldn't it be 'your baby', 'a baby' or 'the baby' or something like that? You wouldn't say 'sister doesn't know' or 'boss doesn't know'. I'm not a native English speaker.

In this context, baby is sometimes used as a proper noun to indicate a singular, specific baby. It sounds more personal than 'that baby', and has been in fairly common use for as long as I can remember in both Canada and the US (at least here on the west coast).

Oh, and you may in fact here the phrases 'sister doesn't know' or 'boss doesn't know' in some circumstances, although in those instances it would be more of a slang/affectation/colloquialism and not as common as 'baby'.

Interesting question!

In this case 'Baby' is a standin for the baby's name. I would characterize this as 'reasonably standard' for spoken language, but a little odd in written language, but could help convey a conversational tone.

I originally thought this was an example of metonymy, but I don't think it is (this is more like 'role-instead-of-name'), so I don't know what the term for this is, and I'm finding it surprisingly hard to search for. I can imagine using it for a profession or job as well, but the contexts of use seem reasonably specific.

>could help convey a conversational tone.

Plus saying "your baby" is potentially overly familiar and possibly confrontational. Using baby with no article makes it indeterminate - it's the idea of their baby as opposed to the actual baby itself.

I agree that it is a stand in for a name. Some ideas on why that might be:

-- sometimes babies don't immediately have names, and we need a way to refer to them

-- professionals who work around babies and in birthing tend to address both the baby and the adults by their family relationships (it's Mom, Dad, Grandad, etc. instead of George and Laura). This is presumably because that helps it keep clear what everyone's the relationships is to the baby, and what role they should play in the whole process.

-- babies aren't really people with their own unique identities when they are first born, so maybe it is kind of awkward to address them with their full adult name.

> You wouldn't say 'sister doesn't know'

Parents do sometimes use "brother" or "sister" without an article when speaking to their young children.

I dunno about what's reasonably safe, but like a bike helmet, you don't want to use a car seat that has been in an accident. I think it was the manufacturer that recommended not using one manufactured more than 7 years ago (so it could be bogus).

Although, I believe in the U.S. you can get a free car seat from any fire station (or hospital?)

Regarding money: apart from a car seat (buy a new one!), there honestly isn't much that's expensive and necessary for raising a baby. Take a pram, for instance: we bought one for $70 on Craigslist for our first daughter, second daughter is using it now four years later, no problems that regular maintenance with what I have in the garage hasn't solved. Crib: Ikea, $40, our oldest slept in that till she was three. Clothes for babies are cheap, buy them a little big and you can use them for 3 months or more. They don't care if their pants go up to their shoulders.

I love the Ikea crib. Simple, safe, all you need for a baby / toddler. We had a fancier crib for our first, but it was way less durable and failed during the toddler years. For clothes, it helps to know other people with similar aged children; we've traded clothes back-and-forth with a whole circle of people. Kids also don't care if they're wearing hand-me-downs :)

Best part for us about the Ikea crib was when we moved to a different country, we just bought an identical one and our daughter instantly went "Sweet, my bed is here!".

Unsolicited advice time!

Just remember: you can get lots of dumb crap for your kids, but you do not need most of it.

Car seat, yes. Somewhere safe for them to sleep, yes. We had a changing pad on a dresser with the first one for a while, but switched to the floor pretty quickly and didn't bother with it at all for the second. You're usually not gonna want to take the kid to wherever the changing pad/table is, and it's easier to dress them on the floor anyway. And you don't have to worry about them falling off of the floor. My conclusion: changing table/pad = junk, unless you have some kind of problem getting down to/up off of the floor.

Bottle warmers. Waste of space and money. Also slow. Just nuke it. Shake it and stick your finger in to make sure you haven't done something horrible. It won't take long (a day) to figure out the right amount of time, at which point you'll almost never mess up anyway.

Favor 8oz bottles, not 4oz. They'll outgrow 4oz ones too fast and then they're basically garbage. Buy ONE BRAND AND STYLE ONLY so the parts are interchangeable. Do the same with sippy cups when those become relevant.

This part's (apparently) controversial, but: you don't need a giant diaper bag and a huge amount of storage on your stroller. When you go out you need: 1-2 diapers, 3 tops, a little plastic bag with wet wipes in it, one bottle, stuff to go in the bottle (this is easier if that's formula, you can acquire warm water one way or another almost anywhere so you just need the pre-measured powder in a baggie). THAT IS IT. You don't need crackers and fruit snacks and a dozen toys and that junk for your toddler. Just don't give them food when you're out shopping or whatever. Real easy if you don't set the expectation that they get snacks and toys all the time when you're out of the house, and that's as easy as... not doing it. So you don't need to carry that crap. You don't need a backpack. You don't need a massive $200 baby bag that you could fit 10 of your baby in and still zip it up. You don't need a stroller that could double as a truck. If you're getting a stroller optimize for ease of maneuvering in crowds (so, small), comfort to push (not too short if you're tall, for example) and ease of transport (collapsible). With one kid especially, consider just getting one of those strap-on carriers and skipping the stroller entirely. When they start to walk, make them walk whenever possible to reduce the amount of time you're dependent on that stuff.

