Want your child to go to college? Get some books.
It is widely understood that having educated parents increases a child’s success in school. A new study shows that having lots of books in your home is even more important. This factor is even more important than the parents’ level of education. Mariah Evans, a sociologist from the University of Nevada at Reno, studied 73, 000 people in 27 countries and found that when more books are in the home, children receive an educational boost and are more likely to move ahead in school. A child in a home with 500 books achieves three more years of education than a child with similarly educated parents who had no books in the home. There was some benefit with as few as 20 books. “You get a lot of bang for your book,” said Evans.
Start reading to your babies early –when they are in the womb — and keep it up. Nightly reading before bed is an important routine that enriches a child’s imagination. Reading and being surrounded by books is great for the whole family!
Protect Yourself and Your Unborn Baby
Do you know that our babies in utero pass more biological milestones than at any other period of life? This is the scientific conclusion of Peter Nathanielsz, MD, PHD, who has conducted extensive research for the new field of prenatal programming, which he calls “the new science of the womb.” In his book, The Prenatal Prescription, he emphasizes that health professionals and the public need to know the causes and consequences of healthy versus non-healthy pregnancy. Suboptimal conditions can cause fetal development to go awry, particularly with the brain and nervous system.
What do expectant mothers need to consider? All of the baby’s organs are developing in the first trimester. Exposure to toxic substances and chemicals, flu, alcohol, cigarettes, many medications and high levels of stress can impair the baby’s physical health, with impacts that can continue into adulthood. . The mother’s health is the single most important factor influencing her baby’s earliest development. She needs to pay attention to the quality of her health and nutrition during her pregnancy and before conception. Do you know that boys require more nutrients as their cells grow faster than girls do? Thus be aware, stay active and fit, keep your stress lowered, eat well and enjoy being closely connected to your baby in womb.
An expecting woman needs to be careful about what she is exposed to, what goes into her mouth and even on her face! I recommend that pregnant women go on to the website http://www.drugwatch.com/to check out the effects of various medications. For example, a medication for acne called accutane can cause birth defects and prematurity. It is harmful to take antidepressant medications during pregnancy without medical advice.
Prevention is the goal to optimal infant development. Although genes play a factor, the mother has the responsibility to consciously and conscientiously create a healthy womb and placenta where nutrients, love and hormones are circulating for the benefit of infant physical and psychological well-being into adulthood.
Tips for Mothering Premature Babies and Twins
When you have delivered a premature baby or twins/multiples, you face a whole new set of challenges. Many mothers contact me when they are overwhelmed by these kinds of “parenting plus” issues. They feel unprepared and are have few resources from the hospital or community.
It is very important to reach out for psychological support before you become completely stressed out from trying to cope with these new life transitions. Your babies pick up on your anxiety and tension and react accordingly, which can become a vicious cycle. If you consciously self calm and relax, you can begin to relieve their stress as well as your own.
Many of these babies are themselves traumatized from having so many intrusive and disturbing medical interventions. Crying may be their way to express the hurt and pain. By talking directly to them about what happened and acknowledge their feelings, you can help them let go.
It’s easy for a mother to become so focused on medical issues, nutrition, and other basics that they overlook the need to nurture their babies emotionally. Here are some tips:
- Soothe, rock and hold your baby.
- Provide lots of skin-to-skin contact to relax the baby.
- Slow down all interactions with the baby(ies), as their immature systems cannot integrate well. Do not over-stimulate them.
- Avoid sleep schedule training; these children especially need to feel attached and comforted. Some irritability and sleep disturbances are normal for these babies.
- Sing to your baby, play music, interact, read stories and play.
- Spend extra time just connecting and being together.
These ideas will help you ease your children into the world, while sustaining your emotional balance and composure during a stressful time.
Sexuality During Pregnancy
A pregnant woman’s body undergoes many changes, which can be unsettling both to her sense of self and sexual identity. In the first trimester, your breasts become enlarged, which may be welcome or not along with your growing belly. Questioning your
perceptions of yourself and your desirability is very normal. It can be helpful to consciously relax and let go into these many transformations as Nature’s plan miraculously unfolds. Know that you are beautiful as you are creating life. You are literally stretched in a very good way to become more loving towards yourself in every respect and in relationship with your partner and baby. This is the ideal time to take care of yourself and to receive all of the love that you need.
Pregnancy and sexuality are very much positively linked as lovemaking creates your baby! Sex during pregnancy is safe until the baby is delivered unless your doctor asks you to refrain for medical reasons. Both physical and emotional closeness will enhance your well-being. Expecting couples need to express love, tenderness and reassurance towards each other as both are undergoing many psychological changes, while moving towards new roles of parenthood. Make sure to provide times for intimacy and stress relief. Nonverbal give and take can be shared through touching, stroking, frequent eye contact and more slowed down lovemaking (in the third trimester). Sexual positions may need to change in order to feel more feel comfortable and not put weight directly on your stomach. I inform women to buy a wedge for their backs and to experiment with spooning and other positions. Some pregnant women have more sexual arousal than normal because of pressure on the uterus and sexual organs, which can heighten arousal or not.
Open up to your radiance and sensuality with new expressions of your sexuality!
