Prolonged, exclusive breastfeeding appears to give children a cognitive advantage over formula-fed kids, increasing IQ by three to four points on average and boosting later academic performance, a Canadian study suggests.

The research by McGill University is not the first to link the method of infant feeding to brain development, but the size and the design of the study lends weight to the idea that breastfeeding actually causes an increase in intelligence.

“Our study provides the strongest evidence to date that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding makes kids smarter,” said lead investigator Dr. Michael Kramer, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at McGill.

Kramer and his team evaluated about 14,000 children in 31 hospitals and clinics in Belarus starting in 1996, following their progress until they were 6 1/2 years old. Half the mothers were exposed to an intervention that encouraged prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding (experimental group), while the other half continued usual maternity hospital and out-patient pediatric care (control group).

Mothers who visited a facility promoting breastfeeding in the former Soviet country were more likely to feed their infants only breast milk at age three months (43.3 per cent versus 6.4 per cent in the control group) and at all ages through 12 months.

By the time children reached an average age of 6 1/2, those in the breastfeeding group scored higher on tests measuring verbal intelligence, non-verbal intelligence and overall intelligence. Breastfed children also performed significantly higher academically than formula-fed children, found the study, published in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

The children’s cognitive ability was assessed by IQ tests administered by their pediatricians and by their teachers’ ratings of their performance in reading, writing, mathematics and other subjects.

“I think that what this says is your average mother in a developed country like Canada who succeeds in breastfeeding for the duration and the degree of exclusivity achieved by the women in our experimental group … can expect her child to be a few points higher in IQ.”

The average jump in IQ is not so crucial when it comes to the individual child, Kramer said. “But if you consider for the whole population shifting the mean (IQ score) up three or four points, that means fewer difficulties for kids at the lower end and more Einsteins and Mozarts at the high end.”

Still, Kramer stressed that women who are unable to breastfeed or choose not to for a variety of reasons should not feel guilty or worry their child will be less intelligent as a result of being formula-fed.

“I think this (prolonged, exclusive breastfeeding) is a goal that’s achievable by the vast majority of mothers,” he said. “Those who cannot - and there are some who cannot - and there are some who could but don’t want to, have other ways of stimulating their children and improving their IQ, like reading and playing with their children.”

“And it might even be that the effect that we’re seeing is not something in the (breast) milk but has something to do with the nature of the contact, the physical contact or with what transpires between the mother and the baby verbally or emotionally at the time of the feeding, and that maybe is transposable to other feeding modes.”

Putting the study’s findings into context for parents, Kramer said “the difference of three or four IQ points is not going to make a difference between a child finishing school or being a success or a failure.”

“This is not the difference between mental retardation and a genius.”

Commenting on the study,Dr. Jack Newman said that while the research does not prove without a doubt that breastfeeding raises intelligence levels in children, there are sound reasons for believing it could.

For one, breast milk contains naturally occurring omega 3 and 6 fatty acids and a compound known as insulin-like growth factor I, all of which have been linked to increased cognitive ability.

“It may be the breast milk itself, although it could be all the things that are associated with it,” he said, referring to the physical and emotional contact inherent in breastfeeding.

The co-founder of the Newman Breastfeeding Clinic and Institute in Toronto also said many women who are unable to breastfeed feel terrible guilt, but he believes too often they have been failed by the medical system.

“Whether every mother can successfully breastfeed is an issue, but in fact most of the mothers who have difficulty with breastfeeding shouldn’t have problems with breastfeeding,” he said. “Most mothers produce plenty of milk and if they got the help and the advice that they should be getting they would not ‘fail.”‘

The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, although a mother can continue to breastfeed along with giving solid foods until the child is two years or more.

Source: The Canadian Press, TORONTO
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmevM3DMQG78F-YAQcLYU4FdwOrg

Science has finally caught up with what mothers have been saying for years: they are super-women with super-powers thanks to an influx of hormones during pregnancy and labour to enable them to cope with the demands of child rearing.

Neuroscientists have discovered that women’s brains are rewired during that period, making them faster, more robust and less stressed than before.

Professor Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond, Virginia, found the lifelong transformation is caused by an influx of hormones, including estrogen and oxytocin, to the brain.

The revolutionary findings could lead to a new world of chemical therapies to transform “bad” mothers or those who are not maternal into “super mums”.

