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Archive for October, 2007

The function of the mother remains almost the same under the various cultural patterns. If the natural closeness between mother and child is disturbed, the individual mother is responsible and not an external cultural or economic condition. For, normally, the mother is the first person concerned with and occupied with a newborn child: she nurtures it carefully and spends the first few weeks close to the child, gratifying his imperative needs. Whatever the child does is of utmost importance to her.

Their early training, through play (dolls, house) and indoctrination, provides women in general with an attitude, the so-called maternal instinct, which stimulates women to assume, wherever possible, a motherly role. If she fully utilizes her natural opportunities and is not in opposition to her feminine role, the mother should always find it easy to establish an intimate contact with the child. Every child has a tendency to lean a little more toward the mother as long as the mother does not disturb this natural development. Even if the mother has only limited time for the child, she can maintain this relationship. It is far less the amount of time which counts than how constructively it is used. Nothing can interfere with her influence if she is capable of being a good friend to her child, if she is willing to understand him, if she stands at his side as a staunch and loyal comrade. A child has a high regard for his mother if she has shown her ability to love him through all circumstances and despite all disappointments.

This ideal of a mother, praised and sung with so much enthusiasm by poets and artists, contrasts sharply with the experiences that psychiatrists and educators have with mothers today. In appalling numbers we find mothers the source of the child's maladjustment and misery. The exercise of mother love under our present culture seems to be a task demanding almost superhuman qualities. Mother love, far from being the blessed thing pictured in old poems, turns too often rather into a weapon of evil. Under the name and pretense of mother love, a discouraged and rebellious, frustrated and antagonistic woman may demand praise for what is actually selfishness, fear, and domineeringness.

Yet there is no sense in blaming our mothers, because they are themselves victims. Women today face a struggle for their rights. They fear being the inferior sex. They are deeply disappointed in their relationships to men, in their marital experiences. For women have yet to win a place in our culture compatible with their talents and abilities. It is simply not true that women as a whole are not "mature," are emotionally unstable, are mentally or morally infantile or underdeveloped in comparison with men. What is sometimes described as feminine inability to think in abstract terms is actually a predilection for the functional; women have a particular sense for usefulness, acquired from generations spent under conditions which limited their activities as the inferior sex and demanded usefulness from them in the service of men. As a consequence, women as a whole (as far as generalities are permitted at all) are more inclined to sense real values, and fall less easily prey to imaginative and frequently dangerous fictions which often victimize the best masculine minds. Why then do so many women fail as mothers so much more frequently today than a few generations ago?

In a disturbed relationship between mother and child, the corruption of all human relationships becomes visible. Human beings today make very little preparation for harmonious cooperation. We need not be surprised to find that increasingly fewer women are prepared for the role of motherhood, which demands fully developed social interest.

A mother who is more interested in herself than in her child can never be a good mother. The deep love and affection which such a mother feels for the child is actually less concerned with the welfare and the development of the child than with her own satisfaction which she expects and demands. A child can give meaning to a marriage, which involves the relationship of several persons, but it can never be asked to provide meaning to one person's life. Yet just that is what some women, disappointed with life and somewhat estranged from their husbands, expect of their children. They want their children to belong to them and to be the purpose and meaning of their otherwise empty lives. Is this attitude love? Not at all. It is a compensation for uselessness. It is a demand for service.

Such a woman has not yet found her own place in the community. She may believe that she lives only for the child, but actually the child has to replace all other obligations which she would have to meet. Social contact, work and the opposite sex become meaningless through this peculiar kind of "love." How many women regard their children as an increase to their glory-an additional rung in the ladder of their prestige! Some try to attract with their children the attention and admiration which other women receive for their legs. In more serious cases, the child has to provide an object for domination. He must fit, and often enough is brought up to fit into the personal life style of the mother. He is impressed with the danger of life, against which only mother love can give protection. By instilling fears and exercising domination under the pretext of an emotion which the mother, without any justification, calls "love," she begins a process of pampering and spoiling to bring the child under complete control and make him utterly dependent on her. In her own insecurity and distrust, she wants to be the only person trusted.

For a period of time, the child may find this overprotection agreeable, but sooner or later, the conflict begins. It may start, for example, when the second child is born and the mother becomes preoccupied with the baby. The first child feels deprived of the attention which previously had been showered on him. If the tragedy does not start then, the conflict is unavoidable when the child must go to school, when he must meet children of his own age. Fortunately, our present school system offers much help for pampered children in adjusting them to the social atmosphere and developing courage, independence, and social feeling. But all that does not solve the conflict with the mother. She either succeeds in keeping him close to her-then he never becomes adjusted to the group-or the child gains independence, and the fear and dominance of the mother expresses itself in open hostilities.

As the children get beyond the baby stage, new difficulties can appear.

