Childhood Stressors

My friend’s dad told me about how he grew up in an area where he felt racism.  He is Chinese, Hawaiian, and Caucasian.  He said the Hawaiians would not accept him because he wasn’t full blood, nor would the Chinese, and he felt he couldn’t fit in with the Caucasians because his skin was too dark and his black.  He said that he was always confused and wasn’t sure if he should even learn traditions.  I asked him if he spoke to his parents about it but he said they weren’t much comfort and he often was alone.  To this day her dad is pretty closed up emotionally.  He usually takes the first impression as the only one, and if he so much as feels that someone doesn’t like him he does all he can to stay away from them.  He even is confused for how he feels about his grandson being interracial.  So as you can see, although the past is in the very far past, he still holds tightly to it and how it made him feel.  I cannot leave any information as a resource for this because he is highly personal and doesn’t want anyone to know he feels this way.   

Children in Iraq have high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder.  It can be expected due to the war we are currently in and the war they have been in for years upon years.  After the Gulf War “94 children in Iraq were interviewed at 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years after the war” only to find out that the same level of stress was present all three times.  At the two year interview the stress had gone just a little bit, but it was still very high.  I couldn’t imagine trying to cope with what they have seen. As far as I know nothing is being done o minimize the stress except for what little hope their parents and American soldiers bring to them.    

I was giving a driving test one time to a young man from Saudi Arabia.  When I asked him about how he felt about the way Americans perceived the Middle East, he said calmly that we overreact.  I said so you don’t have car bombs explode all the time and the streets are safe to walk down?  He said that yes they have regular bombings but that it wasn’t a big deal.  I was amazed to find that he felt these things were normal.  He told me about the first explosion he saw, but spoke of it as we would speak of going to Disney World.  He said the thing he fears most in America is our lack of knowledge.  He said we rely too much from the media to form our opinions for us.  True. 

Dyregrov, A., Gjestad, R., Raundalen, M. (2002). Children Exposed to Warfare: A Longitudinal Study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 15, No. 1. Pgs. 59-68. Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/g27k05pu38546394/

Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding wasn’t always as important to me as it is now.  When I was pregnant everyone kept asking me if it was something that I was going to do.  I would always reply that I would if I could and move on.  A friend of mine only had one breast that would produce milk, but she was very adamant about the benefits and continued to breastfeed well after one year old.  She was a huge inspiration to me when I began and was frustrated because nightly feedings were every two hours and I was the only one who technically had to get up.  But I did it, and lasted a whole thirteen months before my baby decided she had had enough.    

The benefits that I was providing to my child by breastfeeding far outweighed the bad.  And breastfeeding is far cheaper!  It was a bond between my baby and me and provided alone time when we just wanted to be together and let the world stand still.  It was also amazing to think that I was doing something that women centuries ago had done!

I researched breastfeeding in Australia and found that in the 1970’s “40-45% of women breastfed their infants after being discharged from hospital,” however, by 1995 82% of babies were being breastfed (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003)  My mom told me something similar that when she had her other children (in the 60’s and 70’s) that she never breastfed because it wasn’t pushed upon the mother.  She said no one mentioned it or knew the benefits of it like they do now.  This could explain the jump in percentages over the years.  

My future work hopefully will be in regards to emotional development in children and providing adequate examples for them.  I have seen multiple sites that talk about the emotional development with regards to breastfeeding and feeding this way has mental and physical positive elements to it. 

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2003). Breastfeeding in Australia, 2001. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4810.0.55.001.

I thought something would go wrong....

Something that could have effected the weight of my baby but didn't was that for the first 5 months of pregnancy I was extremely sick.  I couldn't keep anything down, not even water.  My doctor tried giving me a small white and red mint candy and said I should be able to keep it down.  Took about 2 mins for that to come back up. 

I had to go to Instacare every week and get an I.V., surprisingly this was the only way I could hydrate.  I was nauseated 24/7 and actually threw-up about every 10 mins.  Driving to work and back home was the worst.  It took forever to get to my destination because I had to keep pulling over! 

Then one day I woke up and didn't have to rush to the toilet.  It was amazing!  I thought the worst was over, then I got into the shower and passed out!  Luckily my husband was home and was able to take me to the hospital where they again had to give me an I.V. for being dehydrated. 

I lost 10 pounds, but was able to eat after I was about 6 months pregnant.  I was really worried about how that all would affect my baby but she came out 6 lbs. 9 oz., and 19 1/2 inches long.

The birth of my child

I’d never held a baby before, and then I went into the hospital to give birth. 

 My husband and I had been through quite a lot before the birth of our daughter.  We were planning to buy a house and our real estate agent would be waiting in our driveway ready to go every day when I got home from work.  After searching, we’d get home about 11 at night in time to go to bed just to get up for work and start this all again.  We did this for about four months. 

