Such children often deliberately hurt themselves: cut hands, pull out hair, beat their head against the wall. They often have a suicidal mood – in this case, they may fulfil their plans quickly if adults do not pay attention to their problems in time.

The study showed that the adolescents who were bullied three times more that their peers had an 8% risk to hurt themselves. For those who rarely got into such situations this figure equalled 2%. Moreover, girls hurt themselves more often than boys do. The authors of the study emphasize a few factors that increase the risks: a similar case that took place within the family, abuse, behavioural and emotional problems.

According to the doctors, the woman will go into labour before 20 May. Perez says that she is going to deliver six daughters and three sons. Now she is at one of the Mexican hospitals near the border with the United States. Once the future world record was made known, Carla’s pregnancy became one of the most popular topics in the Mexican media.

According to the would-be record holder, the reason for such “great happiness” is in vitro fertilization that Perez made when she was treated for infertility. The woman has not thought of the babies’ names yet, as she worries about the delivery. The woman also conceals her age and the exact place of residence.

However, there are also sceptics who accuse Carla Perez of a lie. They believe that the woman is just trying to attract more attention. Recently, one of the employees of the hospital, where the future mother is supposedly observed, said he saw Carla’s ultrasound and announced in his speech on the Televisa channel that she was not even pregnant. Now the local authorities are checking this information.

If Carla Perez is really pregnant, the woman will be called the mother with the largest number of children, provided that all of them are born alive. It will be recalled that the last time nine babies were born was in 1971 by an Australian, Geraldine Brodrick. But, unfortunately, none of the five boys and the four girls survived: two were born dead, the rest died six days after the birth.

The aspiring contestant is Poppy, the 7-year-old daughter of Sarah Burge, aka The Human Barbie, from St. Neots, Cambridgeshire; the mother and daughter are coming to the US to take part in the famous beauty contest. Burge, 51, is known for her plastic surgery-created looks and similar plans for her child who is already in possession of thousands-dollar worth of vouchers for future beauty operations.

Burge is giving out that Poppy will shine at Toddlers & Tiaras, for which achievement thousands of dollars are being spent on training and appearance.

The desired conquest has been anticipated in a new scandalous photo session, and Geniuspregnancy.com is publishing some of them showing the Barbie family posing in revealing outfits.

The most daring pic displays the blonde beauties wearing nothing above their waists but yellow police tape arranged over their bodies; the mom has fishnet thigh-high garters to go with the tape, whereas the daughter is clad in black leggings.

The two are coming over to Atlanta, Georgia, in May, for a series of under-twelve events which will allow Poppy to enlist for her first U.S. pageant.

Sunbeds are addictive and not quite harmless, as is borne out by a number of experts in the field. Talking to NJ.com, Sophie Balk, a pediatrician at New York’s Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, explained that the phenomenon of addiction to artificial sunbathing, known as “tanorexia,” gives the feeling of relaxation that many people develop a habit for. Later they may find it hard to give up the habit and even suffer from withdrawal symptoms. “They may know it’s bad but they can’t cut back,” she concluded, adding that withdrawal causes anxiety and fits of depression. Jeanine Downie, a dermatologist in Montclair, New Jersey, says sunbathing can cause addiction due to the release of dopamine, for this neurotransmitter enhances a sense of well-being. Besides, there are chronic tanners who cling to the belief that dark skin makes them look healthier and more beautiful.

By now it’s common knowledge that too much sunbed lying is fraught with health threat: the danger of developing skin cancer becomes much higher in tanorexics. The Skin Cancer Foundation reports that sunbathers run 4 times more risk of developing melanoma. Dr. Downie says it’s not surprising since tanning beds are about 15 times as ultraviolet active as the sun – therefore a chronic tanner increases his or her chances of melanoma by 75 % with every next tan. According to authorities, Ms Krentcil brought her fair-complexioned daughter with her to a tanning salon, and the child ended up with multiple burns. The girl was 5, whereas the New Jersey law prohibits the use of tanning salon to children below 14.

Ms Krentcil admits to having developed a tanning habit. On the following day the girl’s kindergarten teacher saw the burns covering the girls’ body and called in medical help. Eventually Ms Krentcil was arrested and taken to the Superior Court where she was accused of child endangerment. Ms Krentcil was heard to say before the hearing that the accusation was a “made up” affair. At the court she pleaded not guilty through her attorney.

