There's a much better way to talk to babies than baby talk

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It turns out, a lot gets lost in translation when you talk to a baby in baby talk. A new study from the University of Washington found that babies who are spoken "parentese" have better language development than babies who are spoken to in "baby talk." The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Baby talk tends to consist of simplified grammar and exaggerated sounds. "What people think of as baby talk is a combination of silly sounds and words, sometimes with incorrect grammar," Naja Ferjan Ramirez an assistant professor at the department of linguistics at the University of Washington told CNN, "like 'Oooh, your shozie wozies on your widdle feets."

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Breastfeeding mom's touching encounter with an orangutan has people swooning—and debating

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A breastfeeding mother's experience at Vienna's Schoenbrunn Zoo is touching people's hearts—but not without a fair amount of controversy.

Gemma Copeland shared her story on Facebook, which was then picked up by the Facebook page Boobie Babies. Photos show the mom breastfeeding her baby next to the window of the zoo's orangutan habitat, with a female orangutan sitting close to the glass, gazing at them.

"Today I got feeding support from the most unlikely of places, the most surreal moment of my life that had me in tears," Copeland wrote.

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There's a scientific (and adorable) reason why babies hiccup, according to a new study

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Newborn babies don't seem to do much beyond eating and pooping and, of course, hiccupping. A lot. Parenting advice on how to cure a baby's hiccups runs the whole gamut. It's recommended parents try everything from nursing to stop feeding the baby so much, from giving the baby gripe water to letting the hiccups play their course. But when your baby hiccups too much, you shouldn't freak out. There's a good reason why.

A new study published in Clinical Neurophysiology found that hiccups play an important role in a baby's development. Researchers from the University College London found 217 babies for their study, but only looked at 13 newborns with persistent hiccups. Ten of those babies hiccupped when they were awake, and three hiccupped during their "wriggly" sleep. We have no idea how the scientists got any work done with all that cuteness lying around.

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Working and breastfeeding is hard. Studies say support from coworkers is key to success.

Breastfeeding can be a challenge all on its own. What happens when you add working to the mix?

Compared with the rest of the industrialized world (and much of the rest of the world, actually), the U.S. makes working parenthood difficult. As the only developed nation with no guaranteed paid family leave, many new parents find themselves having to return to work within a handful of weeks after having a baby.

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