Monday, January 17, 2011

The Top Five Benefits of Baby Massage

ntroduction:

Baby massage is becoming a growing trend, not only because it is a unique way to bond with your baby, but because it offers so many benefits to your child. Here are the top five benefits that massage offers babies.

Massage For Blood Flow:

Your baby was born with an underdeveloped circulatory system, as all babies are. Massage stimulates blood flow to your baby's extremities. It takes your baby's body a while to get acclimated to the world outside the womb, and by giving your baby regular massages, you can help strengthen their circulatory system. This helps your baby's blood flow.

Massage For Immune System:

As a result of the stimulation to your baby's body, and the increased blood flow to each part of their body, your baby's immune system may be improved. This means your baby's resistance to common illnesses will be built up, reducing their chances of infections.

Relaxation For Tense Muscles:

Just like when you exercise, your muscles can become tense. Your baby is also working their muscles, all day long, by learning how to hold up their head, discovering fingers on their hands, and toes on their feet. No matter what action you or your baby does, there is always some type of muscle contraction needed for that action. Massage is a great way to relieve the tension in muscles.

Massage As a Stress Reliever:

Baby's learn at a much faster rate than adults. When you try to learn something new, you become stressed. Your baby is learning many things all at once, and you can bet their stress level is often very high. The body's natural reaction when stress occurs is to release a hormone called cortisol. By giving your baby regular massages, you can reduce the base amount of cortisol in your little one's blood, so they will feel less stressed between massages. Your baby's body will also release a hormone called endorphins, just as any adults body would. Endorphins are released during exercise, which is why you feel better when you get up and move. Your baby is not able to get up and exercise. The good news is that these good hormones are also released when you are relaxing. By giving your baby a massage, you can help his/her body release more endorphins, thereby giving them that warm, tingly feeling of calm. With an increased level of endorphins, and decreased level of cortisol, your baby will have a sense of well-being during, and between, massage.

Massage As a Pain Reliever:

Because of the release of the endorphins, your baby can also be relieved of pains caused by trapped wind, constipation, teething, and sinus congestion, because endorphins also serve as your body's natural pain reliever.


http://www.listmyfive.com/a50fc222/The-Top-Five-Benefits-of-Baby-Massage

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Are You Hiring a Lactation Consultant?

"When I get annoyed or feel under pressure, I cave in just to get people to leave me alone. That's why we are looking for a doula and a lactation consultant: people to help us with labor, delivery and breastfeeding." Expectant mom

breastfeeding baby

Excellent point and a deep understanding of who she is under pressure. Let's face it, having a baby is living life under pressure even in the best of circumstances. What are you going to do when the pressure comes in its various forms? Do you know the breastfeeding stumbling blocks?

  • Let me take the baby to the nursery so you can sleep
  • Let's give the baby some formula so you can rest
  • You're not making enough milk for your big baby- he needs a bottle
  • Your baby is feeding too frequently; you're not making enough milk
  • Your baby needs more calories than breastmilk (I'll talk about this in my next post)
  • Colostrum is not enough for your baby- he's hungry
  • You're being selfish: I want to feed the baby, too
  • You can't possibly feed your baby every 1.5-2 hours- you'll be exhausted
  • Let the baby cry; you're feeding her too often
  • You're spoiling her by feeding her every time she makes a sound
  • Your baby is too old to breastfeed
  • Your baby needs more milk now that he is older

What other myths and bad information did you hear when trying to persevere with breastfeeding?

Could it be that the people saying these things are totally clueless about how breastfeeding works?

Become the breastfeeding advocate in your area. Speak the truth. Find pregnant women for whom you can dispel these myths. Empower women to nurture their babies with human milk. The truth you speak and the truth they embrace will bring freedom to both of you.


Thank you Debbie Page

http://www.thenewbornbaby.com/breastmilk_kills_cancer_cells/bid/15476/Are-You-Hiring-a-Lactation-Consultant


breastfeeding laws by state

http://www.ncsl.org/IssuesResearch/Health/BreastfeedingLaws/tabid/14389/Default.aspx?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d2e470d25ec4e0c%2C0

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

l Pregnant Women Should Watch for Signs of Pre-eclampsia

If there’s one rule about the type of pregnant woman who develops pre-eclampsia, it’s that there are no rules. “It’s pretty much an equal opportunity disease,” says Kathleen Mahoney, APN, prenatal clinical nurse specialist at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J.

Also called pregnancy induced hypertension, pre-eclampsia occurs in about 2% to 7% of healthy women, but both incidence and severity are greater in women with risk factors, such as multifetal gestation, chronic hypertension, previous pre-eclampsia, diabetes, obesity and thrombophilia, according to the medical textbook “Obstetrics: Normal and Problem Pregnancies,” published in 2007.