Professor Kinsley said, if females with a deficit of the brain chemical oxytocin can be identified, then “when they are first interacting with the baby you can give them a boost of oxytocin at a critical time”.

Sydney career woman Kim McGee supports the study results.

She said she was never “overly maternal” and had no burning desire to have children. However, two babies later, she has surprised herself at how much more efficient and smarter she has become.

“Even my husband says: `You’re very different’,” Ms McGee said.

“In a way you have more energy as you have two other people who are solely relying on you.”

Ms McGee said caring for two young children was hectic but she had learned to juggle it with full-time work in the finance industry.

“I think that the more women have to do, and the bigger the challenge, the more successful they are at it,” she said.

Professor Kinsley’s research was inspired by his wife’s ability to automatically tackle new tasks with the birth of their daughter. His wife went from being “ambivalent” about children to becoming a “super mum”.

“It was some biological change,” he said.

Laboratory tests on rats showed that the “reservoir of hormones” released enhance a mother’s ability to care for and protect her offspring.

These improvements in behaviour last a lifetime until a woman is in her 80s, he said.

“Our work is showing that, when a female becomes pregnant, her brain is changing dramatically. This is an important developmental period in her life.”

In the experiments, young mother rats showed better maze negotiation skills and memory, and decreased levels of stress and fear.

Professor Kinsley said it suggests the power of motherhood, of how it makes the brain more plastic and flexible, enabling it to respond to the demands of survival.

Dr Karleen Gribble, of the University of Western Sydney, said the influx of oxytocin during labour decreased a woman’s stress levels, making her more responsive to the baby.

“Mothering changes your brain, and part of the way it is changing is via the impact of a hormone like oxytocin,” she said.

Dr Sarah Buckley, who has researched the impact of oxytocin on mothers, said the hormone “reorganised the structure of the brain”.

“A lot of things women do in early parenting such as breastfeeding and holding the baby helps to keep oxytocin being released in a mother’s brains,” Dr Buckley said.

Source: NEWS.com.au, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,26278,23603717-5007185,00.html

Returning to work after maternity leave is one of the most difficult aspects of raising a baby, the results of a new nationwide survey of mothers indicate.

Of those surveyed, 29% cited returning to work after maternity leave as the most difficult aspect of raising a baby, while over half cited it as one of the most difficult aspects.

Not surprisingly, sleep deprivation was found to be the second most difficult aspect of having a baby. Other concerns faced by new parents included worrying about the health of a child and searching for quality childcare.

The results indicated that there are still a number of issues which parents would like to receive further information on. Altogether, 37% of respondents said they would like more information on child development, 30% wanted more information on caring for a sick baby, while 20% wanted more information on weaning.

When it came to the issue of bottle or breastfeeding, an almost equal number of respondents were in favour of each option. A significant number meanwhile opted for a combination approach, suggesting that many mothers no longer feel tied into making an ultimate choice and feel comfortable practising both bottle and breastfeeding.

However when it came to choosing the method of feeding, people with influence, such as healthcare professionals, family and friends, were found to play a large role in the decision making process.

Among those who chose to bottlefeed their child, the most important factor behind the decision was the return to work.

Meanwhile a number of factors were found to influence the decision to breastfeed, the main one being the health and wellbeing of the baby. Some mothers also opted for breastfeeding in the hope of developing a closer bond with their child in the early stages of life.

The survey was conduced by SMA Nutrition in association with Rollercoaster.ie

Source: Irish Health, Ireland
http://www.irishhealth.com/?level=4&id=13443

As a young migrant worker, Lei Gailing sought her fortune in China’s fast-industrializing and freewheeling south. She found a steady factory job and a less stable boyfriend, then became pregnant.

That decision carried implications that Ms. Lei never fully anticipated, marking her as something of a social outcast in a country that still strictly controls population growth and makes few concessions to women like her.

Today, at 41, Ms. Lei says she has no regrets, even after facing a life of bitter twists and turns: pretending to be divorced at one point to avoid bringing shame on her son and ultimately marrying a much older man in an effort to obtain the basic identification her boy needed to go to school or receive other social services.

For all this, Ms. Lei, who now lives with the older man in Beijing in what she describes as an abusive relationship, said she would do it all over again for her son. “I look at him today, and know it was worthwhile,” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “He is so lovely, I cannot regret it.”

