3 lesser known facts about breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is advocated to be the only best thing for a newborn. But while it is the most natural thing to do, it isn't an easy process. It is challenging and full of surprises. Researches throw up facts that surprise all. For example: breastfeeding is like a shield against breast cancer. 
Here are 3 such lesser known facts:

1. The milk contents - ever wondered what your baby thinks of the taste of your breast milk. Well, the fact is that your breast milk is tailor-made for your baby. From the taste to its benefits, it is a full course meal. When the feeding begins, the milk is watery. This is to quench the baby's thirst. Then the consistency thickens and the milk becomes higher in fat content. This meets your baby's electrolyte needs as well as energy requirement. Want to know something more amazing? through the day, your breasts milk's properties keep changing. By evening, it has higher sedating properties and helps the baby's body meet nutritional demands. This should explain that satisfied smile babies have when they sleep right after their feeds.
2. Variation in milk production - it is okay and natural if you feel you are lopsided. Many breastfeeding mothers feel that one breast is heavier than the other since it produces more milk. This is possible and happens a lot. Our body is not perfectly symmetrical between left and right. This applies to breasts as well and shouldn't be worried about. Because of this, milk production can also vary between both the breasts.
3. It causes weightloss - some women are known to lose their pregnancy weight by breastfeeding. Yes, this is also a lesser known fact. Breast milk happens to be a high calorie food which the baby literally sucks off the mother's body. This leads to shrinking of the mother's body.
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3 Undisclosed Facts About Breastfeeding, This World Breastfeeding Week

The early childhood period is considered to be the most important developmental phase throughout the lifespan.  This period focuses on the physical, social/emotional and language/cognitive domains of development of a child, which have direct effects on their overall development as an adult in the future.
Physical Development
Physical developments of a child are associated with the motor skills and physical growth of the child. As a child grows and his or her nervous system become more mature, the child becomes more capable of performing increasingly complex actions such as walking, running, balance, and coordination which involve the larger muscles like arms and legs, as well as, some more intricate skills such as drawing, writing, grasping objects, throwing, waving, and catching, involving the smaller muscles in the fingers, toes, eyes, and other areas. Physical growth follows a directional pattern, such as the body's core, legs and arms develop before the small muscles in the fingers and hands.  The muscles in the center of the body become stronger and develop before those in the feet and hands. Development goes from the head to the toes. 
Cognitive Development
Cognitive abilities are associated with memory, reasoning, problem-solving and thinking that continue to emerge throughout childhood. There are four Stages of Cognitive Development:
Stage
Age Period Between
Milestones
Sensorimotor Stage
Birth to age 2
Respond to sensory stimuli by simple motor skills.
Preoperational Stage
Age 2 to 6
Learn to use language, but do not understand logic or mentally manipulate information and understand others' point of view.
Concrete Operational Stage
Age 7 to 11
Begin to think logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts.
Formal Operational Stage
Age 12 to adulthood
Able to think about abstract concepts and develop skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning, and systematic planning.
 
Language Development
It is the most remarkable development in children. According to several researches, it is found that language development begins at fetal level, as the fetus is able to identify the speech and sound patterns of the mother's voice and by the age of four months, a child can distinguish between sounds and read lips. Infants are able to differentiate between speech sounds from all languages; however, around the age of 10 months they lose this ability and begin to recognize their native language only.

What Is Early Childhood Development?

This is a very common condition seen in toddlers. When the legs are brought together then there is a gap at the level of the knee. It happens because of inward bowing of thigh bone or tibia. The deformity may appear to increase on standing.

Daily requirement of calcium

The optimal primary nutritional source during the first year of life is human milk. Premature infants have higher calcium requirements than full-term infants while in the nursery. These may be met by using human milk fortified with additional minerals or with specially designed formulas for premature infants. Around 6 months of age when weaning foods are started, food items rich in calcium should be added. Readymade formulas are fortified with calcium but one must remember that the bioavailability of calcium from human milk is greater than that from infant formulas or cow's milk. Hence breastfeeding should be encouraged. In children age 2-8 years the daily requirement is around 800 mg/d. In children 9- to 18-year-olds the daily requirement is 1,200-1,500 mg/day.

Some of the common items that are rich in calcium are.

Food Item	Quantity	Amount of Calcium in each serving
Milk	1 cup (240 ml)	300 mg
Cheddar cheese
1.5 oz (42 g)	300 mg
Spinach cooked	1/2 cup (90 g)	120 mg
Sardines or salmon with bones	20 Sardines (240 g)	50 mg
Sweet potatoes	1/2 cup (160 g)	44 mg
Vitamin D:

Babies younger than 1-year-old need 400 IU of vitamin D a day. Kids older than 1 year need 600 IU or more of vitamin D a day. Our bodies make vitamin D when our skin is exposed to the sun. The recommended exposure to sunlight is at least 30 min every day. There are various fortified food items that have vitamin D. Also medicines are available which can provide the daily requirement of Vitamin D

Physiological genu varus. In most of the toddlers, the legs are curved inwards. They should improve over a period of time. The legs should straighten by 2 yrs. The child should be investigated if the deformity is severe; the deformity is only in one leg, if the child complains of pain and if the child appears unusually short.

Bow Legs - Why Do Children Suffer From Them?

Using a hearing aid presents a number of advantages to a hearing impaired person. First and foremost, you will hear a lot better. Hearing aids do not restore your hearing to normal but they improve it significantly. It becomes easier to hear what other people say. Sounds you have not heard for a long time such as birds singing, door bell ringing, the howling of the wind and water running may become audible to you.

