Over the years, there have been tons of studies to learn more about the cries of babies–what do they mean, what do they want, do mothers recognize their own baby’s cries, etc.  A new study reveals an amazing fact about babies–they cry in their native language. For example, German babies have their own cry, French babies cry “in French” and so on. This is so cool!

The scientists said that fetuses start to pick up on the melody of ambient language during their third trimester in the womb. They can’t hear all of the phonetic details of their mothers’ speech, but they can perceive the overall patterns or phrases and sentences. Imitating those patterns probably helps newborns endear themselves to their mothers, the researchers theorized.

The findings, by scientists at the University of Wurzburg and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany and the Ecole Normale Superieure/National Center for Scientific Research in France, were published online in the journal Current Biology. (read more)

Aren’t babies just amazing little creatures?!

image: about.com

“The situation grabbed the nation’s attention early Thursday afternoon, after authorities reported that the experimental helium balloon was set adrift with the 6-year-old (named Falcon) apparently riding in it.

Heene said the family was in the early stages of working on the balloon — a “3D low-altitude vehicle” — when the contraption and the boy went missing.

His brother had said he watched Falcon get into the balloon before he untied the tethers, setting it free. Heene later said Falcon was videotaped getting into the vessel by his brother, but “obviously he got out.”

Once it was untethered, the saucer-like craft flew eastward from the Heenes’ neighborhood, though officials couldn’t immediately confirm how fast it was going.

Authorities said the silver balloon, 20-feet long and 5-feet high, at times reached 7,000 feet above the ground while adrift. It was found more than 90 minutes later in a field near Colorado Springs.” (read more)

It was discovered that the little boy had been hiding in the attic and the whole country breathed a sigh of relief. Then, the story began to unravel. Falcon’s parents, science enthusiasts Richard and Mayumi Heene, were featured on the 100th episode of ABC’s prime-time program “Wife Swap” in March 2009. In a later interview with CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Falcon said he heard his parents call for him from the garage. When asked by his father on-air why he didn’t respond, the boy replied, “You guys said we did this for the show.”

Today, the Sheriff in Fort Collins, Colorado announced that the entire balloon incident was a hoax perpetrated by Falcon’s lime-light seeking parents. Charges are to follow.

What do you think should happen to Falcon’s parents? Should they be charged for the police time spent tracking the balloon and all the costs the state incurred? What do you think about parents who deliberately teach their children to lie for their own personal gain?

image: nydailynews

Here is some encouraging and exciting news! Babies born today will quite possibly live to be 100 on average. Today, more and more people are celebrating their 100th birthdays, but it’s still fairly uncommon.

“Most babies born in the United States and Western Europe today are expected to live to 100 if we continue on the same trend of increased life expectancy, according to a study published in the journal Lancet. “Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations—very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now,” wrote the study authors, who are from the Danish Aging Research Center.

According to their analysis of data from more than 30 developed countries, death rates are dropping among people over 80. And three quarters of babies born in these nations over the past decade can expect to live to 75.” (read more)

So what does this mean for you? As parents, we should strive to improve our health and lifestyle so we can live as long as possible to enjoy our children as long as we can.

Image: bioethics

A controversial new study from Drexel University College of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh connects teen pregnancy and religion.

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.

The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

Researcher Joseph Strayhorn compiled data from various data sets. The religiosity information came from a sample of nearly 36,000 participants who were part of the U.S. Religious Landscapes Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted in 2007, while the teen birth and abortion statistics came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For religiosity, the researchers averaged the percentage of respondents who agreed with conservative responses to eight statements, including: ”There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion,” and ”Scripture should be taken literally, word for word.”

They found a strong correlation between statewide conservative religiousness and statewide teen birth rate even when they accounted for income and abortion rates. (read more)

What do you think? Are Christian teenagers ignoring the traditional religious teachings about abstinence and having babies? Is this a sign that it’s time for religion to support birth control for teenagers?

source: msnbc

image:bioethics

“Officials at Williston’s Mercy Medical Center are investigating how the wrong baby was given to a mother who was discharged this past Saturday.

