Stress on the Development of Children

It was so hard to pick just one stressor that affected me as a child, I had so many. The one that I picked was and still is the hardest for me to understand. Racism I’m a person of a mult-race background. As I child I was not accepted by any race, they all made fun of me and called me a “mutt”. I compensated for that stressor by withdrawing into myself and not trying to make friends, instead I put all my energy into reading and my school work. Even now I sometimes have a problem with racism as an adult. I politely state that I’ don’t speak Spanish or when asked what race I am I will reply “I’m a bag of Skittles” which gets me a lot of laughs.

I have chosen Africa and the stressors that children there face. One of the major stressors that affects these children is hunger.  “Chronic malnutrition remains widespread in Africa, and the target of a 50 per cent reduction of malnutrition in children under five is far out of reach. Fully one in three Africans is malnourished and, despite improvements in some countries, the absolute number of hungry children rose during the decade. Statistics on low birth weight reveal that an estimated one in eight African babies -- some 3.1 million infants -- is born underweight each year.” (Africa Renewal) What is being done to improve this? According to the Millennium Development Goals: they have improved cooking stoves, access to energy, nets to help fishermen, and the continued request for support from other countries to support the donation of food to the people of Africa.

References:

http://www.un.org/en/africarenewal/vol16no1/161child.htm

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview/mdg_goals/mdg1/

Child Development and Public Health

I have chosen to write about SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). I chose this topic because it was one of my greatest fears with having a pre-term baby. I also have a cousin that lost her first born to SIDS. SIDS is a medical condition that causes a baby to die suddenly.  When I saw the charts below I decide that I would share Germany as another part of the world because at one point it had the highest rate of SIDS.

There was a study done over 3 years it was a case-control study. There was a total of 1331 infants in the study out of this 333 were sudden infant death syndrome cases.

Only 4.1% of the infants were placed on their stomach to sleep, those infants were at a high risk of sudden infant death syndrome. Those who were unaccustomed to sleeping on their stomachs were at very high risk, as were those who turned to sleeping on their stomachs. Bed sharing (especially for infants younger than 13 weeks); duvets; sleeping prone on a sheepskin; sleeping in the house of a friend or a relative (compared with sleeping in the parental home); and sleeping in the living room (compared with sleeping in the parental bedroom) increased the risk for sudden infant death syndrome; pacifier use during the last sleep was associated with a significantly reduced risk of sudden infant death syndrome. This study has clarified the risk factors for sudden infant death syndrome in a population where few infants sleep on their stomach. This study supports the current recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. If I ever work with infants I will be able to explain to parents the importance of their infants sleeping on their backs and to help them better understand SIDS.

The AAP makes the following recommendations:

In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics expanded its recommendations from focusing only on SIDS to focusing on a safe sleep environment that can reduce the risk of all sleep-related infant deaths, including SIDS.

The recommendations described in the Policy Statement include

• supine positioning,
• use of a firm sleep surface,
• breastfeeding,
• room-sharing without bed-sharing,
• routine immunizations,
• consideration of using a pacifier,
• avoidance of soft bedding,
• avoidance of overheating,
• avoidance of exposure to tobacco smoke,
• avoidance of exposure to alcohol,
• avoidance of exposure to illicit drugs

References:

http://www.sidscenter.org/Statistics.html

http://www.ispid.org/statistics.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19336376

Childbirth In Your Life and Around the World

Childbirth In Your Life and Around the World

The most important childbirth experience in my life was that of my son. My water broke while I was walking around in Mexico. I was transported to the CA border at San Diego where I was met by San Diego Fire Department. They transported me to Kaiser where I was admitted. I was only six months pregnant and I was a high risk pregnancy. I didn’t go into labor at that time, I was just losing my fluids. I stayed in San Diego for one week then I checked out and went to Kaiser in Los Angeles so that I could be near my family and my husband had to go back to work. I continued to lose the fluid but I didn’t go into labor. I was given two shots of steroids to help my son lungs develop faster. On Jan. 5, 2001 I started having contractions that were not showing up on the machine. They continued until I passed part of my placenta (I had developed an infection in my placenta which caused me to go into active labor) and went into active labor. On Jan. 6, 2001 at 6:10a.m., I gave birth to my 3lb 3oz 21” long son he was born at 26 weeks gestation. He is my miracle baby.

I chose Brazil to learn about their births. I learned that cesarean is the most common form of delivery there. If the hospital or clinic the parents go to deem it necessary then the parents have no choice but to have a cesarean or leave that hospital in search of another. In Brazil, cesarean birth rates account for about 90% of all births. Child birth is still treated in the formal way; in a room with other women in labor, no monitoring, no information being given and no freedom of movement. There is no attention given to the mother to be as an individual or to her unborn child.

The only similarities between the two countries that I could find was that the mother and baby stays in the hospital for at least three days after the birth and maybe more after cesarean birth. There are a lot of differences between the two. The one that bothered me the most was that Brazil performs the cesarean for most births even if the mother can have the baby naturally and the US does cesareans only in cases of emergency or the mother has had one before and the doctors feel that it would be a danger to the life of the mother or child if another one is not done. I feel that forcing a cesarean on a woman can lead her to have negative feelings toward her child which can cause problems with the child’s development. With the cesarean the mothers didn’t get to hold and start the bonding process until hours later unlike mothers that had natural child birth. Immediately after birth mothers and babies start the bonding period which also starts that babies development. That time is so important for a newborn that is not use to its new world and for the mother to realize that she is now a mother.   

http://www.amigasdoparto.com.br/