Appearance
Glossary
Common terms
- Breastfeeding: Feeding the baby at the breast.
- Cluster feeding: Several feeds close together, often in newborn phases or growth spurts.
- Dilation: How open the cervix is during labor.
- Effacement: How thin the cervix has become before or during labor.
- Formula: Infant nutrition product prepared according to package or clinician instructions.
- Paced feeding: A bottle-feeding style that lets the baby pause and regulate intake.
- Rooming-in: The baby stays with the parent in the same room after birth.
- Safe sleep: Practices that reduce sleep-related risk, including a firm, flat surface and no loose items in the sleep space.
How to use the glossary
- Read the term in context, not in isolation.
- If a clinician uses a word that still feels vague, ask for a plain-English definition.
- Add new terms when they show up more than once and still annoy your brain.
What is worth remembering
You do not need to memorise every term in advance. The point of the glossary is to make the page you are currently reading easier to understand, and to keep the rest of the handbook usable when sleep is scarce 1.