Your flights are booked, itinerary organized, and every few weeks you sneak a peek at those nearly impossible-to-get tickets to the  Olympics. Then you realize that your new baby, who wasn’t even conceived when you made your plans, needs its own ticket – a ticket that could be just as difficult to get as yours was, and that could cost another small fortune. Some parents were gobsmacked this week to learn that babes-in-arms would be required to have their own tickets for Olympic events.

After a public outcry from moms, dads and parents-to-be, Games organizers said in a statement on Tuesday that they may change their policy, and “will look at what we can do [for parents in this situation] when the remaining tickets go on sale in April.”

It was welcome news to many moms who say that they need to bring their babies to breast-feed, or because they have no other childcare options. Babies in a front-carrier or sling don't exactly take up more room or require their own seat (they can barely hold their heads up, let alone sit down,) although organizers have said the extra ticket is to ensure that Olympic venues don't exceed capacity.

Related stories:
Restaurant's baby surcharge dishes up outrage
Kid-free flights and restaurants: Where do we sign up?

The Equality and Human rights Commission even told one complainant that she may have a case for “indirect sex discrimination,” the Guardian reported.

But should parents really be bringing a baby to the Olympics in the first place? Long security lines, crowded stadiums and the need to take public transport to many Olympic events are just some of the obstacles -- and germ fests -- that parents and their babies will face this summer.

Plus, London in July and August isn’t exactly like Beijing and Athens, homes of the last two Olympics. Summer in England can be downright chilly, never mind the rain. It's enough to persuade any parent to find a reliable sitter.

Would you take your baby to the Olympics? Tell us in the comments section below.

"Like" TODAY Moms on Facebook, and follow us @TodayMoms

The Sun Online

One British mom has taken celebrity-worship to a new level, toting her infant daughter to red-carpet events to get photos with the stars.

Little Tyler Sercombe, who just turned one, has quite the baby album. She's met more than 130 celebrities: Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Elton John, Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp and many more. While Tyler seems blissfully apathetic to the celebrity wattage, the expressions on the celebrities' mugs are pretty priceless -- ranging from Reese Witherspoon's "Oh look, a cute baby!" to Daniel Craig's "Who is this baby and why am I getting my picture taken with it?" deer-in-headlights stare. Apparently, posing with babies wasn't part of 007's training.

The Sun Online

Daniel Craig: Did NOT sign up for Her Majesty's Secret Nanny Service.

Tyler's mom (or "mum," in British-speak) Donna Sercombe uses a wheelchair, so is able to stake out prime spots at red-carpet events, according to The Sun tabloid, which first published the pictures. According to The Sun, she named her daughter after Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden character in "Fight Club" -- because who wouldn't want to name their baby after a violent, (spoiler alert!) imaginary sociopath?

The Sun Online

Reece Witherspoon with baby Tyler and her star-struck mom, Donna

Commenters on The Sun's website took star-struck Donna to task for bringing a baby out late at night in cold weather (in many photos, you can tell everyone is bundled up against the cold).

"This is wrong on so many levels," one anonymous comenter griped. "The premieres end around 10 pm so this poor baby at 2 months old has been up all sorts of ungodly hours by the time she gets home?"

Others defended Donna against the haters: "So what if she wants to get harmless pictures taken with celebrities, at least she is happy and spending time with her child, which is more than can be said for many mothers," one wrote.

What do you think of Donna and Tyler's red-carpet baby album?

Baby, you're a star! More celeb-related stories from TODAY Moms:

Moms' picks for best, worst celebrity baby names
Why we've got a mom crush on Victoria Beckham
Welcome to motherhood, Beyonce. Now prepare to be judged

"Like" TODAY Moms on Facebook, and follow us @TodayMoms

Fewer women give birth on Halloween than on Valentine's Day, finds a new study. But this may not be a mere calendar coincidence. Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health suggest that pregnant women appear to be swayed by the cultural symbolism of the two holidays -- skeletons versus cherubs --  and this might influence their baby's arrival date.

They speculate that mothers-to-be may avoid delivering on the October holiday associated with death and witches. But scientists suspect that women have a more favorable view of Valentine's day, which is linked with love and romance, and may try for a Feb. 14 delivery.

