Editorial and sourcing policy

This page describes how content on GetBabyReady is produced, checked and corrected. It is written to be specific enough to hold us to.

Sourcing

Every quantitative claim falls into one of two buckets, and the page tells you which:

1. Published. The figure comes from a named organisation — the AAP, the CDC, the FDA/EPA, a hospital system, or a manufacturer's own published chart. The page names the source and the date it was retrieved.
2. Our arithmetic. The figure is derived from published rates plus something you told us. Our newborn quantity calculator multiplies a published usage rate by your laundry interval; the page shows that multiplication rather than presenting the result as received wisdom.

There is deliberately no third bucket for "widely repeated advice". Where we include something that is common practical wisdom but not published by any source we cite — packing extra clothes for a longer hospital stay, for example — it is labelled on the page as practical advice rather than clinical guidance.

When a source cannot be reached

We drop the item. When building our food-safety data, several standalone entries were left out because the relevant authority's page was unreachable at build time and we could not verify the guidance. A missing page is better than a page that states a safety position we could not confirm. Those omissions are recorded rather than quietly filled in.

Health-adjacent content

Several tools touch on infant feeding, food safety and postpartum recovery. On those:

• Hard rules are stated as hard rules. Honey before twelve months and cow's milk as a drink before twelve months are not preferences, and the pages do not present them as though they were.
• Allergen guidance follows the current AAP position of introducing common allergens early, in an infant-safe form, rather than delaying them. Earlier advice said the opposite. Getting this backwards would be actively harmful, so it is stated explicitly rather than hedged.
• Emergency information appears above the tool, not below it. Our postpartum page carries the CDC's urgent maternal warning signs at the top, including the fact that pregnancy-related complications can occur up to a year after delivery.
• We do not give doses. Where a medication is mentioned, the page names it and tells you to confirm with your provider.

Affiliate links and advertising

Some pages carry affiliate links, and the site shows advertising. Both are disclosed where they appear. Three rules govern them:

• A buy link never appears on a page whose answer is a safety restriction. This is enforced by an automated check that fails the build, not by remembering.
• Affiliate links never appear before the answer you came for, and never change it.
• We do not link medications or anything applied to a surgical incision, and the pages say why.

Updates and corrections

Each page shows when its underlying data was last updated. Guidance in this field changes, and our data files record the date each source was read. If you find an error, tell us — corrections are made against the source, and if a source has changed its position we change ours.