You can buy giant loads of kids clothes off Craigslist or that Facebook Swap-Shop thing (I dunno much about it, my wife uses it, I don't have an FB account, but it seems to work well). It's even cheaper than the thrift store. You can buy for next year at the end of each season, works well. Then you sell anything that's not ruined when they grow out of it (or hand it down to a sibling). Clothes end up being nearly free unless you choose to spend more for some reason. Protip: hold out for batches of clothes from nice parts of town and then pounce on them immediately, the clothes will be in much better shape (sometimes brand new) than stuff from poorer areas and usually aren't more expensive(!). Difficulty: you will have to buy new shoes, usually. Just get the cheapest thing that works, they'll ruin/outgrow them quickly anyway.

If you have older relatives and they're not destitute, you'll soon be donating or throwing out excess toys and books by the bin-load. Buy way fewer toys than you think you "need" if this is your situation.

Remember you can always go get more stuff if you decide you need it. Err on the side of starting with too little in general, once the basics are covered. Keep most of the baby shower stuff you don't obviously need in the packaging until you decide you need it, and keep the gift receipt. You may never open it.

I missed your comment earlier. I really appreciate this sound advice!

Wow. There are so many clothes! This is awesome.

What other items have you bought? How large of a variety are the clothes they send - does everyone get the same stuff?

So far we've bought zero items, but that's largely because we've been lucky to have some friends with children who could donate to us.

Things we would have otherwise bought:

* Pram.

* Cot - for when the box is out of use.

* More clothes.

This video makes the contents more explicit, but yeah lots of stuff:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etKF_6MTN9I

Scotland will be doing something similar soon: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...

I saw that when it was announced, but I've not seen any update. Great news though.

There are some commercial companies who sell boxes based on the ones here, but they look a little mixed. (Either too little "stuff", too expensive, or both.)

It's part of the current "A plan for Scotland" [0] which mentions:

"deliver a baby box offering essential items for a child’s first weeks to the families of all newborn babies in Scotland, to promote the fair and equal start we want for every child regardless of circumstance. We will consult with key stakeholders and with parents in autumn 2016, with full roll-out in 2017"

[0] http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00505210.pdf

No reason why but tears welled up in my eyes when I see the first toy. Congrats btw.

I had the same reaction when I went through the things with my wife.

The fine print in the book is education to completely clueless parent.

Basically how to bathe the baby, how to touch him/her and how to play with him/her. As a dude, I'd probably find that useful, as weird as it may sound. And it's probably important for the baby now that I think of it. Sensory deprivation could hinder development. And that could happen if parent is clueless enough.

> As a dude, I'd probably find that useful, as weird as it may sound.

It only sounds weird because you prefaced it with "as a dude" implying what? That ladies have some sort of genetic knowledge of baby rearing techniques? That they receive special classes about it in highschool? I don't know, sounds weird though.

To be fair, young girls are heavily socialized to play with dolls, to play "mommy and baby" games, to push around toy baby carriages... in essence the "average" girl has been trained for motherhood her whole life.

Thats a pretty big cliche.

The cliché is girls that are socialized that way. It's still overwhelmingly true that girls will have dolls more often than boys and that it will format their behavior.

Recognising that is not perpetuating or condoning it.

That also doesn't mean they have a clue on how to deal with an actual baby

Tell me the last time you saw a boy pushing a toy stroller. I see little girls pushing them every week -- starting before they are 2.

Just because things make you uncomfortable doesn't mean they are cliches.

Having worked in childcare / early childhood education, I've seen it a lot. Kids younger than about 5 or 6 don't care. The boys love to play dressup and the girls love the sandbox with the toy cars. As they get older some start to fall into stereotypical gender roles... and even then it's usually obvious that they're learning from / being indoctrinated by their parents. My use of the word indoctrinated is only to indicate that sometimes these gender roles are passively learned from the parents example, but in some cases there are parents that actively enforce / teach their kids to follow gender roles. For example, I've seen a father, on arriving to collect his son, react almost with horror to see the boy in a skirt playing in the mock kitchen.

Cliche is the wrong word. Gender roles in society are a topic that spans many disciplines and has a whole lot of detail to discuss. They are a huge thing, and you're right: the gender role assigned to girls does prescribe for them a lot of child rearing practice. That said, after seeing what some kids will do to a baby doll, I can confidently assert that such play is no substitute for actual instruction.

I completely agree with you, except on the younger than 5 or 6 don't care part. Maybe don't care as much, but studies suggest that gendered socialization starts occurring before 18 months. I think that this indoctrination is more common than people realize (and realizing that it's likely happened to you can be a hard pill to swallow). Especially in areas like mine, where most families are single income, it seems like the girls are always playing with dolls, strollers, ovens.

It makes me very sad.