 When we found a house we were preparing to close on it, and my husband’s job told him he was being relocated.   I was 8 months pregnant and we began preparations to move to another state and I quit my job.  The sellers threatened to sue us, we had to hire an attorney, our real estate agent who found out he wasn’t making a sale decided to sue us too. 

 We were afraid of a lawsuit in the middle of moving so my husband ended up taking a demotion so we could stay.  I got my job back and we went ahead and closed on the house we had been planning to buy.  I was then 9 months pregnant.  I was told from the buyers that the home would be spotless and that they considered themselves neat freaks.  When we moved in the house was filthy.  Urine on the toilets, dog hair all over the stairs, food still in the fridge, and marks all over the walls. 

So at my full bellied 9 months I was on hands and knees scrubbing pee off toilets and bleaching walls and the fridge.  I had to scrub the entire house.  My husband was gone on a business trip.  I felt alone, scared, and most of all tired. 

One morning I went to work with incredible pains, but I didn’t want to tell anyone because I had so much to do and so little time to do it in.  I was then three days past my due date.  My husband got back into town and that evening he took me to the hospital just to get checked out.  They decided to keep me there and I was upset.  Mainly because we weren’t prepared with the car seat, our bags, I was still in my work clothes, and most of all I hadn’t eaten.  The hospital wouldn’t let me eat or have anything to drink. 

15 hours later I wasn’t even dilated yet but they wouldn’t let me go.  I was given something to make me dilate, which I wasn’t very happy about, and then the moment came.  It was all like one huge moment.  I was pushing, I couldn’t see a thing, then they threw my baby on top of me without warning, I wasn’t sure what to do.  I wish someone had of told me that would happen, or at least what I was supposed to do.  I was afraid I wasn’t supposed to touch her yet and I laid there- frozen.  A nurse scooped her up in an instant, people were running about, my husband and mother were trying to take pictures, I felt like I was laying there in silence.  Then I heard my baby cry.

The next three days were jam packed with no sleep and I decided I better get used to it.  All the stories I had heard about the rest after delivery must have been folk lore.  They couldn’t leave my daughter in the nursery because she wouldn’t sleep.  My husband passed out on the couch in the room even with our daughter crying, doctors coming in, and nurses attending to me at all hours.  My husband had to actually teach me how to hold her, how to change her diaper, and basically what this little creature was all about.  I thought this was supposed to be easy and something about ‘come to me’ as in a mother’s instinct?  Nope.  I didn’t get that trait, or the memo.  My husband had to leave again a week after she was born and my mom left back home to Delaware.

All in all I think I was stressed before, during and after my daughter’s birth.  I’m actually curious if that stress is why my daughter’s always had a hard time sleeping.  If it is, I would feel just terrible.  However, she is now almost three, and the doctor’s say she is quite advanced, about two years.  She is very smart, talks wonderfully, is bossy, sassy, curious, empathetic, and loves to learn new things.  I couldn’t have asked for a more special gift.  She’s taught me much more than I think I could ever teach her. 

I read an article on birthing in India.  I found out that they rely more on touch and healing in terms of being together and supportive behavior rather than medicine and machines.  The woman who wrote the article was a midwife from Canada who was visiting India, spoke about a woman on a train who was in labor but who insisted on having the baby at her own home.  Before she made it home the author wrote she was “satisfied to know that she had an easy birth on the train with Lalita and other women passengers!” (Smith, D. 2002)

The author also told of how in Bihar, India,  the removal of the placenta “is to reach up inside the uterus immediately after the birth and tear the placenta out for fear it will rise up in the body and create bleeding.” (Smith, D. 2002)  Since the author wasn’t used to this type of removal she waited more than eight hours for the placenta to fall into a place she could easily grab it.  Apparently the woman who had given birth’s family was outraged, and there was talk about possible revenge if anything were to go wrong. 

I was also very shocked and saddened to hear of an oil massage tradition.  In this tradition “they customarily pour oil into the ears and nose (of the baby).” (Smith, D. 2002)  The baby actually died from being suffocated by it.  It’s a tradition many midwives in India are trying to suspend.  I realized that although both India and the U.S. take care in providing comfort to upcoming mothers, that the U.S. is not as personable.  I see the U.S. as having hospitals which provide a service, you pay, and then ways are parted.  In India, I was made aware that they are extremely cautious about remaining calm, using massage, and giving birth at home surrounded by many women- sometimes not even knowing all of them. 

Smith, Diane (2002). Birth in India: One Chosen Perspective. Midwifery Today the heart and science of birth. Retrieved from http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/india.asp.