Consequences of Stress on Children's Development: poverty

There are many factors influence a child’s healthy development, like war, poverty, racism, natural disaster, isolation, hunger, noise, chaos, disease, environmental pollution, violence, etc., the same is during 2-6 years.


I would like to mention poverty specially here when I read these factors with my own experience.


I was born in a small town with more than 1000 people living there. Before 10 years old, I spent almost my whole time there. All the families in town were very poor at that time. We lived a self-sufficient life there. The parents plant wheat and grow rice in the filed, and also other kinds of food, like sweet potato, pumpkin, and many kinds of vegetables. Because every family cherishes a lot of the food, sometimes when the corns are mature, people would steal from each other’s field. When the time to watering the filed was coming, the adults would stay in the field whole nights to watering their own fields. Usually, I will have one or two new clothes for the spring festival but not any other time during the year. The clothes were very plain, my mother will buy a beautiful cloth, took me to the only tailor in the village, measured my size, and the tailor would make a clothes for me. It was very delighted to have the new clothes.


When I was young, I ate whatever we planted in the field, those were all organic, but the types were not so abundant. When I grew up, I found out I only knew few kinds of vegetables, and have no idea of how to eat for a balance. The “eating habits, not genes, were the cause” take a long-term effect on me. And “eating a wide variety of foods may be essential for optimal health”. (Berger, 2012) And I always feel deficient, worried about what I have are less other others. So, I push myself to work hard, and don’t dare to relax.


Talking about poverty, sometimes when I watch international news, I know there are some countries in Africa very poor. The children live there are really in a miserable condition, they don’t have clean water, no enough food, they can not afford the education, so the poverty pass through generations. How can we help those poor children and their families is a global issue now.



Reference:


Berger, K. S. (2012). The developing person through childhood (6th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Breastfeeding

I choose to think about and discuss breastfeeding for this week’s blog. The professionals in China highly advocate breastfeeding nowadays, they emphasis a lot about the benefits to children. But I didn’t have a successful breastfeeding experience when my son was born 2 and half years ago, and there are still some doubts and questions in my mind.

On 5^th day of 39^th week of my pregnancy, the doctor strongly suggested me to have cesarean delivery. The reason was the fetus’s shoulder is broad, and my public bone is too small for him to go through. After listening to her, my husband and I decided to take the cesarean delivery. With this decision, the breastfeeding problem was coming. After the delivery, the doctor needs to treat the possible inflammation of the surgery. The hospital tested 3 kinds of medicine, and my body always showed anaphylactic to them. Finally, they use a kind of medicine that I would not anaphylactic, but the result is for 1 week, I can not do breastfeeding. After I came home, I tried and tried every day with my son, to the end of first month, I stopped trying desperately.

I am worried about his nutrition, and felt guilty in my heart that I couldn’t feed him, I don’t know how to choose the powder milk, worrying about the qualities, I felt like my son didn’t have an intimate relationship with me since he preferred to gaze and play with his grandmother. Though little Louis is a healthy boy now, I still regret a lot that I could not breastfeed him, and thought he should be better if I could have breastfeed him.

When I read an article written by Antonia (2012), she mentioned in United States, women don’t have maternal leave, and only 35% of them give more than 3 months breastfeeding. I am not familiar with American settings, but from 15 millions searching results in google when I typed the key word “breastfeeding in United State”, US also pays much attention to this. I’d love to explore more about this topic, and hope in the future, I could share with others professionally about this topic.

Reference:

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/united-states-ranks-last-on-breast-feeding-support/?_r=0

personal birth experience

    I have a 2½ years old son. My husband and I didn’t plan much before my pregnancy, and he came naturally. During the pregnancy, I have got morning sick from the second month till few months before the birth. I couldn’t smell anything I feel sick, and couldn’t stay in any room without fresh air, otherwise I would feel sick. I felt the first move on 17^th weeks, the movement was like a fish bubbling once or twice. I paid attention to the change tensely, every week I will check from internet the change of the fetus, and what should I pay exactly attention to.

    I was easily got frightened when there was suddenly a car horned, or there was a sudden big noise around me. I found out sometimes my son now is like me, if he hears something fallen to the ground with a sharp noise or someone suddenly speaks to him in a big voice, he will tremble and sometimes cry. I thought the mother’s emotion and stress would affect the outcome of the baby. I thought if I have another chance to have another baby, I could do better.

    Since I paid all of attention to the pregnancy period, so when the period to deliver really comes, I totally have no idea about natural delivery or other ways, no idea what should do after the baby was born, even have no idea how to develop enough bread milk. So, it is really a mass after my son was born. I found out it is really important to prepare anything or get some advice from professionals how to do at any stage.

Country comparison

    I would like to talk about China. Since the implication of one child policy in China, couples only have one chance to get their “perfect” baby. Since 2014, if one of the couples are single child in his/her own family, the couple can get a second baby. In the cities, the couples even the whole families are usually very careful in preparing for the pregnancy. The male would stop or be requested to stop their drinking and smoking at least 3 months before they have the baby.  The female would start to take folic acid, and even plan the delivery month for getting a good day for delivery. Cesarean sections in China is high, 40%, as both couple and the doctor did not want to take the risk of failure.  The cesarean operation would make the delivery under a more controllable stage that both parties feel much more comfortable and easier.