But people will argue that it's innate until they're blue in the face, and use it as examples to 'prove' that our brains are sexed.

But it still doesn't help people to actually know what to do.

If the parents can't figure out what to do, they shouldn't have had a kid. It's not rocket science. I've seen some of the dumbest people with tons of kids, still alive and kicking.

To be fair, playing with dolls and pushing around baby carriages offers extremely limited practical "training" for caring for an actual live baby.

My partner is a girl! We had children together. She played with dolls, toy baby carriages AND mummy and baby games.

She had no idea how to bathe a baby safely, how to dress it, safely, how to hold it safely, how to play with it safely, how to clean its bum, how to put on a nappy, how to bottle feed it, how to breast feed it ....the list of things she didn't know was endless....

Neither did I.

We figured it out through a combination of trial and error ("oops, wet babies are slippery and easy to drop") parental advice and phamplets.

its not rocket science, its not easy and the "average" girl has NO insider information.

> and the "average" girl has NO insider information

Exactly. Before the baby was born, I took a (men only) course on fatherhood. It was both very funny as well as informational. Afterwards, I knew a lot more than my girlfriend. This helped me because I found out some women can get quite possessive (for lack of a better term). She'd still blurt out "I know best because I'm the mother", but I definitely wasn't ignorant anymore.

A sort of naive question: don't they? (the genetic knowledge part)

Ok, maybe advanced stuff, stuff we've discovered after the introduction of modern medicine is not included, but doesn't the instinctive maternal bond also include some sort of generic component regarding behavior around children?

Humans are mammals, and have maternal instincts just like all the rest.

I'm not sure parental instincts include bathing techniques.

My instincts told me "no" when the midwife suggested adding olive oil to the bath water. I didn't listen. If you've ever fought a greased piglet you would understand what happened next.

Apart from an strong instinctual drive to love and care for children there's no "knowledge" about how to do that. Studies have shown that mother's brains light up differently in response to cries from her own child, and there's a strong anxiety when it's crying, pleasure when it's happy, etc. (Interestingly enough, I couldn't find any studies done on men, but I don't see any reason that fathers shouldn't react similarly)

But there's no "this is how you rock babies," "this is how you breastfeed," etc. I don't see how that would even work. Genes aren't magical. And I've seen some really clueless mothers...

I don't think so. I'm currently a stay-at-home dad of a 10 month old and we've found that my instincts regarding the baby are often better than my wife's. She often has no idea what to do and defers to my judgement.

Maybe, but even something you'd think is all instinct like breast feeding is a great deal of hit and miss. A lot of mothers find it hard to get the baby to feed, to the extent that most nativity units will have nurses helping mothers figure it out (whereas for some it just happens without the slightest problem), and it's not unusual for it to take days to learn to do it properly.

> That ladies have some sort of genetic knowledge of baby rearing techniques?

It's pretty well-known...

I'm baffled as to why you're getting downvotes. As a dudette, I have never felt more clueless since having my baby, and it is only through extensive research that I have any idea what to do with him.

If "maternal instinct" is a real thing, then I guess there's something defective about me.

At least where I'm at, its more that most girls with multiple younger siblings or cousins have probably dealt with them under parents, aunts, etc. supervision than boys. Mommy and daughter bonding time (sometimes Grandma and Aunts).

Learned behavior reinforced with toys of the same nature. Lots of girls these days don't have that extended family or siblings to learn with.

I'm turning 30 soon, and my female friends seem to get invitations to look at someones newborn. I sure don't any of that.

Look up the male / female percentages on daycare workers and you'll get the consequences of that behavior.

The parent didn't imply "maternal instinct". That's one explanation for the gap in knowledge. The other is socialization. It's no secret that girls play "house" more, play with dolls, are taught by traditionally maternal role models, are more likely to take babysitting classes, etc.

More women than men plan a large part of their life around being a parent.

I downvoted him for expressing the factually incorrect and IMO dangerous notion that knowledge has to be inborn or learned by means of formal organized schooling. And for ignoring the obvious fact that the reason why modern women are clueless around children and men clueless around women (especially in certain circles :p) is that they spend their youth locked up with other clueless children and discouraged from expressing their gender (because equality and whatnot) instead of hanging out with experienced adults and learning from them. My $.02.

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to express. I was providing not an exhaustive list of modes of learning, but a (non-exhaustive) list of hypothetical vectors that could lead to the vast majority of one gender being expected to be inherently expert at a subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_bond

We're talking about maternal knowledge. Just because a mother might do anything for her child doesn't imply that she knows precisely what to do.

For those that haven't read it, "The Female Brain" is a fantastic book about human nature and discusses how male and female hormonal levels fluctuate throughout life and how that influences behavior.

A man's and woman's oxytocin levels are elevated after child birth but it's much higher in women. So the PP reference that a man is more clueless when it come to playing and touching their baby is not without scientific basis.

For the typical HN reader/soon-to-be dad, I'm currently reading "The Baby Owner Manual"

https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Owners-Manual-Instructions-Troub...