The Joy of Babies
This video reminds us of the complete joy that babies experience and can share with us.
Echoes from Your Birth
Have you ever felt that something has greatly affected the course of your life, but you don’t know what it is? You may find an answer by learning about your birth experience.
From early childhood on, I was convinced that I was adopted, although looked exactly like my dad, with no rational basis for this view. My awareness of lifelong feelings of abandonment with a strong sense of not really belonging to my real parents eventually led me to my own field of prenatal and perinatal psychology. In my doctoral program, when asked to get my birth history, the light went on. I had a difficult birth and was separated from my mother with a six week hospital stay. This important fact was never discussed with me. There had been no opportunity to bond with my own parents or them to me, which is why we all felt like strangers to each other. No repairs were ever made which could have saved me from unnecessary imbedded anxiety. Resolving these early issues over time gave me the gift of self compassion. Also, my nervous system relaxed for the first time in my life. The events that surrounded my birth had been completely overwhelming. I was not given the opportunity to slow down and to integrate my earliest experiences until I was an adult. The baby part of me could finally feel loved and wanted by my adult self.
Being born should be one of the greatest moments in life. If you have a traumatic beginning, full of interventions and interruptions, there may be stored emotional wounding until it can be resolved. Many of us experience a traumatic birth, which may or may not have been preventable.
My greatest joy is that now I help babies, kids and adults heal from their gestational, birth and early life traumatic imprinting. I want everybody to feel be freed of early shock and trauma that they received. This process of repair is an easy one with infants but more therapeutic remediation is required with adults. You can have the gift of a great start in life with re-patterning and choice.
Are You a Good Mother?
Every mother asks herself, “Am I good enough? Am I doing something that is harming my baby?” Often, comments from relatives or friends, parenting books, or even parenting blogs, can reinforce these doubts.
Donald Winnicott was a famous British pediatrician and psychoanalyst who devoted his life to studying what is best for mom and baby. He stated that every new baby must receive “good enough mothering”. What does that phrase mean? In Winnicott’s view, each ordinary devoted mother develops a unique, loving caretaking style that needs not reflect a perfect mothering theory. There is room for daily mistakes and imperfections. However, he emphasizes that it is important that the infant and mother have time to become bonded to one another and form a loving unit or “dyad” during the first early months of life, when all infants have continuous needs for care, feeding and emotional interaction. Winnicott states that society’s important role is to nurture the earliest mother-baby bond, as the child’s dependence upon his own mother is the foundation for healthy emotional independence. The job of the father and family in these earliest months is to support the new mother with food, love and understanding, so that she can fulfill her role of mothering to develop the infant’s basic trust within his own family and world.
Rather than trying to be “perfect,” each mother can simply pay attention to really getting to know her baby’s needs, disposition and personality. This involves responding to baby’s nonverbal cues, figuring out the nature of his cries, and providing lots of holding, eye contact, and talking. She also needs to trust her maternal intuition and gut feelings about what is best for her own baby – and not worry about all the advice she gets from friends and family. It is normal for a new mother to temporarily withdraw from the world for the first two months to assure her baby’s protection and well-being. Winnicott called this process “maternal-preoccupation.” It is important to care for your baby from an open heart, rather than from a fearful, worried place.
A longer version of this piece appears in St. Louis Kids magazine. Click My Articles to read it.
How to Cope with Infant Trauma
Often I hear people say that that “it is a good thing that the baby was so young” when he or she was exposed to traumatic events in the womb, infancy and early childhood as the child can’t remember or feel these incidents. This harmful view implies that the child is OK nonetheless. Until the 1980s, the medical and psychological professions believed that babies had “infantile amnesia” prior to age three. It was thought that babies could not feel pain from medical surgeries and were not capable of remembering, as they were in a preverbal state without a fully developed brain. New evidence in prenatal and perinatal psychology, including research and writings by David Chamberlain, William Emerson, and the neurobiologists Alan Schore and David Siegel, have shown that prenates and young babies do have emotions, feel pain, and are capable of memory and intelligence. Parents need to understand this topic in order to prevent, recognize, and heal early trauma.
This is an excerpt of a longer article, which you can read by clicking here.
Reduce Your Risk of Premature Birth
Premature births are rising at an alarming rate in the U.S, 36% in the past 25 years. Being born prematurely reduces the time that the baby has to grow and develop. It is the major cause of infant death and is associated with developmental delays, mental retardation, and mental health issues. Studies show that even a few extra days in the womb can make a huge difference in positive outcomes for the baby.
What do women and their partners need to know? First of all, you can avoid many of the causes of prematurity, including smoking, exposure to environmental toxins, and drug and alcohol use. Ask your doctor about microbiogical screening in early pregnancy to treat hidden infections, including of the vagina, kidneys and bladder. If you have chronic illness such as hypertension, diabetes, or lupus, you need to monitor them carefully. Your risk of premature birth also increases if you are African-American, under 18, or over 40.
Today, many couples use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive. A common practice has been to implant several embryos, which often results in multiple births. Unfortunately, these children are at a much higher risk of premature birth. A recent study from the March of Dimes highlights the risks of multiple pregnancies and prematurity associated with IVF. Please read it if you’re considering fertility treatments.
