First Sign Of A Pregnancy
IS A MISSED PERIOD ALWAYS THE FIRST SIGN OF A PREGNANCY?
Usually it is – however, not every missed period necessarily means a pregnancy. There can be a great many causes for a missed period, many of them emotional.
Girls studying hard for exams may miss periods; so may girls leaving home and starting a new job, or traveling abroad, or falling in love or out of it, or suffering bereavement.
The close link between emotions and hormones is the cause of this sort of reaction. Also, physical illnesses may lead to missed periods, including anemia, thyroid disorders and diabetes (both these latter are hormonal) or experiencing surgery or an accident.
However, in a woman of reproductive age living a full sex life without the use of contraception, a missed period should be regarded as very indicative of pregnancy.
One problem which may bewilder is the ‘half missed’ period. Some women, early in pregnancy, experience at the usual period time a small blood loss which is much less than the normal period but which she naturally regards as a period.
To Have A Baby In Hospital
IS IT BEST TO HAVE A BABY IN HOSPITAL?
This is a question that has been debated for many years. There are people who say that normal childbirth is a natural event and not a sickness and that the place for normal events is a normal home, while others point out that childbirth is potentially hazardous for both mother and baby and that hospitals are safer because they are equipped to deal with emergencies. And indeed there are pros and cons on both sides. In this country the proportion of home confinements has fallen heavily and it must be said that neonatal morbidity (illness and death in the newborn) has also fallen. However, this could be due as much to constantly improving ante-natal care and obstetric knowledge as to hospital confinement.
The good things about hospital confinements are:
• ready availability of emergency services, such as anesthesia, blood transfusion, surgery;
• constant availability of trained staff and consultant experts, by night as well as day;
• freedom from any responsibility for her own care by the mother (at home she has to be involved with planning meals, seeing the housework is done properly and so on; even if she has help the fact that she is there at home often means she inevitably shares in what is going on);
My kids Health
Heart Murmurs
There are two kinds of murmurs: pathologic murmurs and physiologic murmurs. A pathologic heart murmur is due to a hole in the heart, such as an atrial septal defect (ASD), a hole between the two upper chambers, or a ventricular septal defect (VSD), a hole between the lower two chambers, among others. A physiologic murmur is not caused by heart defects and results from a number of factors. For example, a baby’s thin chest wall may allow the sound of blood rushing through the large heart chambers to be audible—which disappears by the time he’s a hale 145-pound teenager.
Not all pathologic murmurs are serious. Various holes may close spontaneously, without any consequences whatsoever, with a “watch and wait” policy. Even those that require surgery, such as a simple, uncomplicated VSD, ultimately cause no lifelong disability or impairment.
Health Infant
Projectile Vomiting
A term that gets thrown about quite often is “projectile” vomiting. Parents generally use it to mean forceful vomiting; pediatricians generally use it in reference to pyloric stenosis (or other far rarer blockages of the upper intestinal tract).
Pyloric stenosis is a condition where the muscle sphincter separating the stomach from the small intestine becomes too tight and actually blockades the stomach. The stomach’s normal peristaltic contractions get hurled into reverse, and the last feeding can end up, literally, across the room.
Forceful vomiting ends up only a quarter way across the room, or halfway across the room for overachievers or those living in small apartments. This generally occurs with reflux and is a completely separate problem.
Pyloric stenosis requires surgery, and since it runs in families, often Mom or Dad has a small, midline horizontal surgical scar, just under the middle of the ribcage. For some reason, only the firstborn is affected, and subsequent children are spared. So contemplate (just above) your navel. If you have one of these scars and your firstborn is vomiting all the way across the room, start dialing your doctor now.