My wife got this for me, she knows me well.

The UK used to have two books freely available to new parents:

The pregnancy book: http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/publications/pregnancy-boo...

Birth to Five: http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/publications/birth-five

Probably important is a pretty big underestimate. We have known since the about 1930is and some horrible experiments (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow) that touching, caressing and holding baby is only epsilon less important than feeding them and that neglect will have disasterous consequences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans). Fortunately most parents really like to hold their babies.

I don't actually think anyone in Finland reads the fine print. If someone does, he/she did it for nothing because he/she has probably already read and learned it multiple times.

How to do the first maintenance of the kids is generally shown in the clinic where child is born, by the staff there. (How to change diapers, how to bathe the child, how to turn the baby, how to support the neck properly).

I can only imagine how corrupt would be the process of selecting contents for the box if they were to implement it in Slovakia. That's a lot of stuff - a lot of opportunities to steal something from taxpayers.

I was thinking the same about Greece. Young mothers would be desperate to have such a thing, but local crooked politicians and oligarchs would turn the procedure into a money-spent hole, using the worst materials while double-charging...

I first heard about these reading "The Nordic Theory of Everything", which contrasts Finland with the US, last month. It was fascinating to read as a Brit as the UK sits half way between the two in approach to many things.

Significantly more useful than the bag of freebies and coupons given to new mums in the UK.

"The Nordic Theory of Everything" is indeed a very interesting book. A view of American society from the outside looking in.

I used to have the same owls on my sheets when I was a child in Russia. Fascinating to see it's international.

If anyone else wondered why the Finnish baby box includes condoms: http://help.finnishbabybox.com/article/9-why-do-your-baby-bo...

Well considered, if only to get folks to ask why they are included. Many do not realize how quickly some women can get pregnant again after giving birth.

Definitely guilty of not asking. Am currently awaiting birth of second child.

Forgive me if this is overly intrusive, but were you breastfeeding the child? I was under the impression that you are extremely unlikely to get pregnant whilst nursing.

We were in the process of weaning the first one when the second one was conceived.

I was mostly kidding about not knowing the chances; what we weren't expecting was for it to happen so quickly.

Biology can be hilarious like that.

Not the parent poster, but I think it's as simple as "unlikely" NOT "extremely unlikely"

Breastfeeding makes it less likely. Not extremely unlikely.

Well, my impression was obviously wrong, but I learned something, which is cool!

It is extremely unlikely that you will get pregnant again if your baby is under 6 months, your period has not returned, you are exclusively breastfeeding, and you do not go more than 6 hours between feedings. Once any of those things changes, all bets are off.

I got pregnant with my second when my first was 9 months old, I was still breastfeeding all the time.

Cool, thanks for the response. I learned something new today.

Yup, this was pretty much our experience.

This is certainly one of the more useful nuggets of knowledge I've picked up from HN. Thanks.

My "little" brother is 11 months and 20 days younger than me.

This is fantastic. I'm not joking when I say that I have family members who didn't realize that a second pregnancy was possible during the after-birth period. Thumbs-up for a government tackling a really thorny problem.

I feel sad for reading this, here in Argentina until December 2015 we had a similar state backed plan called Qunita. Now the new right-handed government cancelled the plan without delivering 60k boxes and a judge is trying to burn those arguing insecurity (but none of the 1000s of mothers who received them found any glitch in the boxes).

Please read more (in spanish): http://www.infobae.com/politica/2016/09/14/bonadio-ordeno-de...

This is not constructive, but what a dickhead.

> I feel sad for reading this, here in Argentina until December 2015 we had a similar state backed plan called Qunita. Now the new right-handed government cancelled the plan without delivering 60k boxes and a judge is trying to burn those arguing insecurity (but none of the 1000s of mothers who received them found any glitch in the boxes).

How do you know that none of the mothers had a problem with them? Are there any studies about this?

On the other hand there are three studies pointing that the box had problems and it was considered unsafe (sharp edges, structure fails with weights under 9kg). [0]

Not to mention that one of the companies tasked to build it was just a small real estate company that thanks to that government program increased their revenue by 15.000.000% (in your face SV unicorns!!).[1]

[0] http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1871615-plan-qunita-inseguros-cun... (spanish) [1] http://www.eliminandovariables.com/2015/06/el-kindergate-y-e... (spanish)

It's funny that you quote that La Nacion article which is supposedly based on an INTI study that states that the cribs are insecure for babies weighting 9kg+. While the plan is aimed at early stage babies and just the first few months (-6m).

The same report also states that, according to the criteria used, the huge majority of baby products in the segment are insecure.

Plus: It's not only the crib that's about to be burnt by all the clothes and didactic material...

I have seen this one before, but was happy to read through it again. I have zero interest in having children, but think this is a great idea and would be more than happy for my taxes to help pay for it. The thing is, if this did exist in the UK (where I live), it feels like it would be the first thing to be dropped at the next budget - feels like the only chance it would have of existing in the UK would have been if it was introduced 25+ years ago :(

You get a bag full of coupons and advertorials, perhaps a free sample like a nappy in the UK instead. "Bounty bags" are the main ones.