In a society where until quite recently premarital sex was often punished, the issue of single motherhood has been slow to enter the public arena. But now, a new awareness of the issue is raising questions about the status of women in China, as well as other rights issues like the hukou, or residency permit, a central tool of population control passed down from the Maoist era that restricts movement by linking people to the towns of their birth.

The Chinese government has long maintained that the Communist Party liberated women in 1949 along with the rest of the country. But in an era of rapid modernization, China has lacked anything like a broad current of thought about women’s rights.

“When we argue that a woman owns the uterus, and it’s her right to decide whether to deliver the baby or not, people won’t buy it,” said Yuan Xin, director of psychology at the Consulting Center of Nankai University. “If you are a woman, your personal choice is monitored and supervised by a lot of others, and they expect you to do what everyone else does.”

Official statistics on the number of single mothers are unavailable in China. But with premarital sex now commonplace and women’s earning power growing, particularly in the wealthy cities of the east, experts believe their numbers are rising fast, albeit from a small base.

“This is of great significance,” said Li Ling, a professor of arts and sciences at Beijing Language and Culture University. “It’s hard for me to judge other people’s choices, good or bad, but it means a lot that women are making such decisions on their own, as a matter of choice. In Chinese tradition, women don’t have such rights. We are only the bearers of offspring for our husbands’ families.”

In many ways, Xie Jing, 33, a newspaper reporter in Shanghai, is typical of an emerging generation of single mothers who are professionals and whose choices on child-rearing are eased by their financial security.

Ms. Xie said that she became pregnant while she was engaged, but that her fiancé’s ambivalence over the unexpected news prompted her to set her own course. When her former fiancé asked her, “What is the point of having a child if we are no longer together?” she had a ready answer: raising the child alone.

“My quality of life isn’t so bad, so I don’t want to lower myself to staying with another person just for the sake of being together,” Ms. Xie said. “If that means I have to sacrifice a lot, so be it. But I am in a good situation now with my baby, and I’m not willing to lose it.”

Her son was born two years ago in a partly foreign-owned hospital, where registration of the pregnancy with a neighborhood committee — standard in most of China — was not required. Ms. Xie lives with her parents, who are retired and help take care of her boy. To all but her closest friends, she explains that the father is overseas on a three-year assignment. Her son bears Ms. Xie’s family name, and the father was told that if he did not accept legal responsibility as a parent, he would be kept at bay until the boy turned 18.

Asserting herself in this way was made easier by virtue of Ms. Xie’s residence in Shanghai, a wealthy city by China’s standards with relatively liberal provisions for awarding residency permits. “I checked out Shanghai’s Public Security Bureau’s Web site, and discovered an item indicating children born outside of marriage could apply for hukou,” Ms. Xie said. “The staff was mean to me when I applied, but there were written rules guaranteeing the rights of my child, so there was nothing they could do to prevent me.”

Every province and major city has some leeway in how it applies those rules. But for peasants and working-class mothers without much education, money or standing, choices can seem limited.

Zhong Yu, 23, a music teacher in Chongqing, one of China’s largest cities, said she considered getting an abortion when she recently discovered that she was pregnant. Abortion is legal, widespread and freely available in China, but she could not afford the hospital fees. She hid her situation from her family, and by the time she had saved enough money, she was five months pregnant — too late, she believed, to end the pregnancy safely.

Today Ms. Zhong calls the father, who has no fixed job, a “vagrant” and says she was silly to have become involved with him. “But when I saw my child, I thought no matter how hard my life will be, I will bring him up,” she added.

Ms. Lei, the mother in Beijing, also had few resources and, partly because of that, a difficult path. After returning to her village to give birth, she went to Beijing to look for work and a husband, leaving her son behind with her mother. But fearing he would be taunted as a bastard in the village, she brought him with her to Beijing when he reached school age.

In the capital, Ms. Lei faced new problems. Without a father she could not establish a hukou, or residency permit. In 2006, Ms. Lei described her plight on the Internet, drawing the interest of a Chinese journalist, who wrote about her. Soon afterward, men began contacting her with marriage inquiries.

She agreed to meet one of them one day under a highway overpass. He had described himself as 60, but looked at least 10 years older, she said. The man, a retired and widowed engineer with a mentally disabled son, said he needed an heir to continue his family line, and she needed the help of a man to register her son so he could attend school. Out of their mutual needs came a marriage of convenience.

