Why men get baby blues

A much-anticipated new baby arrives into the world, full of fresh promise and wonder, carrying its parents’ hopes, dreams and expectations on its tiny little shoulders.

While it’s meant to be the most joyous of all life experiences, for some parents, their newborn baby brings with it an incapacitating psychological illness: postnatal depression (PND).

It affects more than 15 per cent of new mothers and 10 per cent of new fathers.

But the real figures may be much higher, says Belinda Horton, CEO of the Post and Antenatal Depression Association (Panda).

By Lollie Barr © Herald and Weekly Times

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Ellen Pompeo Explains Skipping Maternity Leave for Baby

New mom Ellen Pompeo (pictured) skipped maternity leave from Grey's Anatomy after the birth of her daughter Stella Luna, and she seems to indicate in an interview that she realizes some may have wondered why she had decided it was so important to get right back to work.

She told Self Magazine: "A lot of people couldn't understand why I wouldn't take my maternity leave. I felt like I needed to work while I had this opportunity. The writers and producers were really gracious and wrote my scenes so I could pre-shoot them."

She spoke about some of the other issues that all moms face when she revealed her thoughts after hearing the news. She said: "I got pregnant and I was like, 'Oh God, it worked! Oh, no!' Will I know how to do everything right?"

By Phillipa Bourke ©2004 - 2010

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Conjoined twins in London for op

The conjoined twin boys born to a Cork couple last December have travelled to London to prepare for their separation operation next month.

The procedure to separate Hassan and Hussein Benhaffaf is due to take place on April 7 in London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

The boys were born in London on December 2 and since then, their progress has been carefully monitored by Great Ormond Street and Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH).

They travelled to London yesterday with their parents Angie and Azzedine and their two sisters, Malika and Iman. The family were flown by the Air Coprs to the RAF airbase at Northolt in London. They were joined on board by a team from Cork University Hospital’s emergency department and a nurse from the neonatal intensive care team at CUMH.

By Deborah Condon Copyright © 2010

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Stress during pregnancy can increase the risk of asthma in infants

A recent study has found that the offspring of pregnant women who suffered high stress levels are at a higher risk of developing asthma. According towww.worldnewsnetwrok.com, a difference between the cord blood immune pattern of the offspring born to a stressed mother and an offspring born to a mother with lower stress levels has been found. The difference in the pattern could very well be associated with the risk of becoming asthmatic sometime later in life. The study was conducted by researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

As per www.health.am, the research was conducted on pregnant women from about 557 families living in various cities facing different stressors. It was found that the cord blood structure in certain infants was different from certain others depending upon the stress levels of the mothers.

© 2008

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City's maternity hospitals will get cash to move

Dublin's three maternity hospitals will be able to move to new locations as planned -- despite the economic downturn.

There had been fears that a freeze in the Health Service Executive's capital budget could have an impact on the plans.

However, HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm said he was confident that the hospitals would be able to move as planned, in the next five to seven years.

The Coombe Women's Hospital is due to move to the site of Tallaght Hospital, the Rotunda Hospital to the site of the Mater Hospital, while the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, is due to move to the St Vincent's University Hospital site.

By Fiona Dillon

© Herald.ie 2008

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Why pregnant women suffer bad memories

Pregnant women would be wise not to lose sight of their handbag or mobile phone, research suggests.

Among the many odd effects that pregnancy can have, one of them appears to be increasing the risk of losing things.

Scientists found women in the later stages of pregnancy tend to suffer a loss of spatial memory -- the memory of locations and positions of objects.

The problem was apparent in the last six months of pregnancy and lasted at least three months after a woman had given birth.

Experts believe it can be traced to the effect of pregnancy hormones on the brain.

© Herald.ie 2008 By John von Radowitz

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Young children call 911, help their mother deliver baby

Two young children called 911 for advice on how to help their mother deliver her baby after she quickly went into labor at home.

Faith and Jabari Sanders were expecting a new sibling to join the family soon, but they didn’t expect on March 9 that they would be the ones bringing their new brother Joseph into the world.

Their mother, Alana Sanders, began having labor pains around 1:30 a.m., shortly after their father, Geoffrey, had left for work.

“She thought it was a bowel movement,” Geoffrey Sanders later told the San Francisco Chronicle. “She sat down and nothing was happening as far as that was concerned.”

Alana Sanders, 36, realized that she was going into labor. Past experience had proven that she was quick to give birth, and it soon became clear that she was going to deliver her baby at home.

Copyright © 2006-2009 By Shawn Douglas

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Dublin Maternity Hospitals will move to new sites

HSE CEO Prof Brendan Drumm has said he is confident that the three Dublin maternity hospitals will be able to move to their new locations as planned in the next five-to-seven years, despite the current economic climate.

The Coombe Hospital is due to move to the site of Tallaght Hospital, the Rotunda Hospital is due to move to the site of the Mater Hospital, while the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, is due to move to the site of St Vincent’s University Hospital.

Despite overcrowding and a need for modern facilities being well documented in all three maternity hospitals there have been fears that their development plans would have to be shelved due to a freeze in the HSE’s capital budget.

However, Prof Drumm told IMN the move would go ahead.

By Priscilla Lynch

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Baby steps towards empathy

PREPARING CHILDREN for the future is one of the most important tasks any society can set itself. And while the acquisition of skills and knowledge are the fundamentals of an education system, there is a growing body of research which suggests that children need a parallel set of social and emotional skills to help them develop key life skills of resilience and adaptability.