> it's designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life

So nice to read this! It's a pity that ideals like these are things from the past, completely gone in our western, capitalist culture. Words like those now mostly invoke feelings of cynicism and snarks about socialism or communism.

Finland is a western, capitalist culture. Most western, capitalist countries have more compassionate cultures than the United States.

Do you think that, if this program had not been invented yet, that it could be introduced now, by the current government, in Finland?

I'm from the Netherlands (supposedly more compassionate), and we have something like this box. Only the program is run by a marketing data company that wants to sell your data, and box is filled with low value goodies and commercial offerings. The Finnish box is much nicer, as it seems offered with the right intensions and the content is really helpful.

tl;dr: It's not because the cardboard boxes are significantly better than cribs and other sleeping methods, it's the fact that the box comes with almost everything a new parent needs to look after kids, which means they don't have to shell out $foo-money to be able to take care of the children properly, and aren't left worried that they left something out.

And also because the parents need to visit a doctor to get the box.

That makes no sense.

How does the requirement to visit a doctor imply that the babies sleep in a box?

Wouldn't they sleep there if the box was given out without a visit to the doctor?

The doctor's visit gives the doctor an opportunity to establish a relationship and do a bit of education for the new parents.

You would be surprised at how many babies are born in western countries without prenatal care, simply because the mothers-to-be didn't know that it was something that was available and needed. Encouraging new moms to visit the doctor is a fantastic thing. Besides check-ups, it encourages vaccinations and can help with early identification of congenital problems.

Pre and Post-natal care are two of the largest factors in lower infant mortality. By using the box to get Moms in to a doctor's office at least once, many difficulties can be found and overcome.

The box is used for bait. New parents want the box, it's free and full of great stuff. To get the box, they need to visit a physician. As others pointed out, a single visit to a physician can help to identify issues with not only baby but also mom.

To be precise, not really a doctor: the pre-natal care program is generally handled by dedicated professionals whose training is that of a nurse plus some specific to pregnancy. The job title translates "midwife". The system is called "neuvola", literally "place of advice". It's actually a word devised for this very purpose.

This system was established in 1940's and that's also when the baby packages were first given out.

But expecting mothers don't really see a doctor/physician during the pre-natal period unless they are actually ill somehow. Pregnancy is not an illness.

While you are correct the boxes aren't necessarily "better" than cribs, they are just as effective and there are many poorly designed cribs and lots of parents that don't know how to properly furnish one (there's still plenty of parents that use solid crib bumpers that can be suffocation hazards, overly soft crib mattresses, or load it with blankets). Sleeping in a plain box eliminates so many potential issues that new parents can cause themselves with cribs that it's a great idea, and if I wasn't gifted a crib when my daughter was born I probably would have done the same thing.

How do solid crib bumpers cause suffocation? By trapping air in the crib or something? If we assume that's possible, wouldn't a cardboard box have the same problem?

The bumpers are usually made of soft material, the idea behind them is to "protect" infants from injury by hitting their heads against the side of the crib, also because prior to regulation changes in the 70's crib bars were often spaced far enough apart that limbs could get caught between them.

Soft material is the problem, as an infant may roll into the bumper and the material will shape itself around the face and mouth causing asphyxiation. Cardboard boxes are not malleable, obviously, and even if an infant rolls on their side right next to the wall of the box it is impossible for them to do so in a manner that would hinder their ability to breath (the nose will get in the way, or they will retain the ability to breathe through the sides of the mouth even if they manage to completely put their mouth against it).

That makes more sense, I was picturing wooden boards or something.

The cardboard box may actually be better than many cribs, at least from the perspective of reducing the risk of SIDS: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sts/about/risk/Pages/reduce.aspx

There's a company that sells a version of the Finnish baby box, and we got one for our kid: http://www.babyboxco.com/ - everyone loved it. My wife is part Finnish, but we're in the US, so this was a good approximation.

I have a question. Our first child is due this week, and we also got a box from babyboxco. What did/do you use as sheets for the box's pad? We noticed this week that the sheet that came with it is just a non-fitted one that fits a regular-sized crib.

Congrats! I think we used a pack-and-play sheet, which was too big and we just rolled the edges under.

I like the idea of all of the goodies, but as I have mentioned in another reply, I am on my third child, and they have always slept in bed with us, so the box and mattress is still weird for me. I have even slept with one of my babies in a small bed for all three of us with no issue.

We have never owned a crib or bassinet by the bedside even.

I may be wrong, but I remember hearing it was during Victorian times that this became popular.

I know there are people afraid of smothering or crushing their infants. Most negative studies seem to come out of the US. Other countries don't seem to have the same issues cited in US studies. I think it is common sense not to sleep with your baby in bed if you have waterbed, or tons of pillows, a soft mattress and a fluffy comforter.