"I think one problem for the older mother is that you hit your real mid-life crisis at the same time as motherhood, and this tends to intensify everything. If you are 25 when you have a baby, you can think you'll get into a career when they start school and so on; you have all your life before you. When you have your children, as I did, at 39 and 4I, they start school when you're 45. What have you done with your life? Can you stand the strain of motherhood and work? Are you too old to get back into your career? In a few years you're coping with menopause, with a host of emotional reactions, and you've still got to be a mother meeting the demands of very young children."

"Having a baby late-and an older husband-meant I had to cope with a lot of problems all at once. I had to cope with finding the right school for my 5-year-old child, toddler tantrums, go to the hospital with my husband for investigations into his heart problem, and deal with the heavy bleeding that seemed to be a precursor of menopause."

Looking ahead to when children are older, the majority of mothers did not seem to anticipate any particular problems in being in their fifties when their children were teenagers. "I think talk about the 'generation gap' is a lot of nonsense," says Karen, who was 39 and 4I when her two sons were born; now she is in her fifties. "When I compare myself to my son's friends' parents who are younger, I don't see any difference in the children's attitudes toward us. It's normal for all children to think their parents are old, fuddy-duddy, out of touch. They love to say, 'Oh Mom, surely you've heard of x or y?' In fact, I think there's less of a generation gap than there was between my parents' generation and us. There seemed to be such a gulf between our parents, who were young during the war, and us, who were young during the sixties. That's not the case now. Today's kids are just as likely to be listening to sixties music as to nineties and we share some of the same heroes. That certainly wasn't true of my parents!"

Older mothers who have teenagers and young babies in the house may find the generation gap has another angle. "My teenage son wants to play his music, have friends over and be generally noisy just when the baby's finally settled and I need peace and quiet. And then there are times when he wants help with his homework and the baby is screaming and needs attention. So it's a complex juggling act. On the other hand, Joey can be wonderfully kind and attentive to the baby and sometimes he's a great help. He'll baby-sit for a little while or make me a cup of coffee when I'm dead on my feet."

Teenagers with young half-brothers and sisters often oscillate between rapt attention and delight, and disgust and utter boredom, depending on their mood. "I think the important thing is to divide attention fairly equally, to give the older ones their time and the young ones theirs, and not expect the whole family to revolve around the baby," says Sarah, with two teenagers from her first marriage and a toddler and baby from her second.

The Final Word: Love

The overwhelming majority of older mothers do not regret what they've done. "Most people don't regret being born, and most people don't regret being a mother either," says one older mother with two young children. "Once they are there, you love them, and that's it. You sacrifice yourself, you do things you would never believe you were capable of for them, and you would die for them. And you love them with a kind of love that's completely different from anything else you've ever known. On the other hand, if any of us knew what lay ahead, who among us would ever be a mother?"

Twins occur once in eighty-eight births; and quadruplets once in about 680,000 births. Other denominations of multiple births occur quite rarely. Multiple births occur more commonly in older women; women who had at least one pregnancy; women who have a family history of multiple pregnancy an the mother’s side of the family; and women who have taken fertility drugs to stimulate ovulation [the expulsion of an egg from the ovary]

Types

There are two types of twins. One type starts from a single egg, which divides in two very early after fertilization. Because a single egg is fertilized by a single sperm before this division, the two offspring will be of the same sex and alike in skin, hair, and eye color and in general appearance. They are called identical twins.

An extremely rare form of twinning is called conjoined or Siamese twinning. In these unfortunate cases. The twins are attached to each other at the head, chest, abdomen, or back. Surgical separation of Siamese twins may be successful, but often results in the death of one or both babies.

The other type of twinning is the fertilization of two eggs by two different sperm. Twins of this type- called fraternal twins-may be of the same sex or opposite sexes and will bear no greater resemblance to each other than any other brothers or sisters. Most twins that result from fertility drugs are of this type.

Approximately one third of twins are identical, and two thirds are fraternal.

One or more eggs may involved in other forms of multiple pregnancy. For example, quadruplets may result from one, two, three, or four eggs.

Causes

In most cases of multiple births, the cause is unknown. Why certain families have many sets of twins is also not understood. Fertility drugs used to stimulate ovulation are often associated with multiple births-sometimes up to seven or eight fetuses.

Diagnosis

Doctor and patient alike will often suspect multiple pregnancy when the woman’s uterus grows more rapidly then would be expected with one pregnancy. This suspicion is confirmed if the doctor hears two separate fetal heartbeats, or if an ultrasound scan shows two or more fetuses.

Complications

The major complication of multiple pregnancy is premature labor, with the delivery of small, premature babies that are not yet ready to live outside the mother’s body. In general. The more fetuses the woman is carrying, the earlier she is more likely to go into labor. Other complications that may affect the mother are anemia and pre-eclampsia.

The parents of this wonderful new human being will never again return to their old relationship, even when the child has grown and left home and they are alone again as they were at the beginning of their marriage. They will move on to a new relationship-a broader, more satisfying one. They are no longer a couple; they have become a family. The baby has added a new dimension to their marriage and a new reason for each of them to exist. Even if they have initial problems  in adjusting to the changes, even if they feel out of touch with each other for a short time, their common love for and enchantment with their child will bring them together again. No one in the world cares as much about their baby as they do; no one else can share their particular, unique experience of parenthood.