Researchers raise the possibility that pregnant women may have some control over the timing of childbirth. Their findings suggest that a spontaneous birth (giving birth naturally) may be less spontaneous than doctors previously thought.

"The positive connotations of Valentine's Day may increase a pregnant woman's will to initiate birth and the negative connotations of Halloween may precipitate her will to resist giving birth," write the researchers. In other words, maybe a woman's mind is consciously or unconsciously influencing her hormonal mechanisms, and telling her body to speed up or slow down her baby's birth.

In the study, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, researchers reviewed more than three million U.S. birth records. They looked at the number of babies born in the two-week period surrounding Halloween and Valentine's Day between 1996 and 2006, and considered the mother's delivery method.

Researchers selected cultural holidays with widespread participation, like Halloween and Valentine's Day, because unlike religious or national holidays, these would not affect hospital staffing rates. They found that births -- both scheduled and unscheduled -- increased on the holiday associated with hearts and flowers but dropped on trick-or-treat.

On Valentine's Day, they observed a 3.4 percent increase in induced births, a 3.6 percent lift in spontaneous births, and a 12.1 rise in cesarean deliveries compared to the seven days before and after the heart-themed holiday. 

And there was a noticeable decline on Halloween. There was an 18.7 percent drop in induced births, a 16.9 percent dip in cesarean deliveries, and a 5.3 percent fall in spontaneous births compared to the other days in this two-week timeframe.

During this 11-year period, a woman's odds of giving birth on Valentine's Day went up by 5 percent overall, but it went down by 11.3 percent on Halloween. Although researchers admit they don't know the exact mechanisms behind this birth-timing pattern, they suspect that psychological factors and cultural beliefs can impact when women go into labor.

Of course, birth records don't reveal what may have been going on in couples' minds or lives nine months earlier.

Halloween and Valentine's babies, let's hear from you. Is it fun to share your birthday with pumpkins and costumes or hearts and romance? Others who have holiday birthdays feel free to add your comments.

Related:

• Three days after birth, newborn has teeth. What?!
• 'Baby fever' is a real thing -- and not just in women
• Cravings for baby powder, and more tales of pica

While my husband slept and the baby in my tummy began to knock, I stood in the small back room. It was painted the perfect shade of yellow, with pastel stars hanging from the ceiling. I was 40 years old, and in a day or so, my first baby would be born. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, or how I would be a mother.

Monica Lopossay

Who me, Mom Guru? Diana Sugg, pictured here with her two sons, relied on her sister's advice.

But at least I knew I had the basics in place, thanks to my sister, Valerie. Deep into that night, with the BBC on the radio, I went through her checklist and got the nursery ready -- the snap-on crib sheet that would make changes fast, the goofy-looking animal mobile that would make a quick shower possible, the CD player with the lullaby disc that would help my newborn fall asleep.

I didn’t know how much I would need her. Because once my son Sam arrived, all the advice from the books and the childbirth class blurred. The voices around me, around any new mother, were many and contradictory. You need to work. You need to be home. You need to let the baby scream. You need to let him sleep in your bed. It’s not that hard. Why haven’t you lost weight? Why are you still nursing?

Maybe other women were used to it. Some had been preparing their whole lives for it. But I needed help. And to this day, I thank God that I had my sister. My guru.

She had what I didn’t: the confidence that comes from experience. As a teenager, she’d built a babysitting empire, and now, after setting aside a career as a Chanel executive, she had her own two sons. She’d analyzed every product on the market. She’d researched and lived so many of the issues I was now facing. Hers was the voice I could believe in.

Valerie shared strategies like keeping my fingernails short, so I wouldn’t scratch the baby, and rotating toys in and out of the closet, so the old toys would become “new” again. She counseled me to shift my mindset. I couldn’t feel badly that I wasn’t writing and working as much as I’d hoped. I couldn’t worry about what other people thought, or managed to do, because their children slept better. It was okay to let Sam watch the “Baby Galileo” DVD for a little bit if I was swamped.

