Due to a series of events causing anxiety, fear and confusion in a person who feels all of those very easily … we will be giving HypnoBirthing a go for our second baby.

I’ve been reading many books as you all know, on parenting, but have really only just started reading on birth.

I’ve started with the Sears “Birth Book” which is great and I’ve been reading and re-reading the section on VBAC’s as well as visiting The Human Pacifier who often has really great for inspiration with videos there…most of the time I end up crying over.

I’ve had a few others from my Midwife which I’ve read as well.

Over the past year and a bit I’ve been using Meditainment and have found it very useful in calming me down or getting me to sleep, so I feel that HypnoBirthing will probably do the same for me. (I’m just really sad that Meditainment does not have a Birthing section…oh well)

Click to see this lovely link Regin Sling

I remember when I was little traveling with my parents around Thailand seeing all sorts of ways to carry your baby…but not somthing like this…time must of moved on

See this blog Magic City Slingers for some extra links on baby wearing which is where I learnt about Regin…thank you

I found this article PDF interesting with the history as well as the different cultures view points of breastfeeding.

In reading the book Baby Matters  I understand a little more of my own culture I see how we are influenced by marketing from Formula company’s as well as our culture becoming more needful of our perceived ‘own time’.

What is in the PDF
When should weaning from Mother’s milk occur?
When are we naturally intended to begin weaning?

When is our natural final weaning?

How have humans weaned through the millennia?

What do the “experts” say?

What does the research show?

If we read this quote from the World Health Organisation site
“….Breastfeeding is an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants; it is also an integral part of the reproductive process with important implications for the health of mothers. As a global public health recommendation, infants should be exclusively breastfed(1) for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health(2). Thereafter, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond. Exclusive breastfeeding from birth is possible except for a few medical conditions, and unrestricted exclusive breastfeeding results in ample milk production….”

I found both the book and the PDF very interesting as well as the recommendation’s from the World Health Organisation…which I would also like to note that the WHO writes for everyone and the last bit of the quote is written for our western culture which is affected by the ‘lack of milk’ syndrome.

“…If a day or two of letting a child cry to sleep would solve all problems, there is no way that the previously quoted percentages would be so high (they are in the book on the other page). In addition, if those who tried it found immediate, simple success, it would be impossible for word not to spread quickly around the world. The truth is that even though cry-it-out advocates try to tell you that it’s a quick fix, it often takes weeks or even months of very intense crying (and very little sleeping) for a child to finally succumb and start sleeping better, only to relapse after teething, illness, vacations, schedule changes, and growth spurts. So to imply that “a few nights of crying” would solve everything is naive and unrealistic….’

This is from one of my new books…Elizabeth Pantley. I’ve been getting new books in the subject of parenting for over a year now. Dave and I were just discussing how far we have come and how educated we are now to what we were before.

We don’t need this book as Ara is sleeping just fine but I’ve become a bit of a “sleep helper” and in my search for help/ideas it seems that information has become very slim as children become older…so the book the “No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers” is just great.

An interesting look into colic…this is something I would like to read more into as I feel that Ara had Colic…so educate educate rather than use the chines whispers of what others might feel works for them.

“…Ultimately, science doesn’t know much about colic, but there are many gimmicky “colic cure” sale pitches to make your wallet burst into more tears than your child. Nevertheless, there are a number of contributing factors that if remedied may improve the situation. These issues may or may not be directly involved in the cause of colic, but they are all things that should be evaluated by every parent. It all fits into the realm of learning about your unique bundle of joy and encouraging his or her best possible health…” click to visit site for more 

This has also been somthing on my mind

“… Weaning is not a negative term, nor is it something that you do to a child. Weaning is a journey from one relationship to another. The Hebrew word for wean is gamal, meaning “to ripen.” In ancient times, when children were breastfed until two or three years of age, it was a joyous occasion when a child weaned. It meant the child was filled with the basic tools of the earlier stages of development and secure and ready to enter the next stage of development. A child who is weaned before his time may show anger, aggression, habitual tantrum-like behavior, anxious attachment to caregivers, and an inability to form deep and intimate relationships. We call these traits diseases of premature weaning….”

I’ve also been reading a bit in other blogs as friends are waiting for their next baby and still breastfeeding…and hoping that they will still be breastfeeding two…to keep that bond going. 

 I’ve been really reading into this and have lots to say so I’ll probably give more links soon.

Check out Alfie Kohn

2. Creating praise junkies. To be sure, not every use of praise is a calculated tactic to control children’s behavior. Sometimes we compliment kids just because we’re genuinely pleased by what they’ve done. Even then, however, it’s worth looking more closely. Rather than bolstering a child’s self-esteem, praise may increase kids’ dependence on us. The more we say, “I like the way you….” or “Good ______ing,” the more kids come to rely on our evaluations, our decisions about what’s good and bad, rather than learning to form their own judgments. It leads them to measure their worth in terms of what will lead us to smile and dole out some more approval.