“He needed a kid and I needed a home,” Ms. Lei said. “My kid needed to go to school, so we pooled together a family. There was no contract of any kind.”

They married, but their hasty pact quickly unraveled. The man balked at registering the boy in his name out of fear he could be breaking the law. Now, Ms. Lei said, he is cold toward her child and mean to her. For now, the boy, Jirong, 7, attends a neighborhood school that has looked the other way over his lack of a residency permit.

“Most people in this situation would have given away their child to others for adoption,” Ms. Lei said. “Almost no one would choose to bring up the child on her own.”

Source: New York Times, United States
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/world/asia/06china.html

The age-old battle between wives and their mothers-in-law is the reason women go through the menopause, researchers have concluded.

The younger women were more single-minded and selfish than their mothers-in-law and the behaviour led to the older women losing the ability to breed eventually.

The evolution of the menopause is thought to have started about 50,000 to 300,000 years ago and took place because it was the female of the species who left home to find a breeding partner.

The daughter-in-law had no blood relatives in the family she moved in with. The only genetic investment she had was with her own children. By contrast, mothers-in-law had to choose between having more children or helping to raise their grandchildren. With food often difficult to find, the mothers-in-law tended to avoid competition with their daughters-in-law and to help with the grandchildren instead.

The evolution of such behaviour led eventually, researchers suggest, to the older women losing the ability to breed. The menopause developed as a means to avoid competition between women.

“When more than one female breeds, every mouth you feed is one less for your own,” said Michael Cant, of the University of Exeter, who carried out the study with Rufus Johnstone, of the University of Cambridge. “One of our unique characteristics is we share food among family members but having another female producing a baby means the offspring are competing for food and helpers for many years.

“If it comes down to a choice between breeding and helping with other children, the younger woman has nothing to gain by helping because she’s not related to anyone in the group. But the older female can help to rear her grandchildren. It gives the young female the advantage. She’s going to breed no matter what.”

Humans are the only primate to have the menopause and it has long been a puzzle to scientists as to why it developed when so many other social animals, such as chimpanzees, meerkats and wild dogs, continue breeding into old age. Even long-lived creatures such as elephants breed into their sixties and baleen whales have been known to give birth in their nineties.

The “grandmother theory” was proposed 50 years ago to argue that women lived well beyond the age of fertility because they were programmed to help with their children’s offspring. The theory has won widespread support but has troubled some researchers who argued that the genetic benefits were too limited when measured against the cost of losing the ability to have children.

The researchers argued in their paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that there is surprisingly little overlap in the ages of motherhood and grandmotherhood.

Such rigidity suggests, said the researchers, that the “fertility schedule” is hard-wired into the genes.

Dr Johnstone said of the study: “It should open up new avenues for research on menopause and fertility in humans and provide new insights into the evolution of menopause in the two other species in which it occurs under natural conditions – killer whales and pilot whales.”

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3656046.ece

Having a baby makes you brainier — that was the rather surprising finding from an American study published earlier this month.

While in the first three months, “mumnesia” may mean she leaves her shopping in the supermarket car park and puts her handbag in the fridge — as one mother I knew did — the researchers found that in the long term, a mum’s memory and ability to multi-task improves.

In fact, it’s just one of a number of physical benefits that having a baby brings to mothers — and sometimes fathers.

But there are also the health downsides. Here, from the brain to the waistline, are some of the good — and bad — things about having children.

THE BENEFITS

Smarter brain

Doctors call it “maternal amnesia” but it is more commonly referred to as “mumnesia” or “nappy brain” — anyway, whatever it’s called, you know you’ve got it when you put your car keys in the cat’s bowl.

Men’s jokes about nappy brain are similar to those about the “time of the month”. And yet new US research says that “nappy brain”, although it exists, is a short-term phenomenon, probably due to sleep deprivation.

Previously, it was thought the cause was brain shrinkage — one study found that a pregnant woman’s brain shrinks by up to seven per cent.

But while argument rages about the cause, Allen Snyder, a leading Australian neuroscientist, says “women’s memory is not reduced during pregnancy — rather, their attention is on things that are more immediately crucial”, such as keeping that baby alive!

He described a woman’s brain as being like Albert Einstein’s; Einstein used to forget where he had put large cheques because he was a tad busy working out the theory of relativity.

American research on pregnant rats supports the idea that women who have had children are actually cleverer. It suggests that the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for memory, learning and emotion, might actually grow more neuron connections during pregnancy to accommodate an increasingly demanding environment.