My wife and I don't drink alcohol either, so no possibility of being so drunk that we would be unaware of smothering our baby, and neither of us is hypermobile in bed. All mammals keep their young close. The 'co-sleeping' is a modern term that makes it sound out of the ordinary, but in fact it is very ordinary.

People will say they slept better and the baby got used to being in another room, or across the room, but I can say from three babies worth of fathering, they get comfortable real quick being in bed with their parents.

Some people are very heavy sleepers and might not notice turning over onto their infant.

Additionally, the other big reason that you're not supposed to have an infant sleep in a normal bed is that they might roll off. It's fine I guess if both parents are around and "box" the infant in, but otherwise it's quite possible that the infant might toss over one too-many times and fall off the bed.

We've occasionally brought our little dude into bed with us when he's going nuts, but also know the potential consequences. It's not generally safe to bring a child into an adult bed and I know without my spouse being super-vigilant I might roll over onto him.

Yes, it takes two to parent in all things family! Congratulations on your little one!

I didn't realize how much I would enjoy fatherhood until I became one.

I replied in detail downstream, but as I've said there too, parenting is a personal thing, and I am not out to convince anyone one way or another. I was just amazed at what I read when I bothered to do the research, and it didn't seem too scientific (baby with meat cleaver in bed poster by Milwaukee Health Dept. [1]).

I'll repeat myself a bit here by re-quoting this article, because I think it's important. "The United States has a higher infant mortality rate than any of the other 27 wealthy countries, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control. A baby born in the U.S. is nearly three times as likely to die during her first year of life as one born in Finland or Japan." [2]

Co-sleeping is not the reason for those rates, and if it were it would be more embarrassing for the US, since other countries don't seem to have the same results.

I am from the US. I had my first child in 1997, and my latest in 2014. I am now living in the East Java, Indonesia in a rice-farming village where most of the house have dirt floors. I have raised a kid in NYC, NJ, and now here. I am more worried about King Cobras than co-sleeping risks, and fatal bites are very, very rare for non-snake handlers or performers.

And for the record, I don't like the term co-sleeping; I prefer to say we have a family bed ;)

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/co-sleeping-ad-baby...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/29/our-i...

The box itself is not really the thing. It's just packaging for the things you get inside, made of cardboard, with a bit of colour printing outside. Other than that, it's like the cardboard packaging of Ikea furniture.

That you can have the baby sleep in the box is nice but the clothes and equipment inside are the actual deliverable.

One main thing about that stuff is that it is extremely good quality. The government buys them at large quantities and awards the manufacturing contracts and actually gets them for nothing. The items are much better made than most things you can buy at a shop.

<rant> Not directly related to the article, but reading thru the series of negative replies when a poster suggests "hey, this is a great idea, we should do it in the US", is disheartening.

A great deal are so fiscally short sighted, misguided, and downright hostile, that it really takes away any hope for the "average American". HN demographic should represent some of the best of the best of the US, and well... i guess this kinda explain the rise of Trump. </rant>

Maybe the US is just too big and heterogeneous for this kind of thinking. I mentally multiply the cost of the box by the 4 million babies born each year, come up with some absurdly large number, feel overwhelmed by the need to pay for so many people. Of course, the burden of that cost is shared across many people as well, but the huge number has already asserted itself in my mind; I can't help thinking what that billion dollars could buy for me and mine. I can't help thinking how different from me are some of the people receiving my hard-earned money. Never mind that those same people are providing the funding when I have my child.

Finland has ~50k babies born each year. Everyone speaks the same language, has a shared cultural identity; each one of those 50k mothers could be your neighbour, your sister. There is real empathy: the thought of depriving one of those mothers is painful.

I don't know what the solution is. Smaller, more culturally homogeneous states? I hope not. I like living amid diversity. Maybe we can build a cultural identity that sees fellow citizens as kin instead of just greedy, grabbing hands.

Or maybe I should just move to Finland.

> I don't know what the solution is.

Not being greedy and selfish and complaining because other people got something. That would help at least.

The problem is, where do you draw the line?

I think no one really knows "the solution". Solutions for social issues are ever changing. I think the knee jerk fear of change over what are minute issues is the disheartening part.

This would be trivial to implement, but the ramifications could be great and save a ton of down the road health care costs. Preventive care and all that comes with it.

The US has 3-4M births per year. But ranks in the 70's for infant mortality. It's is not a stretch to think the 300-400M spent for this, is a small percentage of the medical costs that are saved... and if it doesn't, its not the big waste it appears, and the naysayers seem to imply....

That was my point.

No need to blame multiculturalism, no need to start micromanaging the biggest economy ( thats why costs seem large ), etc etc. Just simple cost/benefit that too often is sidelined by knee-jerk "'MERICA!" thinking.

I think lack of trust of the government/experts is a big problem here. Leading economists can say "this expensive program is a good investment and will reduce costs in the long run", and people simply don't believe them or care. Cutting costs seems to be the surest way to win votes.