But it was hard, and I wasn’t getting much sleep. One day, exhausted, I confided my worst fear to Valerie. Maybe, for me, having a baby had been a mistake. Maybe I just wasn’t right for it.

“Oh, D,” she said, hugging me. Her voice was like a clear bell on a cold night. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You can do it.”

And over time, with her belief in me, and some experience, including a second son, I started to feel more comfortable in the world of kids. I began to rethink my long-held concept about motherhood: that it was a magical thing, and certain people were just wired for it. Maybe it was like learning to play the piano, or to write stories. Maybe I could get better.

On a walk one day, after easily manhandling 90 pounds of boys and a double stroller uphill, I stopped at a light. I found myself next to a pregnant woman, who was going to have her first child any day. I recognized the look on her face. She was a little lost.

My inner guru came out. In five minutes I gave her the lowdown: order diapers online, find a neighborhood or mothers’ email group to tap for advice, find some help, and take care of yourself.  “And no matter how hard it gets, just remember, have faith in yourself,” I told her. Then, thinking about all I’d learned, I smiled at her. “Because you can do it.”

Diana K. Sugg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered medicine, crime and other issues for newspapers around the country. She is now a freelance writer in Baltimore raising two young sons.

"Like" TODAY Moms on Facebook, and follow us @TodayMoms

Everyone knows not to get between a bear and her cubs, but if mama bears used bottles maybe they’d be a little more mellow.

A study published in the September issue of Psychological Science found that nursing mothers are roughly twice as aggressive as bottle-feeding moms and women without children when confronted by a threat.

“Maternal defense does not involve nursing mothers going out and looking for bar fights, but when they have a helpless baby, they’re more likely to defend themselves when the fight comes to them,” said Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA’s Department of Health Psychology.

Similar aggression has been observed in lactating monkeys, rats, mice, deer, hamsters, lions, prairie voles and sheep. When reading a book about how vicious predators become loveable moms, Hahn-Holbrook noticed that many of our preconceptions about mothers being quite docile were actually wrong for other species. She wondered if the same thing would hold true for humans.

She and other researchers recruited 18 nursing mothers, 17 women who were feeding formula to their babies and 20 non-mothers. The women were told they’d be playing a competitive computer game against a research assistant posing as a rude and aggressive study participant. When the women “won” a round of the game, each got to choose how long and loudly they would blast their opponent with an annoying sound.

After accounting for other differences, the researchers found that breast-feeding mothers delivered sound blasts to the rude opponent that were more than twice as loud and long as those administered by non-mothers and nearly twice as loud and long as those by bottle-feeding mothers.

The study suggests that lactation—and not just motherhood in general—kicks maternal protection into overdrive. During the confrontations, for instance, nursing moms exhibited lower blood pressure levels than the other two groups of women. That can actually dampen fear and stress responses and give them a little extra moxie to defend their offspring, the study concluded.

“We interpreted this as breastfeeding being nature’s way of helping moms calmly but effectively deal with potential threats,” Hahn-Holbrook said. But in a day and age when we’re not exactly likely to be chased by saber-toothed tigers, does the aggression factor add any benefit?

“That’s completely beyond the scope of our study, but I’m sure there are plenty of contexts in which moms could use a little extra help in that regard,” she said. “This wouldn’t just come up in terms of predators but might also encourage a mom to run back into a burning building and save an infant. I definitely think that moms generally are inspired to do that, but I wonder if lactation would just give moms a little extra push and a little extra courage.”

The littlest art critics -- a bunch of 9-month-olds in Switzerland -- preferred the works of Picasso over Monet in a recent study. 

Paintings by the Spanish artist appealed more to the diaper-clad set than those by the Frenchman in a series of five different experiments published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

Now, you may wonder: How much insight can an infant offer when comparing cubism to impressionism?

"At 9-months of age, infants' vision is already much the same as in adults," says Trix Cacchione, a psychologist at the University of Zurich, and the study's lead author. "To an infant, a painting is most likely only a perceptual pattern and their aesthetic preferences are most likely guided by low-level functions of the visual system."