Perhaps that’s why a mother can load a washing machine, feed mush into a little mouth and tell her other half what he forgot to buy at the supermarket, all at the same time.

Motherhood also gives women a more acute sense of sight. An American study found pregnant women massively outperformed non-pregnant ones in visual perception tests — usually a skill associated with men. It’s thought acute vision helps perceive threats to your offspring.

Reduced stress levels

This sounds surprising — after all, the arrival of a first baby can be an especially difficult time. “Having to reorientate as a mother is very stressful,” explains Martina Clett-Davies, sociologist and research fellow at the London School of Economics.

And it’s not just women who feel the stress of new parenthood. “Men go though this, too,” says Clett-Davies. “Many feel hard-done-by and ignored. At least women are recognised as mothers.”

However, it’s not the amount of stress that matters, but how you deal with it. Of course, there are those who suffer from the serious problem of post-natal depression (some estimates put this at as many as one-in- ten new mothers).

However, new research says most new mothers might actually be less stressed than non-mothers. The reason is oxytocin, a hormone produced by both men and women, but which women make more of to stimulate labour and breast milk.

Oxytocin is a sort of natural anti-depressant, it inhibits the release of stress hormones.

Lower risk of cancer

The good news: “Having children affects a woman’s risk of developing cancers, in most cases beneficially,” says Lucy Boyd, UK epidemiologist at Cancer Research. The risk of breast cancer drops by seven per cent with each birth; the risk for ovarian cancer drops by 40 per cent with the first child, and 55 per cent after the second; and for uterine cancer it drops by 30 per cent with the first child.

Some cancers seem to be linked to increased levels of oestrogen — some scientists believe having periods (which stop when you are pregnant) is a cancer risk factor.

“It’s the pattern of hormones associated with the menstrual cycle that are to blame,” says Professor Valerie Beral, Director of Cancer Research UK’s epidemiology centre in Oxford.

During pregnancy and breastfeeding, oestrogen levels tend to be lower. “Increased oestrogen equals increased risk of cancers.”

The bad news is that motherhood puts you at greater risk of cervical cancer — if you have lots of children. It’s not clear why, but as Professor Beral explains: “If a woman has eight or more children, it doubles the risk.”

THE DOWNSIDE

Weight gain

While Hollywood stars seem to drop the baby weight by simply breathing out, mortal women can struggle to lose the pounds afterwards. But there’s no sound physiological reason why, say experts.

So whatever your personal theories about how it’s affected your metabolism or the way your body stores fat, the fact is you’re fat because you’re eating too much.

Furthermore, breast-feeding mothers, who can burn an extra 500 calories a day, have even less excuse for being overweight.

“A lot of women take pregnancy as an excuse to eat more than usual — in the first few months you need only the equivalent of an extra glass of milk and piece of fruit,” is the somewhat depressing news from Paul Sacher, research director of MEND, an organisation that works with obese families.

He adds that fathers are also at risk of putting on weight. “Anecdotally, a lot of men are sporty till they get married. Family life is more sedentary.”

When Sacher and his team try to persuade overweight families to change eating habits, it’s often men who are most resistant. “They want to continue with the take-aways, white bread and Coke,” he explains.

Weight gain, as we’re regularly told, leads to a greater risk of a host of problems, from osteoarthritis to diabetes and heart conditions.

Gum disease

Pregnancy puts huge stress on the body, but at least one health fear is unfounded: it does not leach calcium from the teeth.

Nigel Carter, chief executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, says: “It’s an old wives’ tale. Once calcium is in the teeth, it can’t be metabolised for use elsewhere in the body.”

However, that doesn’t mean that having a baby is harmless for the teeth. “The vast majority of us have mild gingivitis, a form of gum disease. As a result of hormone changes during pregnancy, this can become worse,” says Carter.

The first sign is bleeding gums. If untreated, your teeth become loose and fall out. “You used to hear mothers say: ‘I lost the bottom set with baby number one, and the top set with number two,’” says Carter.

But these days, with better care — pregnant women are entitled to free dentistry — fewer lose their teeth.

Inability to talk coherently

Who among non-parents can ever comprehend the bone-crushing tiredness of the first year of a baby’s life? Not only do mums and dads feel groggy, they behave that way, too.