I've heard the U.S. being diverse as an argument before, but I don't really follow. Although, I can totally understand the political climate being such that getting it implemented would be impossible.

There's a company that copies the Finnish baby boxes and sells them to people outside of Finland https://us.finnishbabybox.com/ I think they deviate a bit from the offical one (you can choose genders where the article says the official boxes are all neutral and theirs includes bottles). They ask what time of year your baby is due and how harsh your climate is so the clothes are appropriate and the right sizes. What else might vary? They also offer a cash-out option, which should cover any individual's concerns.

There's also no reason it couldn't be a county or state program.

I know it's not as comprehensive as the baby box, but hospitals give free samples to new parents (I assume from companies trying to hock their goods).

Or move to Canada, where _despite_ diversity & multiculturalism, people care about each other.

As a Canadian, it's baffling to see how divisive the US is. The irony of it being that social programs like this would actually reduce the feeling you describe ('different from me') by levelling the playing field. Provide everyone the same quality of education, healthcare, and access and what differences are left?

"Maybe we can build a cultural identity that sees fellow citizens as kin instead of just greedy, grabbing hands." - Maybe, if you can build a culture that doesn't deify money.

> Everyone speaks the same language, has a shared cultural identity;

Not that this changes your argument significantly, but there are two official languages in Finland: Swedish & Finnish.

There are many immigrants to the country, including myself, who speak neither terribly well, or at all.

While it might be true that native Finns have a shared cultural identity with the rise of immigrants, again including myself, that is not universal.

> Or maybe I should just move to Finland.

I'd recommend it. Though the darkness and brutal cold might be hard the summers do make up for it.

Yeah I was definitely oversimplifying. There is still a difference, I think, between the younger countries made up of diverse immigrants, and old, traditionally homogeneous cultures that have recently seen more immigration.

Agreed, though I'm a Finn, not an American.

Even here in Finland it feels like the government doesn't want people to have kids, as the amount of support you can get is very little compared to what it was 30 years ago. Raising kids is burdensome and expensive, so even with our social security system I feel like poor people must go through hell when they have babies.

I believe that children are very important for any nation, as they are the tax-payers and decision-makers of the future. Healthy politics should really take this into account.

We had a baby a few months ago. We got so many clothes from friends and family, some of it brand new, that our baby haven't had the chance to use it all before outgrowing it.

We even got the pram, cot and car seats (plural!) for free. It's crazy.

Any clothing we bought was just because we liked it and not because we needed it. Seriously, I don't know how is it in northern cultures, but where I come from it is extremely common to get the clothes from your cousins (and pass them on to the next :)), regardless of your money (unless you are rich, in which case I don't know how it works :)).

I'm not sure if this is a Latin thing, Southern European thing, Mediterranean thing or what :)

Edit: My point being: Corruption (as mentioned by others in different countries) and the very strong family support networks in other cultures might be the reason why this doesn't exist in other European countries.

Last time I came across an article about this, I found out that there is a company that sells a version of the "Finnish baby box".

https://finnishbabybox.com/

Wouldn't be surprised if the Finnish gov could make some decent money by selling the real deal (at market rate).

As millions of cats have shown, there is no better place to sleep than a cardbord box :)

Joking aside, this looks like a fantastical practical approach to social support. No complex and very expensive program, just a very practical "starter set" for parents. It relieves both a possible financial burden and of course makes sure, that nothing immediately important item isn't present at a time when parents probably think about a lot of things but not shopping.

As a way to bring something like this to the US. I wonder if something like this could work as a similar model to Toms. Buy one give one away to a family need.

There are private companies replicating the idea:

* http://www.babyboxco.com/

* http://britishbabybox.com/

* https://www.finnishbabybox.com/

Seems like if you had the right marketing and the right balance of items/price it'd make a nice startup.

I've ordered from the third company to Australia, didn't take very long and was (and is!) extremely useful, not to say much cheaper than what I would've paid with Australian prices for most of the clothes for the first year.

I started a similar one for the Indian market but so far haven't had much success.

If you have a website this would be the perfect thread in which to add a link!

I watched the first one being A/B tested on the UES Mom's group on Facebook.

I'm convinced that it is the first proto-useful thing to come out of New York's Upper East Side in the 21st century.

We should try giving useful items to welfare recipients instead of just money. It would be a great way to insure that the support was going to the right things. Why not give kids a back to school kit? This could be huge for kids in situations where no one will buy them the things they need for school. This happens a lot more than most people know.

That's a pretty controversial statement. Many countries are experimenting with purely cash based welfare instead of in-kind. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/wel...

The world abounds with people so full of hubris that they are firmly convicted they have the answers to others' needs and problems. Why not give kids a back to school kit? Because maybe they need food or socks or medicine more than they need a protractor or a PeeChee. If you want to help them give them money. Most people can figure out what they need for themselves.

They do give these out at some US hospitals:

http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/health/2016/07/04/alaskas-lar...

The BBC did a follow up article on this recently: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35834370

Apparently spurned by the article, a few startups have appeared offering similar boxes in other countries.

