I had a Bumbo for my second child. I think that for second kids they have a short but great life, from about 4-8 months (or until they can reliably sit up unpropped). It enabled my son to see his baby sister as much more of an equal/ playmate, and she loved sitting in it and watching his latest antics.

And like someone else mentioned, it's a great travel high chair for early weaning days. I used to sit my son in his buggy, but that got messy at times.

Fennel tea is common here. It does help the baby's digestion.

It is actually suggested to give a baby water or fennel, camomile tea, especially in summer when it is hot. Only milk? never. Mine was nursed til 15 months, but used the bottle to drink water from (funny that, mums bosom doesn't provide a drink selection button...).

No drink selection button, but the milk adjusts to suit the child's needs - including required hydration.
Abstract of a preliminary study here: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retri...4067369191568F

This really made me laugh, i've been amazed the way that Fennel is akin to Asterix's magic potion here in Swizerland.

Baby puking = fennel tea
Baby griping = fennel tea
Baby thirsty = fennel tea
Baby eye's getting a big gunked up = fennel tea on cotton wool
Mother not lactating = fennel tea for her
Father doesn't do things quite like the mother wants it done= a swift reprimant, an argument, fennel tea for her and moody beer for him

Seems to work well (the beer that is..)

According to our pediatrician, the new weaning rules are to introduce solids as soon as possible (4 months) and not to withhold allergenic foods like eggs and wheat until after the first year, but to introduce them early (still trying one food at a time, though, at first). This is really recent in Switzerland, as it applies to our four month old, but our two year old was supposed to wait until six months for solids.

Fennel tea is still recommended here, for everything, as described. I absolutely hate fennel, so I avoided it. Water is still a big no-no, though I'm not sure why tea is fine but water isn't.

We also got a bumbo. My first daughter hated it, but she was also fairly thin and didn't fit well in it. In fact, she can still get in and out of it at age two. My second is a little, um, chunkier, and likes it because she can see her big sister, but we only put her in it for a few minutes at a time. I'd say skip it, because both kids vastly prefer mami's lap to the seat and I don't think it's a great travel high chair.

Although my experience rearing babies took place several years ago in the states, I found one of the most significant differences in what was recommended by pediatricians at that time vs. a generation ago pertained to sleeping positions for newborns. Whereas my own mother's generation was advised that it was quite alright to lay baby down to sleep on his stomach, further research showed that any position other than on his back could be linked to SIDS/crib death. These days I believe all new parents are advised to lay baby on his back to sleep.

That advice doesn't work when baby begins rolling over and ends up sideways at the foot of the bed when mom goes in to check on him!

I don't know anyone who actually bought one of those things. I think it's all hype, really. I worked hard at keeping the 'accessories' down to a minimum as I saw the potential of having a mountain of plastic crap that had a very short span of usefulness and this totally falls under that umbrella. It might be really handy for a very specific child and situation, but mostly it's just another thing that will clutter a closet after about 2 weeks.

I will say the one thing that I resisted buying that my sister bought for me, which I cursed upon receiving it until it worked miracles, was a cheapo bouncy chair from Target that allowed me to take a shower, etc., since I had a kid who never, ever napped. It was great for about 3 months and it was easy scrub clean and to pass along.

Gads...I just noticed how old this thread is....sorry

Loved the bouncy seat, esp. the vibrating one! And sorry for being the one who resurrected the ancient thread; looking back to earlier today, I don't even know how I happened to come across it.....

Off-Topic - Happens like this quite often. A spammer or spam search engine finds a thread with a 'relevant' word in it; a spamming post gets added to the thread; innocent members reply, then someone sees the spam, reports it, the spam gets removed by a moderator and the innocent member suddenly finds that he has resurrected an age-old thread. It can be quite amusing when a word with two or more meanings is picked up as basis for spam on a completely different subject.
e.g. Someone writes a request such as 'Looking for tennis partner. I'm a beginner and a complete rabbit at the moment' and a spamming publishing agency (if there were such a thing) finds 'rabbit' and might put in a post with a link to 'Cookery Books for Cheap and Delicious Stews'. This immediately gets a couple of replies. Then we take the Spam post out and no-one can work out why the following posts are suddenly all talking about food.