As Dr Louise Reyner a senior lecturer in human sciences at Loughbrorough University, explains, it is the frontal cortex of the brain which is affected by sleep deprivation.

“This part of the brain is responsible for language and reasoning,” she says.

A sleep-deprived person will have “difficulty with word-generating tasks”. In other words, talking — ever tried having a conversation with a new parent? The fact that all they can talk about is their offspring is not necessarily a sign of parental obsession, but of an inability to string together more complex thoughts.

Sleep deprivation will not only make us tired — scientists are increasingly linking it to a depressed immune system.

So, while it may seem logical for parents who constantly catch their baby’s colds to blame the playgroup their little darling attends as a hotbed of germ infestation, it could just be that their own defence against disease is damaged.

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://tinyurl.com/2ua92q

At some point during last month’s well-baby checkup for her son Isaac, Kamila McGinnis stopped listening to her pediatrician.

Isaac, who turns 3 in June, hasn’t shown much interest in toilet training. McGinnis wants him out of diapers and encourages him to use the potty. But, she says, her pediatrician told her to back off.

“She said, ‘He’ll know when it’s the right time for him,’ that it’s important to let him do it on his own,” says McGinnis, the mother of three in Timonium, Maryland. “In the back of my mind, I said to myself, ‘I disagree.’ I felt like my pediatrician was saying she knew more than I did.”

In many ways, pediatricians do know more than parents. When your doctor says your newborn needs to ride in a rear-facing car seat, don’t argue. When he says your 2-month-old with a 105-degree fever needs to get to the doctor’s office — and fast — you’d better listen.

But there are far more areas that are gray and have no science, or not very good science, to back them up, says our panel of pediatric experts. They say that sometimes, this means your pediatrician is giving you his or her opinion, not medical fact.

“There are several ways to approach many issues in pediatrics. There isn’t one clear-cut way,” says Dr. Robert Needlman, co-author of the latest edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. “Pediatricians really should make a distinction between what’s based on research and what’s based on our own particular beliefs.”

Since pediatricians don’t always make that distinction clear, here are examples of five parenting issues where there’s plenty of room to disagree with the pediatrician.

1. ‘Don’t pick up your baby in the middle of the night’

Dr. Jennifer Shu, a pediatrician in Atlanta, Georgia, and co-author of Heading Home with Your Newborn, says parents tell her all the time that their pediatricians have given them directives about their baby’s sleep.

“Parents tell me, ‘My pediatrician told me to let my baby cry it out, that they should be sleeping through the night without eating,” says Shu, a spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Rather than make the parent feel awful, we ought to have some latitude, some flexibility.”

Dr. Joyce Zmuda, a pediatrician in private practice in Owings Mills, Maryland, says she tells patients there’s lots of “wiggle room” on this issue. “They have to first understand that if they go to their baby in the middle of the night, they’re creating an expectation that the parent will always be there when they cry,” she says. “But if they understand that and just can’t stand to hear the baby crying and want to go to them, that’s fine with me. It’s a personal decision.”

2. ‘Baby should be at home with Mom’

Some pediatricians tell parents it’s best if baby stays at home until a certain age.

“There’s been a whole debate about this in the psychological literature,” Needlman says. “And the bottom line is that the timing of the day care isn’t as important as the quality of the day care. Poor-quality day care is bad for a kid at any age, as is poor-quality home care.”

He says that if your pediatrician tells you it’s best for your child to stay at home, this is just an opinion. “There was a time we thought a child younger than 3 in the care of anyone but the mother was just horrifying. That belief has been well, well dispelled,” he says.

3. ‘Don’t give your baby ‘triple nipple confusion”

If your pediatrician (or lactation counselor) tells you not to give your baby a bottle or pacifier because the baby might get “triple nipple confusion,” take it with a grain of salt, our experts tell us.

Dr. Hope Hamilton-Rodgers, a pediatrician in private practice in Rome, Georgia, says there’s not a lot of research to back up this assertion. “I have plenty of patients who do bottle, breast and pacifier from the get-go and don’t have nipple confusion,” she says.

Dr. Laura Jana, Shu’s co-author of the newborn book and of Food Fights, a nutrition book for parents and kids, says some newborns do experience nipple confusion, so she offers this advice: “I tell them if they’re concerned about nipple confusion, they can do just breastfeeding for a week or two to make sure their baby’s getting the hang of it, and then if everything’s working OK, try a paci or a bottle if they want.”