New Responsibilities of Parents

Perhaps the most difficult part of the responsibility of caring for a new baby is being on call constantly, twenty-four a day, 168 hours a week, with never a moment off. No other job requires such dedication as that of parenting. Babies don’t eat, sleep, or cry on schedule. You will be called upon to feed or comfort your infant at any  and every hour of the day or night, whether you are asleep, or ill, or occupied with a project of the utmost importance. In short, you will be required to adjust your lifestyle to accommodate the total dependency of your baby. This shift in the focus of your life may be traumatic at first, especially if you have been particularly independent and unencumbered.

Supplying the Basics

The primary responsibilities of parents are to provide their children with food, clothing, and shelter-the basic requirements of human life. In principle, all the most poverty-stricken of new parents can accept those responsibilities with few qualms, because they are the ones they fulfill for themselves. It’s the day to day details of supplying them that may make you feel insecure and far from confident in caring for your infant. You may feel, as some parents do, that while your childbirth education classes have prepared you very well for actually producing a baby, you’ve not had adequate preparation for caring for your child. The all important questions of what, how, when, how often, and why have not been answered to your complete satisfaction. In truth, they cannot be, because every baby and every set of parents is unique. Every family is different from every other, and every individual in every family is different from all the others. Some routines and procedures simply have to be tried out and perhaps discarded before you are comfortable in handling even the most ordinary of your responsibilities to your infant. You may wonder if the trial and error method of mastering a skill is a suitable approach for the serious work of rearing a human being.

In searching for knowledge about how to care for their babies, many parents are apt to be intimidated by “experts,” who may include the baby’s grandparents and next door neighbors as well as pediatricians and psychologists, and to accept as truth any scrap of advice they are given whether or not it “feel” right to them or has been substantiated in their experience. Of course there are times when nothing can be substituted for the knowledgeable orders and advice of experts in the professional fields of medicine, nutrition, and child psychology. But it is important for you, as a new parent, to learn to trust yourself. Remember, there is no right way to do most things involved in child care. You can read, you can take classes, you can question your doctor closely, you can listen to your friends and relatives, but ultimately you must make your own decisions about what is best for your own unique child. And because you know that child better than anyone else in the world, you are far more likely than others to make the best decisions.

Remember, as you make these decisions, to enjoy your baby as you learn to care for him. Try to look at parenting, not as a series of problems to be overcome or even, in the positive language of public relations, as challenges to be met. For a little while at least, let the rest of the world go by as you give yourself up to this new life you have created; appreciate the miracle of every day.

Ok – we aren’t overly stupid adults… we do know how conception occurs but some of the finer points might just surprise you.

Human conception is a miraculous and complex event. It is perhaps more surprising that pregnancy occurs so often than that it fails sometimes. A human egg is released every month from a woman's ovary under the influence of a complex cycle of hormones. The hormones are released by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus, located in the brain. The egg is swept into the fallopian tubes by delicate projections (called the fimbria) at the end of the tubes, where it is normally fertilized by the man's sperm. The fertilized egg then moves down the tube and, helped along by the tiny hair-like cilia that line the tube, enters the uterus, or womb. The embryo must implant into the lining of the uterus (the endometrium). There it starts to produce hormones that will stimulate its growth. The site in the ovary, called the corpus luteum, from which the egg was released, must produce enough of the hormone progesterone to sustain the pregnancy for the first three months. After that the placenta takes over that job.

The woman's uterus must be structurally sound and capable of expanding to contain the growing fetus. The cervix, the opening of the uterus, must be strong enough to hold in the baby until it is ready to be born.

It is estimated that it takes a fertile couple having regular sexual intercourse an average of six months to conceive. At any point, something can go wrong and pregnancy will not result:

• Sometimes an egg is not released.
• The egg and sperm may fail to meet and fertilize.
• Many early embryos fail to implant, and sometimes an implanted embryo fails to develop or is rejected by the mother's body.
• An abnormality in the fetus or a lack of sufficient levels of the hormone progesterone may make it impossible for the embryo to survive, resulting in a miscarriage.

Roughly one-third of infertility is caused by a problem in the woman, one-third by a problem in the man. Of the last one-third of cases, infertility is caused by a combination of problems in both partners or, in about 20% of these cases, is unexplained (American Society for Reproductive Medicine, "Frequently Asked Questions about Infertility," I996). The statistics for unexplained infertility have tended to fall with better diagnosis and an improved understanding of what causes infertility, but it is still more common than many doctors like to admit.

The most common cause of female infertility is failure to ovulate, and this condition is the easiest to treat. A course of fertility drugs can be given to see if these will activate the ovaries. There are several fertility drugs, and while the doctor may know which is the best to try, often he simply has to go through each in turn, trying different doses, to see what is or is not successful. This can make the woman feel like a human guinea pig. Tests into other areas of infertility can be long, complicated and invasive. Male infertility is the hardest to treat.