Nicole and Phil Zimmerman of Wheeling get a family portrait taken with Ella, 1, and Ava, 3.

Research and technology have led to many changes in the way children enter this world and how they are cared for once they arrive. No more waiting to find out if it’s a boy or a girl. No more “twilight sleep” births. No more banishing dads and grandparents to the waiting room. Thirty years ago, there was no such thing as electronic fetal monitoring, ultrasounds, genetic testing or epidurals. “These are all kind of foreign to a lot of grandparents,” said Dr. Robert Wetzel, obstetrician and gynecologist at East Ohio Regional Hospital in Martins Ferry. Today’s new grandparents likely left the hospital with their babes in arms; car seats were not required by law until about the early 1980s. Whiskey was a popular teething remedy, babies were put on their stomachs to sleep, and newborns were fed cereal as early as a month or two old. None of these practices is recommended by pediatricians today. This generation gap can lead to trouble if grandparents don’t tread carefully. “My in-laws were kind of taken aback at my putting my babies to bed on their backs,” said Nicole Zimmerman of Wheeling, mother of Ava, 3, and Ella, 1. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend newborns sleep in a crib or bassinet with a tight-fitting sheet and no blankets, pillows or stuffed toys, to prevent sudden infant death syndrome.