4. ‘Your baby must eat solid foods by 6 months’

The standard advice for parents is to start their babies on solids sometime between 4 and 6 months of age. But if your baby’s that age and isn’t interested in real food and wants to get all his calories by breast milk or formula, there’s no reason to panic, Shu says. “Some are just slower to take to the textures of food and want just the bottle or the breast.”

Jana, a spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, says all children are different. She remembers one of her three children was unenthusiastic about food until she was 9 months old. “My son, on the other hand, at 4 months old cried between spoonfuls because it wasn’t coming fast enough,” she says.

Needlman agrees there’s no reason to panic if your 6-month-old doesn’t want to eat solid food, but it’s a good idea to visit the pediatrician to make sure the dislike is just your baby’s personal preference and not a sign of a health problem.

5. ‘You must take the pacifier away’

Some pediatricians get very opinionated about the age at which to wean a child off the pacifier. But our experts say as long as it’s not interfering with the child’s speech, or causing dental problems, it’s OK to let a child soothe herself with a pacifier.

“There’s not a lot of science on this,” Shu says. “It’s not cut and dried by any means.”

The bottom line: when you’re in the pediatrician’s office, you should try to separate medical fact from medical opinion.

This isn’t always easy.

“This is a big deal for mothers and even bigger for new mothers who trust their judgment even less,” says Mia Redrick, a “mom coach” and author of Time for mom-ME. “Often it’s hard for mothers to distinguish medical advice from a pediatrician’s personal opinion.”

Needlman offers this advice: If you’re not sure if you’re getting fact or opinion, ask. “It’s a good thing when a parent says ‘Really? I don’t want to do that,’” he says. “You can challenge your pediatrician along the lines of saying, ‘That advice you gave me doesn’t feel comfortable to me. Can we talk about some other options?’”

Source: CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/03/13/ep.pediatrician.advice/

Concerned by the whopping number of children in the age group of six to 59 months suffering from anaemia, the government is taking several steps, including providing supplementary and fortifying food and vitamins supplements to rectify the malady.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told Lok Sabha on Wednesday that 69.5 percent of children in the age group of six to 59 months are suffering from anaemia of which 63 percent are in the urban areas and 71.5 percent in the rural areas.

“Anaemia is a multifaceted problem. The important reasons for widespread anaemia are inadequate intake and absorption of iron from cereal based diet, inadequate consumption of green leafy vegetables and citrus fruits,” he said.

He also pointed out that poverty and illiteracy are the contributory factors leading to anaemia among children.

Pointing out that the government is highly concerned about the matter; he said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently held a meeting to chalk out a strategy to deal with the problem.

The ministers for women and child development, human resource development, rural development and health attended the meeting, he said.

“We have decided to introduce fortified food in mid-day meals,” he said.

He said under the reproductive and child health programme (RCH-11) the government is providing iron and folic acid tablets to all pregnant and lactating women and preschool children to control anaemia.

“Now it has been decided that children six months to five years would be given 20 mg iron and 100 mcg folic acid supplement in liquid form,” he said.

Children in the age group of six to 10 years would be provided with 30 mg iron and 250 mcg of folic acid, while adolescents in the age group of 11-18 years would receive the same dose as adults, he added.

“Children in the age group 0-6 years receive supplementary nutrition. Supplementary food is also provided through national programme of nutritional support to primary education,” he added.

The minister said they are planning to provide vitamin A supplements to children till five years of age. Also, health ministry has launched a pilot project on fortification of micronutrients with flour and oil.

Ramadoss said the government is planning a huge awareness campaign on breast-feeding and the ASHAs or the women health volunteers have been asked to inform the villagers to use locally nutritious food. (…)

He said even children born in affluent families are anaemic. “About 56 percent of children in affluent families are anaemic.” (…)

Source: Times of India, India
http://tinyurl.com/288psg

The number of women giving birth in their 40s has reached record levels.

And experts have predicted that these numbers will increase further as new fertility techniques allow women to postpone motherhood.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that the conception rate for women aged 40-44 rose by 6% between 2005 and 2006 – the fastest growth in any age group.

By comparison, the number of teenagers becoming pregnant in England and Wales fell from 41.4 to 40.7 conceptions per 1,000.

The trend is exemplified by an increasing number of celebrity mothers who are becoming pregnant after they pass 40.