The incident happened around 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, said Mercy Chief Financial Officer Kerry Monson, who was the administrator on call this past weekend. Monson said the mistake was discovered by staff and “as soon they recognized it, it was addressed.” (read more)

As soon as they recognized it? What if they never had recognized a problem?! They should be 100% positive that their protocol is mistake proof!

Opinions on this doll, which is currently only available in Spain, vary wildly. While many think the doll is a great way to promote breastfeeding with future mothers, just as many are horrified. Some have even suggested that the doll can lead to precocious sexual behavior.

My personal opinion is that first of all, we’re not giving children enough credit. Most children know what breastfeeding is. Emulating a safe and normal mothering activity that they have previously been exposed to is not going to confuse children and make them want to experiment sexually. Ask any child, and they will tell you what a mother’s breasts are used for. Most children have seen animals in the act of nursing as well. It’s all natural to kids, why do we adults always have to turn it into something weird?

If this breastfeeding doll is so offensive and so sexually suggestive, then how do you explain the popularity of Bratz dolls and other “fashion” dolls?

So, this is offensive?

But, this is not?

Personally, I’d prefer it if my daughter pretended her breasts were for nurturing her doll instead of getting good tips at the dolly “gentlemen’s club”.

This is all much ado over nothing! If anything, all of the online discussion over this doll has been the best advertising this doll’s maker could have ever hoped for!

What do you think?

Images: nydailynews, lawyerahead

“A CUTE BABY BOY FOR ADOPTION HE IS VERY HEALTHY AND READY FOR ADOPTION FOR MORE YOU COME BACK TO US.”

That’s what the advertisement on Craigslist said when Jenni Brennan came across it. The only problem: Jenni’s 7 month old baby boy was pictured with the ad.

Jenni replied to the ad pretending to be interested in adopting the boy.

She was told to send $200 to an address in Cameroon to begin the adoption process. She also received details of the baby boy up for adoption which claimed he had been born in Canada and was now in an orphanage in the African nation of Cameroon.

The FBI has now launched an investigation into what they believe is an international adoption scam.

So how did these international scammers get the photo of Jenni’s son?

Jenni, from Abington, Massachusetts, believes her son’s photo had been lifted from her family blog.

She had created the site to share photos of her family, including her other son Jackson, 3, with friends and family.

Investigators believe the online scammers had “stolen” the photo and used it in an attempt to extort money from couples desperate to adopt children.

So what can we learn from this? Sadly, there are always going to be people doing bad things online. Scammers are everywhere. This is a good reminder to create private invite-only blogs when you want to share family photos, or email them individually to your friends and family with a watermark. Of course Jenni’s son was never harmed and this incident was fairly harmless but this is still a wake up call for all of us.

Source: foxnews.com, telegraph.co.uk

You may remember when I wrote about women of retirement age having babies and the risks associated with that.  Well, the worst that could have happened HAS happened–one of the world’s oldest mothers, Carmen Bousada, died last week.

Beginning in 2005, Bousada underwent hormone treatments to reverse nearly 20 years of menopause and sold her house to pay for in vitro fertilization at the Pacific Fertility Clinic in Los Angeles.  She told the clinic she was 55 — the facility’s maximum age for single women undergoing the procedure.  When her sons were born in December 2006, Guinness World Records said she was the oldest woman on record to give birth.

Shortly after giving birth to twin boys in 2006, Carmen became ill with cancer. Several news sources are reporting that she passed away due to ovarian cancer, while Bousada herself reportedly said that she has stomach cancer.

Carmen once said: “Often circumstances put you between a rock and a hard place, and maybe things shouldn’t have been done in the way they were done, but that was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamed of, and I did it,” she said.

Her dream may have been achieved, but now her children are motherless.  You can’t replace your mother.  Is it fair that she got to live out her dream and now her children will grow up motherless?  They’re not even three years old yet.  Most likely, they will remember very little about her.  They will only have photos and newspaper articles to remember her by.

Speaking to a Spanish TV show on the eve of her death on July 12 she said: “I have no regrets. I am calm because I see the children are happy.  I’m happy because the children are my life.  I would like to have done more things. I’m not afraid of what’s going to happen.  I just don’t want to go yet.  I would like God to have left me the way I was, before I was ill, so I could  have enjoyed a few more years with my sons.  But knowing they will be looked after by my family does give me peace of mind.”