The lady has been saved neither by nude photo shoots (she received $8,000 for her pictures in the Closer magazine) nor by the staged photos with her 14 children.

According to Nadya, she has been living on her social payments for about a month assuring the state that she can not support herself and her children on her own. According to TMZ, Suleman is literally “buried in debts,” the exact amount of which is equal to a million dollars.

The declaration of bankruptcy was filed by the “octomom” according to Chapter 7 of the U.S. legislation, which means recognition of a “total bankruptcy”, leading to a probable loss of the entire property.

It should be noted that the children of the 36-year-old Suleman were conceived through artificial insemination, and it was she, who asked her doctor to implant more than the recommended number of embryos. At first, she gave birth to her six senior babies, and then she became famous all over the world due to her 8 juniors.

It should be noted that the mother of 14 children had quite a lot of business plans: she appealed for the registration of the “octomom” brand, signed a contract for the filming of a reality show, and even asked the visitors of her website for financial assistance.

The result is: $50,000 on her account and about a million dollars of debt.

Outwardly the – one even hesitates to call them that – toys are well-equipped for their task, for they are fashioned to resemble real babies as close as can be. Many stores throughout the world have been refitted to turn out Reborns. The production involves sedulous and meticulous long-time handwork so that shop babies could not only look but also feel like the real thing, complete with an electronically provided heart beats and a carefully calculated weight of the head to give the proper balance. Real-looking skin color is achieved by applying 10 and more layers of paint. Hair is fixed through the micro-rooting process by one strand at a time.

Besides the fact that every small detail is taken care of, customization is provided, adding birthmarks and other personalizing features.

The perfect vessel for motherly love, the Reborn babies are sold for prices ranging from $200 to $600 to be carried around, cuddled, and generally adored. While they are ideal for mothers who are mourning over their deceased babies, it is not only these who go for the lovely ones. Maybe it is not something to be surprised at?

Barbie doll has celebrated its 53rd anniversary quite recently. It has undergone so many changes over the years! Barbie has tried all styles of dress, all possible hairstyles and makeup. She had many different occupations, ranging from a nurse to a diver. She even gave birth to a baby – there was such a doll with an imposed “tummy”, wherefrom the baby appeared. And now… Barbie may have cancer and go through chemotherapy.

It all began with Bratz doll, which is often called Barbie’s friend. Thanks to Facebook, the idea of creating a bald doll collected quite a lot of supporters. This idea was shared with the creators from the Mattel doll company, and they announced, via Facebook again, that they would produce the first doll without hair in June.

Most of the dolls will be sent to the Children’s Hospital and presented to the girls, who have had alopecia (hair loss) after cancer and radiation therapy.

When the doll goes on sale, every dollar obtained from selling it will be sent to help sick children. It is worth saying that the doll will be magnificent. It will have wigs, accessories, hats, and scarves. All of this should teach the girls, who have suffered from hair loss, to live with this further.

Meanwhile, the fans of Barbie dolls are keen on having their doll support girls with cancer and have already launched a campaign to collect signatures for the idea. And they say that they may be able to repeat what the fans of the Bratz doll did. They wish Barbie had alopecia.

Previous studies showed that the brain of autistic children was larger in comparison with healthy children, especially in the prefrontal cortex, which played a key role in thinking, language skills, decision-making, and social behavior.

While studying this anomaly, the researchers from the University of California San Diego Autism Center analyzed the tissues of the prefrontal cortex of 33 postmortem brain samples of autistic and non-autistic people aged 2 to 56 years. It was found that the brain, suffering from this disease, included other variations of both DNA and RNA (ribonucleic acid), which played an important role in protein synthesis. The author of the study, Eric Courchesne, explains that the RNA-violation in the autistic brain, is most likely related to the genes that encode the proteins regulating cell growth. According to the researcher, they found out that the links, that had to govern the genesis of brain cells and develop them, were abnormal, and the same was true about the links governing the formation and removal of neurons. The connections, which should have regulated DNA repair, did not work.