Sophie Rhys-Jones, the Countess of Wessex, and actresses Jane Seymour and Marcia Cross have all recently given birth after their 40th birthday.

Peter Bowen-Simpkins, co- medical director of the London Women’s Clinic, which has bases in Cardiff and Swansea, said, “Many women, especially professional women, are putting off having children because of career prospects, not losing a promotion, because of high mortgage payments and not finding the right partner. For busy women, sometimes it can be hard to settle down.”

“It’s not as straightforward as saying it’s because women are going off and having a career – in reality these women are conceiving with blokes so it’s a case of a couple choosing when to conceive. And lots of people have become ambivalent towards having children so they are taking longer to decide whether they want to uproot their lives in this way.”

The NHS does not currently allow women over 38 to have a free cycle of IVF, so those who need help conceiving later in life are spending thousands of pounds to achieve the belated dream of becoming a mother.

Many also rely on donated eggs because the quality of their own declines rapidly after the age of 42.

But this could be set to change as increasing numbers of clinics are offering women the chance to freeze their eggs in their 30s

Mr Bowen-Simpkins, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, added, “If we go back to Victorian times women would be having their 10th baby in their 40s, but after the age of 42 fertility drops extremely fast because the quality of eggs decline. For some women it will happen naturally, for others it doesn’t and they need help. We are now doing a lot of cycles with donated eggs.

“Freezing eggs is becoming increasingly common for younger women in their 30s – about 80% will survive.

“This means that these women will be able to have their own genetic children when, at the moment, they are having someone else’s genetic child.”

Julie Bentley, chief executive officer of the FPA, formerly known as the Family Planning Association, said, “Every woman has to make her own decision about the right time to have a baby.

“As long as women are aware that their fertility naturally declines over the age of 35, and that it will prob-ably take a bit longer to get pregnant, late motherhood is a valid choice.

“These figures illustrate that the traditional approach of ‘get married young and have children’ isn’t the reality for many British women.”

Source: ic Wales, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/2e5ue6

Pregnant women who perceive having had a well-balanced relationship with their parents during their childhood will experience fewer difficulties in the transition to motherhood, as opposed to women whose relationship with their parents was characterized by unresolved anger or rejection – reveals a new study conducted at the University of Haifa. The study also found that women who tend to deny negative experiences in early childhood relationships expected to experience a relationship with their future children characterized by less warmth compared to other women who participated in the study.

The research, which was conducted by Ora Gazit under the direction of Dr. Miri Scharf, examined 160 Jewish women in the last trimester of their first pregnancy who live with their husband or partner. The researchers examined the expectations, thoughts and emotions of the pregnant women regarding themselves as future mothers and their future relationships with their babies – based on two approaches related to identity building. The first focuses on the way people perceive their early childhood relationship with their parents and how this is reflected in their thoughts, perceptions and behavior during their lives. The second focuses on existing differences between people whose motivation is derived from an aspiration for success and those who are motivated by an aspiration to avoid failure.

The results of the study revealed that women whose early childhood relationships with their parents were characterized by rejection and unresolved conflicts, expected to experience a high measure of separation anxiety, thought their child would be more demanding of them and thought they would set a lot boundaries, compared to other women in the study.

Among women who described their early childhood relationships with their parents as being characterized by rejection but who had difficulty recalling many of the events representative of this relationship, the study found a majority had positive thoughts about their impending motherhood and towards their unborn child. However, in comparison to the remainder of the women in the study, they expected to develop a less warm and close relationship with their baby. The women who had a balanced view of their early relationship with their parents had the most optimal expectations towards their impending motherhood. They expected to feel a low level of separation anxiety from their child, thought childrearing would be easy and that their relationship would be characterized by warmth.

In addition, the study found that women who were characterized by wanting to advance and reach set goals were positive and more optimistic, in comparison to women who were characterized by abstention and concern with self-defense, security and responsibility. According to the researchers, women in the first group thought they would be more fulfilled in parenthood, saw themselves and their child in a more positive light, thought they would be more productive and warm as mothers and expected to have good communication with their child. “The results of the research show that there is great importance in evaluating thoughts, perceptions and feelings about parental identity during pregnancy. Such an evaluation will enable early identification of women who are concerned they will have difficulty contending with parental roles and offer them tools that will help them adapt better to the transition to motherhood,” summarized the researchers.

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/uoh-wwt022608.php