Tim Hales / AP

Everyone is a critic. Even babies have an opinion when it comes to art, prefering Picasso to Monet.

Researchers wanted to understand whether the little ones would favor one artist's style over another, what types of visual images appealed to them (Picasso's highly-abstract elements vs. Monet's more realistic landscapes), and whether babies display a preference for certain colors, shapes and contrasts.

Not yet art snobs -- well, barely able to offer more than some high-pitched squeals, smiles and drool -- the babies were shown the artwork on a computer screen while sitting on a parent's lap.

In one of the experiments, 24 infants (14 girls, 10 boys), were shown either six paintings by Picasso or the same number by Monet, and researchers measured their "look time" at each image. They then introduced two paintings side by side, one from each artist, Picasso's "Landscape of Juan-les-pin" and Monet's "Poppy Field Near Giverny."

Babies who had been viewing the Monets preferred the Picasso -- it was something new and different to their eyes. But the infants who had been shown the Picassos also looked longer at the new Picasso.

Some tykes were booted from the study because of "fussiness." Being a research participant is tough stuff when you're not yet 300 days old and your diaper may be filled with a stinky mess.

In another trial, 19 babies were shown the same Monet and Picasso paintings they had seen before in color, but this time they saw them in black-and-white (thanks to the wonders of Photoshop). Once again, the little ones still went for Picasso over Monet.

Cacchione says she's previously observed that infants are fascinated by abstract paintings, like Picasso's. "What surprised me was that the preference was not connected to colors."

The Picasso paintings featured bold, vivid colors and sharp contrasts while Monet's had softer hues and subtler contrasts.

Although Cacchione admits she can only speculate on why infants were partial to Picasso, her hunch is "they were easier to process and afforded the most stimulation to their still developing visual system."

When asked how parents could put some of these findings to practical use, she suggested, "Maybe we should decorate young infant's toys with patterns including bright contrasts and not with less contrastive calming colors."

Perhaps that may inspire a new generation of artists.

At first, the videos are cute, even tame, by YouTube standards: Babies in Bumbo chairs are put atop Roombas, the robotic vacuum cleaners that spin around and clean up so you don't have to. And over the years, there have been many Roomba-related videos showing the robot freaking out dogs, cats, bunnies and babies. But the bumper-car baby thing takes it in a whole 'nother direction.

In "Our little girl and her trusty steed, Irene the Roomba," for example, Irene spins the baby around, and as a parent lifts the baby girl in her chair off the robot, Irene moves away quickly, perhaps happy to be freed of the job she was not meant to do: Cart around little ones.

"We got a baby chair from friends today and immediately used it to mistreat our child!" notes one of the parents in a caption below the video, posted recently.

Nor is it this the first such Bumbo/Roomba filming. A check of YouTube videos shows similar escapades ("Cameron on bumbo on roomba," "Baby T's Roomba Rodeo, " "Bumbo+roomba=boomba") and some that go back a few years ("Roomba Ridin Baby").

Some comments are favorable. "i absolutely love how unfazed the baby is," is one comment about Irene the Roomba and her miniature rider. "We need an adult size version of this" is another.

"While I was a bit worried about the baby falling off, she didn't seem to give a damn about what was going on and her parents were right there so it seems fine," says one seemingly rational observer. "That is one COOL baby though, she puts up with it and makes her parents look silly. 'THIS is what you do with your spare time? good job mom and dad, I'm just gonna sit here and not care.' "

At least two baby Bumbo/Roomba videos were just posted today, "Baby Riding roomba + bumbo" and "Cameron on bumbo on roomba." The caption on the latter says: "Caroline had a fabulous idea to put the baby on a bumbo on the roomba! It was awesome like the teacup ride at Disneyland!"

But, hey folks: It's not a teacup ride. It's not Disneyland. And a robotic vacuum cleaner is a piece of machinery that is not meant for babies, pets or any living creature you give a whit about — DURRRR.

Related stories:

• YouTube's April Fools button backfires?
• UCLA student's 'Asians' rant ignites YouTube responses
• Texting fountain lady's problems bigger than YouTube fame

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney, who does not recommend any parent or relative do this. At all.