Ultrasonagraphy provides a picture of a fetus by means of bouncing high-frequency sound waves off the baby. It is useful for dating the pregnancy, checking for major abnormalities, to see if there is more than one baby, locating the placenta and assessing the cause in cases of bleeding in pregnancy. It is routine in many hospitals at around 16 weeks of pregnancy, and you may be under pressure to accept a scan even if you are having your baby at home.

The actual procedure involves lying on your back on a narrow trolley while a blunt probe is scanned across your abdomen, which is lubricated with conductive gel. A sometimes blurred picture is built up on a nearby screen. It is possible to freeze the picture so that specific measurements of the baby can be made to assess the gestational age.

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Bullying may be a extremely contagious behavior that transmits instantly from kid to kid, just like the contagion. The behavior will begin with associate degree adult bullying, threatening, demeaning, or gaspingly excluding a toddler.

Some oldsters do that as a matter of course: it’s accepted in several families as rightful discipline. However disrespect and intimidation set a behavior example that youngsters absorb fully.

When a toddler has been treated badly, or has witnessed harshness, the behavior enters the child’s expertise; however her mind can’t method it. Youngsters merely don’t perceive meanness or harshness. It continually hurts, even once they aren’t the direct target.

The words aforementioned, the facial expressions a toddler sees, the visual communication of the aggress...

There is a disadvantage to having a baby at home — namely the expectation that, because you have not been in hospital, you are able to continue an active life without a rest. If you are at home you are available to solve any housekeeping or childcare problem. You are also available to visitors, who are unrestricted by visiting hours.

You may feet wonderfully fit after having a baby at home. You are less likely to have had drugs or an episiotomy, or for your labor to have been induced or accelerated. You may not have had syntometrine and your labor may have been shorter than if it had been in hospital. All these things can contribute to your feeling as if you can carry on just where you left off. However this does not mean that you should...

This objection will depend very much on what happened before, but need not necessarily be discouraging, even if you have previously had a Caesarean section. You may, however, find it hard to get a booking, although it still remains your right. It is up to the health authority to make the best possible provision for your individual circumstances; this might include taking some blood for crossmatching in the event of your needing a blood transfusion, and making sure the midwife who attends you is experienced and has some back-up.

There are in fact a number of good reasons for having a baby at home after encountering difficulties with a previous birth, all of which contribute to reducing the chances of it happening again...

We generally talk about ART as occurring in cycles. A cycle of ART begins with the stimulation of the woman’s ovaries to produce eggs (oocytes). Commercially produced gonadotrophin (ovary-stimulating) hormones are used in higher than usual doses to stimulate «super-ovulation,» or more eggs than would normally be produced and brought to maturity in one cycle. The development of these oocytes is monitored by ultrasound until they are ready to be released from the ovary (ovulation). Ultrasound checks are performed at least three or four times in the early part of the cycle, sometimes every day, along with measurements of estrogen and other hormones. Maturation of the oocytes is then brought about by giving a syntheric form of luteinizing hormone, a pituitary hormone related to ovulation...

I feel badly regarding this, however generally I hesitate to actually get down and play with my female offspring, as a result of after I need to stop taking part in and have a tendency to the baby, she gets thus upset. However am I able to keep from symptom her feelings?
—a mother of a baby and a four-year-old.

It’s healthy and infrequently necessary for fogeys to mention, “OK, currently i want to mend dinner, thus I want to prevent fiddling with you currently.” we’ve several tasks to juggle, and that we typically need to stop fiddling with our youngsters, finish their play with one another, or move them toward a replacement activity before they are able to create a modification...

Placental insufficiency is a condition where there is a reduction in the placenta’s ability to sustain the baby. The placenta or afterbirth is the organ within the uterus where the baby’s blood vessels exchange waste products from the baby’s system for oxygen and other nutrients supplied by the mother’s blood. If the placenta either does not develop normally or starts to deteriorate for some reason, the baby will go short of essential materials for growth. This will be apparent if your uterus is not growing at the expected rate and may be demonstrated by ultrasound. Placental insufficiency can be caused by raised blood pressure, smoking, syphilis, diabetes and bleeding in pregnancy.

You can be reasonably sure that your placenta is functioning well if you are aware of the baby kicking frequ...

Be mindful that a tremendous emotional toll can be exacted by the cycle-to-cycle swings of hopefulness and grief, even if they are eventually followed by triumph. It takes a strong relationship to hold up under these stresses. Besides the natural emotional aspects of all of this, you will also be subject to yo-yo mood swings because of the hormones used in ART. Here are a couple of stories of real people that illustrate what we’re talking about.

Sydney was a teacher, in fact she was head of a prestigious private high school. She and Tom had married in their mid-thirties and were busy with their careers until, when Sydney was 41, they realized that they wanted to have a family before it was too late...

Whether you plan to work full or part time, child care will be a vitally important part of your life and is another piece that should be arranged well before coming home with a baby in your arms. There are many options, and each one fits someone’s needs. The possibilities include professional child-care centers, relatives, immediate family who work different shifts, in-home nannies, and other mothers who finance staying at home with their own children by sitting for other people’s children. You can find a safe and comfortable arrangement with any of these solutions, but take nothing for granted and do your homework ahead of time.

You need to define your needs and criteria...

On rare occasions — statistically more rarely than in hospital — a baby delivered at home dies, either before it is born or shortly afterwards. This is always a tragedy and there really is no consolation. However there are aspects of stillbirth or neonatal death at home from which bereaved families draw some comfort. (If you feel that your baby would not have died if you had been in hospital then the following considerations will be of no help at all.)

If his or her death seems to be inevitable or unpreventable, you may prefer that your baby is born at home...