Hearing aid usually improves the user s social, psychological and physical sense of well being.

Study as well as experience shows that hearing aid generally improve the quality of life and will help you:

Get a better relationship with your family
Feel better about yourself
Get better mental health
Improve your physical well being
To concentrate better
Feel more independent and secure
Feel less tired or exhausted
Be more able to participate in social gathering
Be able to increase your social contact
Be able to do better in your job  
Hearing aid will help you to reduce tinnitus
Hearing aid will help you to avoid dementia by helping you to hear and improve cognitive functioning
As you start hearing through hearing aid, you will start socializing yourself and indirectly improve your quality of life.
Why you need to wear two hearing Aids?

Better understanding of speech
Better understanding in group and even in noisy situation
Better ability to tell the direction of the sound (Localization)
Better sound quality
Greater listening comfort
Hearing is less tiring and more pleasant
Keeping both ears active preserves speech understanding in both ears
Effective tinnitus masking
Better understanding of listening to radio and television
Speech will be clear

Advantages Of A Hearing Aid!

There is always a sense of anxiety, whenever we tend to start off with something new, as people are resistant to change. It is more so in the case of young children. School refusal refers to the refusal of children to attend school as a result of emotional distress. This school refusal can wreak a kind of havoc on families.

Elaborate on symptoms a little more and causes

Symptoms

There are certain symptoms related to the refusal of children to attend schools. They include:

Often it comes in the form of tantrums
Frequent complaints of stomachaches, vomiting, nausea, exhaustion, headaches or diarrhea
There could be loud meltdowns in an overwhelming manner, which include their refusal to leave the house, running down the street to avoid getting inside the car or on the school bus
Children might even become aggressive and lash out at their parents with physical blows
Child feeling fearful of being alone in a room or dark


Causes

Some of the primary causes include:

It arises out of students having a feeling of separation from their parents and homely atmosphere, hence, leading to anxiety
It comes out of an emotional attachment which children tend to have with their parents, especially mothers
Children tend to feel scared with the thought of getting into an unknown atmosphere all of a sudden.
Consistent fear of criticism, ridiculing, confrontation or punishment by the teacher or any other person in the school
Having learning difficulties
Being afraid of qualifying the tests
Not feeling comfortable with school activities like singing, playing or attending school assembly
Fear of being ridiculed due to appearance, clothes, weight, etc.
Fear of being bullied by a class or schoolmate
How Can Children be Helped to Get Rid of this Problem?

The ideal treatment to help all those children struggling with school refusal includes a team approach. It will be beneficial to have a strong team which includes the class teacher, family and if possible, a mental health professionals. The steps include:

1. Assess: The very first step is to complete medical and psychological examination. Given the fact that school refusal is usually linked to an underlying anxiety or depressive disorder, it is necessary to get to the root of the problem and begin there. This would include both family and teacher questionnaires for interviews.

2. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: This is a very structured form of therapy, which helps children to identify their maladaptive patterns of thought and also learn replacement behaviours. It would help children to confront and work through their anxiety.

3. Desensitization in a Systematic Manner: Those children who struggle with school refusal, need a graded approach to return to school. They can return for a some increased amount of time and then gradually build upon it.

4. Training for Relaxation: This is extremely essential for all those children who struggle with anxiety. Some of the relaxation strategies include deep breathing, guided imagery and mindfulness, which kids practice at home and also utilize in school.

5. Plan for Re-entry: The treatment team even creates a plan to help children re-enter the classroom. The plan includes contingencies to help the student during anxious moments throughout the day.

6. Routine and Structure: Children who are anxious can even benefit from routines at home that are predictable. Establishing healthy sleeping habits and a regular sleep cycle during holidays and on weekends can yield positive results.

School Refusal - Symptoms, Causes & Treatments Of It!

Your hearing is one of the most important function your body carries out and sometimes you realize that you are losing your sense of hearing, when it is too late to get it back. There are two main reasons for this. One of the reason is age  and the other is when the inner ear's hair cells break down and do not pick up sound well. Here are 7 ways to safeguard your hearing.

1. Try to avoid loud places
It is not advisable to go to places where you have to shout to be heard, such as in a street, a concert or a construction site.

2. Buy low noise rating equipment
The equipments in your house will make sound that you hear the most. Try to avoid these equipments by buying appliances with a low noise rating.

3. Wear hearing protection at loud places
However, it is true that it is not always possible to avoid loud noises. This is when you need to get hearing protection. Earplugs and earmuffs are two of the best ways to make sure that even when you are in a loud place, your hearing does not get affected. Earplugs and earmuffs generally reduce sound by 15 to 30 decibels, which may be crucial to make sure that later in your life, you do not lose your hearing.

4. Avoid smoke
Smoking raises your chance of hearing loss. Second hand smoke does the same thing. Therefore, try to avoid, both smoking and secondhand smoking. 

5. Remove earwax properly
Earwax cannot be removed properly using a cotton swab. Instead, you should use an irrigation kit. Remember this as otherwise; the earwax could muffle your hearing.

6. Avoid medications which reduce hearing
Certain medications increase hearing loss. Therefore, double check with your doctor to make sure your medicines will not make you lose your hearing.

7. Get your hearing tested
Finally, get your hearing tested as identifying the problem early on can help stop worsen the situation.

7 Tips to Safeguard Your Hearing

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