Wiki’s Reinforcement

Suppose parents, for fear of spoiling their baby or letting her manipulate them, restrain themselves from responding to her cries and develop a more distant, low-touch style of parenting. What happens then? The baby must either cry harder and more disturbingly to get her needs met or give up and withdraw. In either case, she finds that her caregiving world is not responsive. Eventually, since her cues are not responded to, she learns not to give cues. She senses something is missing in her life. She becomes angry and either outwardly hostile or withdrawn. In the first case, the baby is not very nice to be around, and parents find ways to avoid her. In the second case, the baby is harder to connect with, and again, parents and child enjoy each other less. Either way, this child will be difficult to discipline. She comes to believe that safety and security depend on no one but herself. Problems in relationships develop when a child grows up thinking she only has herself to trust in. Since the parents don’t allow themselves to respond intuitively to their baby’s cues, they become less sensitive and lose confidence in their parenting skills, another set-up for discipline problems.

You can tell the unconnected baby by his expression – or lack of one. He does not seek eye contact and he does not evoke the warm feelings so evident with connected babies. “He looks lost” is a comment we once heard about an unconnected baby. You can also tell an unconnected baby by the way he holds himself stiff, as if conformed to his baby seat rather than to soft shoulders. As the unconnected child gets older, much of his time is spent in misbehavior, and he is on the receiving end of constant reprimands; or he tunes out and seems to live in his own separate world. This child becomes known as sullen, a brat, a whiner, or a spoiled kid. These undesirable behaviors are really coping strategies the child uses in search of a connection. The unconnected child doesn’t know how to regain a sense of well-being because he has no yardstick to measure attachment. He has difficulty finding a connection because he isn’t sure what he lost. This scene results in path-up parenting, with perhaps much time spent in counselors’ offices.

The unconnected child is less motivated to please; he’s less of a joy to be around. As a result, unconnected parents don’t find job satisfaction on the domestic scene, so they seek fulfillment in professions and in relationships not involving their child. Parent and child drift further apart. Unlike the connected child who is a joy to be around and develops healthy friendships, peers may shun the unconnected child. He may even put off people who can help him form connections. The emotionally rich get richer, and the emotionally poor get poorer. With professional counseling, children and parents can begin connecting and settle into a style of discipline that brings out the best in each other. It will require a lot of energy to accomplish this at a stage when it is naturally designed to happen. Newborns are more into being held than six- or nine-year- olds. The best chance for staying connected later on is to get connected early….”

An extract for Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt

“…In that time of early life celebrated by paintings and icons of the Madonna and child, mother and baby may, if all goes well, find themselves in a kind of cocoon of peace and love. Breastfeeding itself inactivates the mother’s own stress response; her amygdala expresses less CRF, presumably removing anxious, fearful feelings; whilst the prolactin generated by breastfeeding provides a feeling of tranquillity. The breastfeeding state of mind facilitates her ability to calm her baby and to manage his stress. Once established (and this is not always easy to achieve), breastfeeding can be a powerful source of sustenance for the mother as well as the baby.

She is then potentially more able to inhibit her baby’s stress response and to ensure that his cortisol levels remain low. This is achieved through her presence, her feeding and her touch. The baby is protected from stress and discomfort and his brain responds by growing more cortisol neurons. A brain well stocked with cortisol receptors through this early experience will be better able to mop up this stress hormone when it is released in future. This furnishes the baby’s brain with the capacity to stop producing cortisol when it has helped deal with a source of stress. The stress response will quickly be turned off when it is no longer needed.

But if the baby doesn’t have this experience of being cocooned in a protective mother’s arms (whether provided with bottle feeding or the breast), or if she is absent for too long, then his stress response can kick in and become active prematurely. The baby may become flooded with cortisol and the cortisol receptors will close down. This means that in the future he will have fewer cortisol receptors. The cortisol secreted at times of stress will not find enough receptor homes to go to, particularly in the hippocampus and hypothalamus, and will continue to wash around his brain, producing the high cortisol levels and the feeling that stress cannot be stopped. A reactive stress response will have been set up. There have been numerous studies linking depression with such a hyper-reactive stress response….”

I’ve wanted to find out what happens if we do have cortisol in excess and what damage it does on the body. I’ve read the final affects on the body once you’ve had it for most of your life. But what happens in the immediate I feel is explained in the above.

Ethnic Baby Carriers

These photos just go to show how its done in many other countrys…there are no western carriers here.

Thanks to Half Pint Pixie for this post.