But risk factors alone don’t dictate who will develop the life-threatening condition, which is sometimes responsible for maternal deaths, says Jane Salzone-Johnson, RN-C, BSN, nurse manager of labor and delivery and high-risk antepartum at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J.

“Recently an Asian woman, who didn’t have any risk factors except that she was having twins, was brought in by ambulance [while] seizing,” Salzone-Johnson says. “We delivered her babies, and she did very well. But here’s someone who didn’t fit the category — she had good prenatal care and was followed regularly — and she came into the hospital seizing.”

The condition affects the vascular system by increasing blood pressure, which can decrease or block blood flow to the placenta-fetal unit. To date, the only known way to resolve the condition is delivery.

Since there is no known cause, there is no way to prevent the condition. “We treat everyone when they’re in prenatal care as if it’s something they’re going to get — we take blood pressure at every visit, weigh people at every visit to check if they’re starting to accumulate fluid,” Mahoney says. “Prenatal care is the foundation for detection, education and entry into treatment.”

Serious Risks

If left untreated, pre-eclampsia can cause stroke, stillbirth and maternal death. The disease’s outward symptoms, which usually appear in the third trimester, include swelling in the face, hands and feet, blurred vision and epi-gastric pain. As soon as medical professionals notice an indicator, such as a blood pressure increase from 110 over 70 to 130 over 85, extra weight gain or decreased urine output, a woman’s blood and urine are tested and she’s placed on a maternal fetal monitor, Salzone-Johnson says.

“If the blood work comes back normal, the doctor is likely to tell her to go home and be on limited activity and come back in a week,” she says.

In more severe cases, a diagnosis leads to immediate delivery. “No matter what week gestation; she could be 24 weeks and could be delivered,” Salzone-Johnson says. “In pre-eclampsia, the placenta is not nourishing the baby, so the baby is not going to get any larger or get any more nourishment from the placenta.”

Regardless of how quickly delivery occurs, patients receive magnesium sulfate, which lessens the chance of the condition worsening to eclampsia and the mother suffering from convulsions. Antihypertensive medications are given to lower severely high blood pressure. If the gestational age is 24 to 34 weeks, corticosteroids are administered to accelerate fetal lung maturity.

“If you have pre-eclampsia, we’ll do everything to prevent eclampsia,” Mahoney says. “All of the medication and even the decision to deliver is based on the desire not to have the women seize. If you have an eclamptic seizure, you’ll have the same movements as a tonic-clonic seizure. You could lose consciousness, and because you have this massive kind of muscle activity, you could have decreased oxygen to the baby.”

Additionally, the seizures could lead to maternal cerebral hemorrhage and fetal death or brain injury from oxygen deprivation, says Maria DeMarinis Smilios, MS, ACNS-BC, assistant director of nursing for maternal child services at Flushing Hospital Medical Center in Queens, N.Y.

Rest and Recovery

Despite the potential severity of the outcomes, the majority of cases end well, nurses say.

Mothers on magnesium sulfate can have vaginal births and recover quickly from the effects of the magnesium sulfate, which include lethargy, hot flashes and overall malaise, they add.

“Mothers are still at risk for developing seizures 24 to 72 hours after birth, so we keep mothers in the post-anesthesia care unit and on magnesium sulfate for 24 hours after birth until they are stabilized,” Smilios says. “We keep the lights dim, a quiet environment and minimize the visitors to keep her from being overly stimulated.”

At Flushing, mothers are wheeled to the nursery to see and, if possible, touch their babies. Most facilities encourage mothers to pump their breasts or breast-feed as the benefits of breast-feeding outweigh the effects of the magnesium sulfate, Smilios says.

Over the six-week postpartum period, the mother will eliminate the excess fluid and her blood pressure will normalize, Salzone-Johnson says.

From the moment it’s detected to the time of delivery, nurses should advise mothers that with proper treatment, it is possible to have a healthy baby, Smilios says.

“As long as it’s identified early, it’s treatable,” Smilios says. “It’s not something that will harm the mother dramatically or the fetus dramatically, and the outcomes are very successful.”

More than anything nurses can do to minimize the impact of the disease is remain educated, Mahoney says.

“You really need to keep track of the literature because there are patients who come to you and they can’t walk and they can’t talk and they aren’t engaged in their care, so you have to be able to give them the tools to help them be fully engaged,” Mahoney says. “And the more you know, the more they will know and the better off they’re going to be.”

http://news.nurse.com/article/20101227/NATIONAL01/312270001/-1/frontpage

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Another Hypnobabies story, from France!!

Kerry received this email from a mom in France who did the home-study course!

Hello,

I’d like to take a minute to thank the Hypnobabies team for helping me have the best birth experience of my three children.

