The News Review:
- parenting colic crying baby
- Health visitors plan to boost Tories’ family image
- Written by Sola Ogundipe
- Health Scan: Childhood memories affect expectations of motherhood
- Nigeria: For the Child to Survive, Innocence Must Die
parenting colic crying baby
The Australian – Mar 15, 2008
As Barker notes, the diagnosis is made on what the baby is doing, such as incessant crying, grunting, unsettled sleeping or tucking its legs up under its body. In effect, colic refers to a pattern of behaviour, not the huge array of physical or environmental factors that might be causing it. Dr Harriet Hiscock, of the Centre for Community Child Health at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, believes there has been simply too much emphasis on colic as a gastrointestinal problem. She cites a 2006 study led by Ralf Heine at the hospital which tracked more than 100 colicky babies but found no correlation between their bouts of crying and the pH (acid) levels in their gullets – undermining the notion that reflux sparked their hysteria. Says Hiscock: “There will be some babies who are too sensitive to their environment both internally and externally, and those babies might be getting a spasm in their gut that causes pain, but beyond that we can’t say for sure that colic is caused by gut problems – or reflux for that matter. ” This is not to claim that reflux, or stomach pain, never causes an infant’s distress; nor that babies don’t have adverse reactions to the lactose in breastmilk or the protein from the mother’s diet. Another mother at Tresillian, Paula Lamby, had a baby, Shayla, who vomited and screamed after every feed… And the impact can be far-reaching. A one-year follow-up survey of parents with colicky babies, conducted in Finland in 1996, found they had more difficulties in communication, more unresolved conflicts, more dissatisfaction, and a greater lack of empathy with their children than those parents who had not endured colic. Perhaps more worryingly, the baby’s mental health may be compromised too. While there are no long-term health concerns for the majority of babies, two years ago Dr Mary Brown, a pediatrician from the University of Melbourne, followed up 75 children aged between five and eight who had been admitted to The Royal Children’s Hospital emergency ward with severe colic as babies. They were more than twice as likely to suffer mental health problems as other children. We also know that shaken baby syndrome – when a baby is hurt after being picked up and shaken too hard – is most likely when the baby has been upset. And the most common cause of parents committing infanticide is a crying baby.
Health visitors plan to boost Tories’ family image
Guardian Unlimited – Mar 15, 2008
A 40% drop in health visitors in one part of London has led to cases of rickets and postnatal depression being missed and immunisations not being carried out, he will say. Linking his policies to tackling disadvantage and what he calls Britain’s broken society, Cameron will tell delegates: “We’ll never get to the heart of the big problems we worry about – whether it’s crime, or antisocial behaviour, or children leaving school without the qualifications they need – unless we do all we can to give every child the best start in life. “Cameron will also outline a £10m annual child health inequalities fund for parents in the most disadvantaged areas, and a substantial increase in training to recruit the additional health visitors. The party claims the measures will be achieved by reallocating the money which the government has earmarked to employ additional outreach workers at Sure Start children’s centres, estimated to total £201m per year by 2010. “We need more trained professionals who really know what they’re doing,” he will say. “Health visitors give advice, they don’t judge, they help out. And that’s why parents say that is the kind of help and support they want.
Written by Sola Ogundipe
Vanguard – Mar 15, 2008
, Nigeria is signatory to several commitments devised in international conferences to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, malnutrition and child survival in the world. Notable among these commitments were those made at the 1989 Conven tion on the Rights of the Child. As the most ratified human rights treaty in history, the Convention calls for recognition of the child’s right to the “highest attainable standard of health. All rights reserved.
Health Scan: Childhood memories affect expectations of motherhood
Jerusalem Post – Mar 15, 2008
They based this on two approaches related to identity building – with a focus on the way people perceive their early relationship with their parents and how this is reflected in their thoughts, perceptions and behavior during their lives; and on differences between people who aspire to success or to avoid failure. They found that women whose early childhood relationships with their parents were characterized by negative experiences expected to experience a high measure of separation anxiety, thought their child would be more demanding, and that they would set a lot of boundaries. Among women who described parental rejection as young children but had difficulty recalling many such events, most had positive thoughts about their impending motherhood and their unborn child – but they also expected to develop a less close relationship with their baby. Women who had a balanced view of their early relationship with their parents were likely to expect a minimum of separation anxiety from their child, thought childrearing would be easy, and that their relationship would be warm. The study also found that women who wanted to reach set goals were positive and more optimistic compared to women who were concerned with self-defense, security and responsibility. PILLCAM FOR COLON APPROVED… Only 11 by 31 millimeters, the plastic capsule is swallowed with a sip of water. Tiny video cameras at each end capture four images per second for up to 10 hours. But it is expensive, so adding it to the basket of health services is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Nigeria: For the Child to Survive, Innocence Must Die
AllAfrica.com – Mar 15, 2008
She weighed just 1. The midwife told Esther, Ann’s exhausted mother, that her baby was pre-term because she was born too early. Esther, who was having Ann as her third child in a space of five years, did not understand why she could not carry the pregnancy through the full nine months as she had done in her two previous pregnancies. What she could not deny however, was her history of giving birth to small babies. Her first two babies, both female, had tipped the scales at 2… Her last baby was barely six months old before she became pregnant with Ann. Esther was in a hurry to bear children. Like her own mother, Esther was under pressure to give her husband the elusive male child, but the consequences on her health, and the health of her babies have been dire. Esther may not know it, but all three babies, particularly Ann, were destined to be born underweight. In turn, they would also grow up to be short, underweight adults. As a very short woman, Ann would be more likely to undergo obstructed labour, which would be dangerous for both her own health and the health of her own newborns. The severe micro- nutrient deficiencies that perpetually affected her mother’s health are bound to affect her also as a mother and that of her newborn.
