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We need each other. You need someone and someone needs you. Isolated islands we are not. To make this experience called "life" work, we've got to lean and support. And relate and respond. And give and take. And confess and forgive. And reach out and embrace. And release and rely.
Dear Family and Friends:
This is an e-mail I had hoped we would never have to write.
Throughout this entire ordeal, we have been honest and open with
ourselves, our family and our friends. We have always dealt with things
as they are not how we wanted them to be and today is no exception.
Since my last e-mail which was encouraging, Eileen developed
symptoms of an infection. After several tests it was determined that a
tumor is growing in the lower area of her abdomen. The fact that she
has appendix cancer and the type she has is very rare and fast growing,
there is probably little we can do except to make her as comfortable as
possible. We did discuss more chemo and more surgery, but with both
theses options the risks far outweigh the possible limited benefits. We
will make all the final decisions next Friday when meeting with Eileen's
oncologist but we believe we have run out of reasonable options.
At this point we are just looking for her to have some
quality of life and to make her as comfortable as possible as the days
progress. We have talked and have decided to be thankful for the good
life we have had, the family we have raised and all the friends that
really care so very much. We will take each day we have and look at it
as a blessing. As horrific as this disease is, it does buy us some time
to say what may not have been said and to do some things we should have
done.
As always, thank you for your love, support and concern; we
are going to need it more than ever now.
Love, Dave & Family
Wrapping your newborn snugly in a blanket, or swaddling her, can help her feel safe and secure and may even help prevent SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). A study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in May 2005 suggests that babies who are swaddled sleep better (have fewer spontaneous awakenings and fall back to sleep more quickly) and are more responsive to outside stimuli than babies who are not swaddled during sleep. Swaddling, then, may help your baby feel more secure sleeping on her back and enable her to wake up more easily if something is amiss.
Not all babies like to be swaddled, though, and most outgrow it quickly. "By about 2 months, your baby will be moving around more in sleep, and swaddling could make her uncomfortable and contribute to night waking," says Judith Owens, a pediatrician and director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. If your newborn starts to fuss when you swaddle her but you'd like to keep doing it a bit longer, swaddle her with her arms and hands free.
If you're worried that your unswaddled baby will be cold, dress her in a blanket-type sleeper at bedtime. And keep in mind that your baby probably doesn't need to be dressed as warmly as you think. Cooler temperatures are actually more conducive to sleep, Owens says.
Overdressing your baby or keeping her room too warm can put her at an increased risk for SIDS. The temperature in your baby's room should feel comfortable to you; 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit is a good range.
Baby's first smiles give mom's brain a buzz
Tiny grins light up reward centers that lead to quality care, study says
Any mother who's ever felt a jolt of joy at her baby’s first grin knows how intoxicating that can be.
Now, scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine say there’s more to the baby buzz than just a rush of happy feelings. Turns out that seeing your own child smile actually activates the pleasure receptors in the brain typically associated with food, sex — and drug addiction.
“It may be that seeing your own baby’s face is like a ‘natural high,’ said Lane Strathearn, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor and and Texas Children's Hospital who studied the brain reactions of 28 first-time moms.
“We know similar brain circuits are activated,” he added. “Whether that feels the same as a shot of cocaine, I’m not sure.”
Strathearn and his team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the mothers' brain reactions to photographs of their own 5-month to 10-month-old babies and those of others in three emotional states: happy, neutral and sad.
As expected, the sight of their own happy babies sent blood rushing to the moms’ brain regions associated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in addiction. The spike rewarded the mothers with a neural kick that prompted them to want to take action to care for their babies, Strathearn said.
“It makes sense biologically,” said Strathearn, whose work is published in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics. “It establishes that bond between parent and child.”
The work is important, Strathearn said, not only because it documents the brain activity of healthy moms, but also because it could provide a baseline for studying the brains of abusive or addicted mothers and lead to possible interventions.
"We want to understand what happens in this relationship with mothers and babies," added Strathearn, who is a research associate in Baylor's Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.
No spike for crying babies
Surprisingly, however, the moms in the study didn’t respond as strongly to their own infants when their expressions were neutral — or when they were in distress. The neural scans showed the mothers responded to all crying infants about the same, by activating areas of the brain involved in conflict.
“We were expecting a different reaction with sad faces,” Strathearn said. Although it’s not exactly clear, that could mean that mothers are wired to react to all crying babies, not just their own.
The new study provides important insights into maternal responses to babies' emotional cues, said Regina Sullivan, a researcher at Joe LeDoux's Emotional Brain Institute, which is affiliated with the National S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and New York University.
But it doesn't clear up one big mystery of brain study: Are the documented brain reactions the result of instinct or socialization?
"We don't know whether this response is learned or innate," Sullivan said. "People tend to think that we're innately good parents, but it so happens that parenting in humans and in non-human primates has to be learned."
‘It's got to be like crack’
Whether she responded because of instinct or expectation, the results of the study were no surprise to Katrina Lyons, 39, a Houston high school science teacher who joined the research project three years ago, just before the birth of her first son.