I live overseas in France and had to go through my first pregnancy without the help of my mom, sister or good friends. I was learning lots of pregnancy related vocabulary in French, trying to navigate through the medical system here, and in retrospect, I was like a little girl who did what everyone said without really thinking about what kind of birth I wanted to have. I had an epidural (after having been stuck 4 times with the needle) and my son was born early in the morning.

I never thought that the birth of my next child would be much different, but my water broke first and we arrived at the hospital to wait while the anesthesiologist was busy with an emergency c-section. I hadn’t taken any birthing classes since my first pregnancy and wasn’t mentally prepared to handle a natural birth. I panicked and didn’t know how to breath or focus. By they came for the epidural, I felt like my body was going to be ripped in half. They tried 16 times to put the needle in my spine before I told them to stop and examine me – my daughter basically came flying out as soon as I lied down on the table. I had less pain the next day than with my first birth, but the 16 holes in my back made me promise myself that for the next children, I would do things my own way.

When I found out I was pregnant last November, I decided that I wanted a natural, home birth. I called all the midwives in my area, but unfortunately in France, there are few midwives who agree to this because they are not insured for home births. I next looked into birthing clinics but they only exist in the larger metropolitan areas. The midwife that agreed to do my birthing classes gave me the alternative – have the baby at the hospital and leave the next day if both the baby and I were healthy. The midwives then do the check-ups at your home for the next 4 days. In order to really prepare for the birth, I started looking into more methods for a pain free birth that I could do at home. That’s when I stumbled on to the Hypnobabies website. I really enjoyed the testimonies from other moms and when I started listening to the CD’s, I really felt at peace with my choice.

So on August 18th I woke around 7:30 with a contraction that was slightly painful…since I was just 4 days from term I had a feeling that this was going to be the day. Throughout the morning, I prepared breakfast for my two older children, husband and parents-in-law and did some cleaning around the house. At lunch I told my husband that the contractions were getting stronger and that if they continued then the baby would certainly come that night. He was very glad that the birth happened while he was on vacation! After lunch, I dropped my kids off at a friend’s house and she said that she could bring them home if I had to leave for the hospital. All this time, the contractions were coming about every 20 minutes and I kept using the Hypnobabies technique that minimizes the pain but lets you move about and talk to others.

I returned home and decided to take a bath around 4:30 and listen to my favorite Hypnobabies CD track. My husband had left to help a neighbor get a load of firewood, so I told him to keep his phone on and to hurry! At 5:00, I called my husband and told him he had better hurry home…then I called the hospital and told them I would be arriving in the next 30 minutes. My contractions started speeding up and I was using the Hypnobabies techniques, walking, and a gym ball during each contraction. Then my husband took a quick shower, but our friend called and couldn’t bring the kids home so my husband went to get them and I started panicking because I felt something like the head. I checked myself and wasn’t sure what it was, but later the midwife told me it was the water bag. She said I was very lucky that it didn’t break or I would have had the home birth I so wanted! So I was finally able to leave for the hospital at 6:00 and the whole time I kept praying there would be no traffic jams and I held on the handle in the car to keep from sitting completely down.

We arrived at the hospital 20 minutes later, directly at the emergency room when I felt my water start to break. The nurse wheeled me to the maternity level and directly into the delivery room, where I barely had time to get undressed before my water starting trickling even more. The midwife examined me and said that I was fully dilated, so she had me lie down and said not to do anything so she could get ready. Well, my baby didn’t agree with that…he was ready! The water bag had completely descended and burst and three pushes later, my second son was born. My husband arrived on the second push…he had to park the car. I asked the midwife to let the cord continue to beat until she cut it, which she did.

My son barely made a sound when he came out – a small cry and then he snuggled up to me. I do like this hospital because they leave you, the baby, and the father to bond for about 30 minutes until they come back to deliver the placenta and clean up. Our little Owen was so calm that I had to ask if he was even breathing! I believe that my birthing choice and the fact that I was able to stay calm, focused and in a hypnotic state had an enormously positive influence on my son. I honestly feel like I was in charge of this birth. I was able to keep it natural with no epidural, no perfusions, no exams every 30 minutes. The choices were mine and I was able to leave the next day. Owen is a wonderful addition to our family and we can’t wait to complete it with a fourth baby in the next year or two.

My midwife asked if there were any plans to translate the CD’s – she enjoys learning about new techniques to include in her birthing classes. If you ever are interested in that, I do translation work here in France and would be happy to discuss that option.



Cordially,

Merry Gilliot

Chênehutte-Trèves-Cunault, France
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=11688&post=75355&uid=216516692353#post75355

Monday, January 10, 2011

great picture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/307400097/

Monday, January 3, 2011

The Business Of Being Born, WATCH IT FREE

http://www.documentarystream.com/the-business-of-being-born/