In many cases, these skills are learned naturally through everyday life at home and in school. But, what happens if they aren’t? Canadian social entrepreneur Mary Gordon says the absence of these social and emotional skills results in bullying and disruption and also impedes children’s learning. “Children’s emotional intelligence is now known to be a predictor of positive life outcomes such as good mental health, successful relationships, academic and career success and civic responsibility and engagement,” she says.

Gordon was in Dublin recently to give a classroom demonstration of her internationally recognised programme, The Roots of Empathy. The programme is based on the simple premise that children can learn empathy by observing the close interactions between a parent and baby. While here, Gordon introduced two classes of school children in Tallaght to a mother and her six-month-old baby. The children sat around a mat on the floor watching and chatting about the baby with her mother and Gordon. They smiled, giggled and asked lots of questions as they watched the baby grab and play with soft toys, pull herself along the mat and gurgle with joy.

By Sylvia Thompson © irishtimes.com

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Obesity leads to 'alarmingly' high risks in pregnancy

WOMEN WHO are significantly overweight while pregnant suffer an “alarmingly” high rate of medical complications, new Irish research has found.

The study of pregnant women, carried out by researchers at UCD’s Centre for Human Reproduction in the Coombe Hospital in Dublin, confirms the risk to pregnancy outcomes associated with obesity.

The study, which analysed data from 5,824 women who delivered a baby at the Coombe in 2007, found pregnancy in severely obese women was complicated by hypertension in 35.8 per cent of cases, and by gestational diabetes in 20 per cent of women.

The complications necessitated an extremely high rate of obstetric intervention, the study noted, with the hospital witnessing an induction rate of 42 per cent in obese women, and a Caesarean rate of 45 per cent.

By Eoin Burke-Kennedy ©2010 irishtimes.com

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Foods Pregnant Women Should Shun

CBS News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a practicing OB-GYN, said on "The Early Show" pregnant women should have a well-rounded nutritious diet. But in that diet, they shouldn't eat certain foods that may harm the baby.

One of those foods is cooked seafood high in mercury. Ashton explained the bigger and older the fish, the more mercury it may contain.

According to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines, women should avoid swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish during their pregnancies.

The same goes for raw seafood.

By Dr. Jennifer Ashton ©2010 CBS

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In Defense of Baby Einstein: The Educational DVDs May Not Teach Kids, But They Help Parents

Another day, another study showing that “educational” programming for babies isn’t. The latest research, which came out yesterday, shows that infants between 1 and 2 don’t pick up any language skills from Baby Wordsworth, a DVD in the Baby Einstein series. The paper adds to a huge body of evidence that, with very few exceptions, TV shows and videos are at best no help in teaching anything to young kids.

I have an 11-month-old, so I’ve spent the past 11 months—scratch that, 20 months—being inundated with messages about how best to raise a child. Also, before my daughter was born, I made an extensive study of Baby Einstein and other supposedly enriching media for infants as part of a cover story for our Japanese edition. The story isn’t online, but here is what it said about the DVDs:

They probably don’t harm kids, per se, unless they’re used at the expense of parent-child interaction. But that’s the problem—too often, they are serving as the latest variation on the “electronic babysitter” ... Every developmental psychologist interviewed for this story had harsh words for [Baby Einstein]. All of them pointed out that it isn’t interactive—it bombards young kids with images and sounds but doesn’t give them feedback when they respond ... Rather than plop your baby in front of a DVD—even an educational one—psychologists say it’s far better to read to him.

By Mary Carmichael © 2010 Newsweek, Inc.

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Assisted reproduction does not affect baby

Whether a woman gets pregnant the ‘traditional’ way or by assisted reproduction appears to have no effect on the birthing process or the baby, the results of a new study indicate.

Norwegian researchers looked at the pregnancies of more than 1.2 million women who gave birth between 1984 and 2006. Of these pregnancies, over 8,200 were as a result of assisted reproduction, such as IVF (in vitro fertilisation).

They found no differences between the birth weight and gestational age of the babies who had been conceived spontaneously and those who had been conceived following assisted reproduction. There were also no differences between the risks of having a small baby or having a premature baby.

The team did find a slightly higher risk of breech births among the assisted pregnancies. However their findings suggest that this is due not to the technology used in assisted reproduction, but to other factors – namely the fact that mothers who undergo assisted reproduction tend to be older on average, have shorter pregnancies and fewer previous births.

By Deborah Condon Copyright © 2010

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Should you eat eggs when pregnant?

Very early on in my pregnancy I found myself heading towards Bayswater for no other reason than a need to satisfy a sudden intense craving for a parmesan custard from Le Cafe Anglais. My desire was so strong I could smell it - £4.75 worth of wobbly, cheesy goodness was going to be mine, and nothing was going to keep me from it. No one would know, I reasoned, so why not, just this once?

I'd got as far as the Whiteleys escalator before I realised with a flush of shame that this behaviour was identical to that of a secret smoker. Not only might I compromise my own health and that of my baby, but I was also contemplating doing it behind my partner's back. The sneaking around was particularly heinous as he had, unprompted, also given up all the favourite foods of mine I was unable to eat. We had agreed I should be mindful of the risks of contracting salmonella from partially cooked eggs, so there was no way I could justify eating Rowley Leigh's custard. Was there?

By Catherine Philips © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

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