Lyons said it’s hard even to describe the joy she felt at the sight of Aiden’s first smiles or those of his brother, Jack, who is 1.
“Does it feel like a high? Oh, yeah,” said Lyons, who surrounds herself with photos of her boys. “It’s got to be like crack. I just have to see them everywhere."
The Pediatrics study focused on the brain reactions of well-educated, middle-class mothers, but it could have implications for others. Moms who are depressed, for instance, typically fail to respond to their smiling babies.
And other studies have shown that using cocaine, a drug that activates the dopamine reward systems, might interfere with the brain perks prompted by smiling babies. That could explain high rates of child abuse among cocaine-addicted mothers, Strathearn said.
Other scientists are looking at the effects of infant emotions on fathers, but the current study was limited to biological mothers and babies, Strathern noted.
His work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Kane Family Foundation, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
If the research can help, Lyons said she was happy to participate.
“I think that’s good for all babies,” she said. “Everybody deserves a mama who loves them.”
Award-winning author, singer, and songwriter Stormie Omartian and her husband, Michael, spent 20 years raising their children...and learning the power of praying for them. Now, in 31 short, easy-to-read chapters, Stormie shares how you can pray through each stage of your child's growth, from early childhood through adulthood.
Learn how to turn to the Father and place every detail of your child's life in His loving and capable hands: safety, character development, peer pressure, school, marriage, friends, relationship with God, family relationships, adolescence, career choices.
Whether your child is three or thirty-three, it's never too late to discover the joy that comes from being a part of God's work in his or her life. Being a perfect parent doesn't matter. Being a praying parent does.
I love this book.
There has been a lot of media lately claiming that sleeping with your baby in an adult bed is unsafe and can result in accidental smothering of an infant. One popular research study came out in 1999 from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that showed 515 cases of accidental infant deaths occurred in an adult bed over an 8-year period between 1990 and 1997. That's about 65 deaths per year. These deaths were not classified as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), where the cause of death is undetermined. There were actual causes that were verified upon review of the scene and autopsy. Such causes included accidental smothering by an adult, getting trapped between the mattress and headboard or other furniture, and suffocation on a soft waterbed mattress.
The conclusion that the researchers drew from this study was that sleeping with an infant in an adult bed is dangerous and should never be done. This sounds like a reasonable conclusion, until you consider the epidemic of SIDS as a whole. During the 8-year period of this study, about 34,000 total cases of SIDS occurred in the U.S. (around 4250 per year). If 65 cases of non-SIDS accidental death occurred each year in a bed, and about 4250 cases of actual SIDS occurred overall each year, then the number of accidental deaths in an adult bed is only 1.5% of the total cases of SIDS.
There are two pieces of critical data that are missing that would allow us to determine the risk of SIDS or any cause of death in a bed versus a crib.
The data on the first question is available, but has anyone examined it? In fact, one independent researcher examined the CPSC's data and came to the opposite conclusion than did the CPSC - this data supports the conclusion that sleeping with your baby is actually SAFER than not sleeping with your baby (see Mothering Magazine Sept/Oct 2002). As for the second question, many people may think that very few babies sleep with their parents, but we shouldn't be too quick to assume this. The number of parents that bring their babies into their bed at 4 am is probably quite high. Some studies have shown that over half of parents bring their baby into bed with them at least part of the night. And the number that sleep with their infants the whole night is probably considerable as well. In fact, in most countries around the world sleeping with your baby is the norm, not the exception. And what is the incidence of SIDS in these countries? During the 1990s, in Japan the rate was only one tenth of the U.S. rate, and in Hong Kong, it was only 3% of the U.S. rate. These are just two examples. Some countries do have a higher rate of SIDS, depending on how SIDS is defined.
Until a legitimate survey is done to determine how many babies sleep with their parents, and this is factored into the rate of SIDS in a bed versus a crib, it is unwarranted to state that sleeping in a crib is safer than a bed.
If the incidence of SIDS is dramatically higher in crib versus a parent's bed, and because the cases of accidental smothering and entrapment are only 1.5% of the total SIDS cases, then sleeping with a baby in your bed would be far safer than putting baby in a crib.
The answer is not to tell parents they shouldn't sleep with their baby, but rather to educate them on how to sleep with their infants safely.
I love sleeping with my kids. Hunter has slept with me his entire life basically up until the day I got married. With Morgan, she sleeps in her bed next to mine and then I put her in bed with me around 4:00 AM after her feeding. She gets up around 7:30 AM, so I enjoy those few hours of snuggle time in the mornings, hearing her breath, filling her warm body next to mine and oh that yummy scent she gives off. The way I see it, this is OUR time as parents to get in all that together time with our kids. For too soon they will not even think about having you next to them in bed. As well, I also think that you have all your life from childhood to adult life to sleep alone.... who would want that, especially those little children? So I say go snuggle with your children for you never know when that opportunity will be gone. Safe snuggling and Safe sleeping moms and dads.
Quiz here. Do your kids at any time sleep with you or not? Curious!!!
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