If only the USA had a similar program!

We can't divert money away from the war machine.

In Finland, the package was actually seen as a part of the war machine.

The package developed from assistance baskets delivered to low-income mothers by General Mannerheim's Child Protection Society after the Finnish civil war (1918), and became a government program in 1937 by offering the package to low-income mothers. The purpose was to increase birth rate and reduce infant mortality by drawing mothers to pre-natal care with the promise of free stuff.

It was expanded during the years of WW II and offered to all mothers starting 1947, at a time when the country was recovering from war and paying war reparations to USSR and everyone was really piss-poor, so poor it makes me want to cry. The country was under tremendous pressure from the Soviets and had to desperately assign all available resources to defence, food production and other essential items. Making parents feel that the government cares for them was important in the war years.

We can -- let's start with a population the size of Finland. The State of Colorado has about the same # of people -- a great place to start! Think critically before you toss out the old argument: The U.S. should do X, just like Y; where X is the socialist program of choice and Y is a Nordic Country of your choosing.

Not sure if that applies here.

There isn't anything particularly hard to administer about sending a one-time box to every parent who has a kid. It's not even collecting any new information--everything needed is recorded during birth registration. Even the potential for fraud is limited, because generating fraudulent SS numbers is much more lucrative than cardboard box resale, and we already have systems in place to limit that.

A county or state could easily implement this, with well-scoped resourcing requirements and little chance of cost overruns.

My worry about fraud isn't about the mothers, it's about the politicians and suppliers who would run this program. Too many pockets getting in the way.

Ummm... isn't the US GDP per capita higher than Finland's?

And couldn't we exploit economies of scale?

Well, your counter-argument is just as old.

I got two of these when our son was born a couple years back, and they were amazing. I posted a review and tons of photos:

https://www.care.com/c/stories/580/a-year-with-the-finnish-m...

Yes, we did use the box. Yes, we did use all the clothes, lotions, toys, etc. In fact, our son basically wore nothing except eurogarb for his first year.

There are some commercial versions of this available in the US, though they're relatively pricey. The fact that this is a public benefit in some places is truly awesome, and something I wish could be politically tenable here in the US.

Baby-box-industry lobbying intensifies

You actually have the choice between the box or 140 euros, but not many people take the money. We did, once.

If you have twins, you're allowed three boxes---if triplets, six. We had twins so we opted for two boxes and the money.

Build your own baby kit. (Just add baby)

I've heard that Finns even have another box for dads as 'paternity package' which complements the content of maternity package. But that is probably not state sponsored: https://www.instagram.com/p/BCj-EgjHrhs/

I've heard that Finns even have another box as a 'paternity package', which complements the content of the maternity package. But I guess that is not state sponsored: https://www.instagram.com/p/BCj-EgjHrhs/

France goes way beyond that.[1]

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9211691...

It's a great programme.

You might be interested in some of the comments here, from 3 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5817728

Great idea. I think in US, we can build a warby parker model for this.

Same here, I actually read/watched a documentary about sleep that pointed they do this a lot in Scandinavian countries (such as this article). Hopefully the uS can find a solution like it

That gear looks well designed.

It does.

I expected it to be a little cheap because most baby-stuff isn't going to be useful for very long (the babies growing so quickly), but all of it felt solid, and the designs are pretty great too.

The cloth diapers are also a nice touch! We ended up using mostly cloth diapers until the baby started eating solid foods.

We liked cloth too, but it's a lot of laundry. We switched to disposable for the last child. I think it's more economical to use cloth diapers if you can afford the extra time it takes to manage them.

They're not used for long but while they're used they're used hard.

Actually the quality is excellent, the stuff generally lasts very long. There's not that much of an aftermarket though because everyone has one.

Government gets it quite cheap at the quantities it buys; an itemized list is here:

http://www.mtv.fi/lifestyle/koti/artikkeli/mita-aitiyspakkau...

The package total was 136.78 € (about 150 $ USD) in 2015.

The mother does not have to take the package, she can also opt to get the money instead.

Another interesting quirk is that if you get twins, you can apply for three packages, and if you get triplets, you can apply up to six packages!

Universal Baby Incubation will never work. Mothers will no longer buy anything for their baby because sufficient is supplied by the state.

In Venezuela the babies are being put in cardboard boxes too: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3800058/The-youngest...

These pictures are not "shocking". The babies sleep in boxes and seem to be doing all right. If you have limited resources, you should put the money in essential things. Proper food and medication is more important than having a big fancy bed. The babies sleeping in these pictures appear to be fed and well dressed.

But it is of course possible that in other respects, the Venezuelan baby care is lacking due to corruption and mismanagement. I can imagine that the level of care and attention given depends a lot on what kind of people you happen to have in each place.

I don't like how they correlate this cardboard box starter kit program to Finland's low infant mortality rate. The claim that the U.S. has such a high infant mortality rate compared to other industrialized nation has been thoroughly debunked[1].

[1] - http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/3/editorial-the...

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