I hope it did give her peace of mind before her death, but even more than that, I hope her children grow and find happiness in the tragic situation their mother put them in.

Image/Source: dailymail, associated press

Meet Beccah Beushausen, a 26-year-old social services worker from the Chicago area.  In March, she started a blog following her personal tragedy: Becca or “B” as she called herself, was pregnant with a terminally ill infant.  Calling herself a “Christian” she posted bible quotes and voiced her anti-abortion views, she attracted hundreds of readers.  They were there in sympathy and to pray for her.  They also sold tee shirts for her, and sent gifts and money.  They even sent her pictures of their own children.

When “B” informed everybody that the baby died shortly after birth, there was an outpouring of grief among her readers.  Then, “B” posted a picture of her poor departed baby and that’s when everything unraveled.  The photo was clearly of a doll.  A few of her readers became amateur investigators and soon, the whole big lie was blown wide open.  Word spread and soon many of her “friends” were furious.  They had invested their time and energy to her, and for nothing.  She quickly deleted her blog, twitter and facebook accounts.

So, why did she do it?  She says it was to deal with the death of her son that she did lose shortly after birth in 2005.  “I know what I did was wrong,” she said.  “I’ve been getting hate mail. I’m sorry because people were so emotionally involved.”

What is so sick and wrong about this scam is that Becca preyed on vulnerable women:  Women who had seen real tragedy, had lost real children.  She used religion to make herself seem trustworthy.  She took time and attention away from people who really needed it.

I think there are a few good lessons to learn in this mess.  First, don’t believe everything you read online.  There are people that just enjoy writing fiction and people who enjoy getting attention, and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you get emotionally involved in what you’re reading.  Second, never ever donate money to an individual online.  The chances of being duped are much too high.  Call your churches, your food pantry, the homeless shelters and ask what you can do to help.  Your good deeds will go much farther in your local real life community than they ever could for a stranger online.

Source: chicagotribune.com

Elizabeth (Munro) Adeney is a 66-year-old business woman from England.  Instead of preparing for retirement, she’s due to give birth to her first child in June.  Her friends say she is feisty and just as healthy as many younger women.  Elizabeth wants a child to leave her estate to when she dies.  Elizabeth underwent IVF (in vitro fertilization) in Ukraine, where standards for IVF are very lax.

Shockingly, Elizabeth is not the only senior citizen choosing to give birth late in life.  In Spain, Carmela Bousada became a mother at age 67 and Omkari Panwar from India delivered twins at 70.  The oldest mother with a baby in the United States is Aleta St. James, at age 57.

Omkari Panwar

Pregnancy past age 40 brings about many complications and the older the mother the more serious and risky it becomes.   When Omkari was due to deliver her twins via C-section, doctors were not even sure if she would survive the surgery.  Diabetes, high blood pressure, and preterm labor are common among older pregnant women.

But is it “wrong”?  On one hand, why shouldn’t a woman have a child, regardless of her age?  If she has the means and is physically able to care for a child she has every right to do it.  Motherhood should be judged on ability, not on how old you are.  Some would say that it is better for a child to have a mother with the financial means and the emotional and intellectual maturity to raise a child instead of a younger and possibly disadvantaged woman.

On the other hand, IVF treatments were designed for women of childbearing age whom due to biological complications (infertility) can not physically conceive.  Is it fair to allow older women that chose not to have children in their younger years to undergo IVF?

My personal feelings about the issue lean more towards wondering why these older women choose not to adopt.  Do you know how many babies in England alone are waiting to be adopted by somebody like Elizabeth?  Feeling the yearn to become a mother is normal, but isn’t a little selfish to insist on going to dramatic lengths to birth your own biological child?  Why?  So they’ll look just like you?  Does it really matter?

At 30 years old and the mother of one, I’m already exhausted.  I’m going to use my golden years to relax!  Retirement is a reward for all we go through with our careers, families and children. Who wants to chase a toddler when you could be playing bingo and knitting?

photo sources: ABC news, Times Online UK