How are these changes, after all, associated with autism? Scientists believe that an excessive number of neurons or brain cells can explain its larger size compared with the human brain, not suffering from this disease. In numbers, it looks like this: about 0880000000 neurons in the prefrontal cortex in healthy children and about 1570000000 in autistic children.

The fact that the school provides knowledge and adds more reason is not new. However, early studies on this subject show that the children with high IQ levels have most likely received a better education than others. Now, there is strong evidence that additional education makes the child more intelligent. We are talking about years, and not about seven classes a day and the load of numerous elective courses.

How did it become clear? Some time ago, there was an education reform carried out in Norway, and the period of secondary education was increased for two years. The scientists compared the data of the people, who had studied before these developments and after them. It was found that the additional workload had had a positive impact on the growth of the rate of schoolchildren’s mental development, and their IQ had been increased by 3.7 points on average.

The results of this study are sensational, at least because the vast number of psychologists and educators continue to believe that IQ level is determined by genetic factors. They claim that IQ is stable and not susceptible to any modifications. And for them, it is a matter of faith rather than of scientific findings.

So, if your child has decided to quit school and go get secondary special education, try to convince him or her that a few extra years at school will give him more intelligence.

A new research, conducted at the University of Virginia, shows that the teenagers, who are not able to convincingly prove their position during an argument with their mother, find it harder to resist peer pressure. In contrast, other children are able to calmly and persuasively defend their point of view.

Of course, parents should give their children an opportunity to use their arguments in the dispute. However, they must first of all learn to listen – to listen to their children’s opinion to the end, to try to understand the motives which prompted the child to commit a particular act. This is the basic pattern of behavior, which the teenager copies and will continuously apply in life, including interaction with peers.

The skill of reasoned argument will be very useful when a classmate or a friend from the neighborhood will offer your child to try alcohol or drugs for the first time. It is not simple to abandon the “temptation”, because one can easily do anything “in a company”. And if a teen has an argument and the skill of using it, he or she can prove the peers that drugs and alcohol will not do any good in one’s life. At the same time, the teenager will retain the “reputation” in a social group, which is so important in this age.

Of course, parents can simply demand compliance with some rules of conduct, but the consequences of such pressure on the child are unpredictable – the teenager may act in the opposite way, thus demonstrating the protest.

Joanna Marie Chango (Ph.D., a post-graduate student in clinical psychology) and her colleagues have tested the adolescents and their mothers (because it is mothers who spend the most time with their children). They were offered to discuss any problems and then take part in a simulated hypothetical situation. As a result of these studies, the children, who did not get their mother’s support and understanding during the conversation with her, were more susceptible to peer pressure.

Laura Glynn, a psychologist from Chapman University in California, has held a number of studies that prove the idea that pregnant women do suffer from short-term memory loss, and the brain as if focuses on the needs of the child, while everything else is in the background.

Especially if it is not the first pregnancy, expectant mothers know that it is this temporary happy condition which makes them extremely forgetful. They can fail to remember what they have been doing, where they have put the car keys, what day of the week it is. But it does not matter, and neither the pregnant woman, nor the people around her should be scared by it. Be sure the “brain will get back in its place” exactly at the moment when the baby is born. One will need extreme concentration, good reaction and endurance, so the body is prepared in advance by accumulating energy.

Dr. Glynn explains that these changes make a woman absent-minded, forgetful and extremely sensitive. They can be caused by hormonal changes in her body, by the moving of the fetal cells into the mother’s bloodstream (the scientists believe that these cells are attracted to certain brain areas), and the movements of the fetus. And even if the child moves almost imperceptibly, any change in the position of its body increases the heart rate of the expecting mother. In addition, pregnancy is a critical period for the development of the central nervous system of the woman, but, unfortunately, the scientists do not know practically anything about it. The only thing we can say for sure is that all these components taken together affect the pregnant woman’s brain, making it so… “absent-minded”.

Naturally, there was a safety glass wall between Sofia Walker, 3, and the lion Malik, but that did nothing to diminish the ferocity with which the animal tried to get at the girl with his paws. It paused and then continued to strike at the glass making his anger manifest – yet failing to get the undaunted girl to cringe away from the sight.

The Wellington Zoo’s Paul Hatton explained that the threatening pawing was intended to show that Malik wasn’t going to share his breakfast with the girl.

Gemma Potter, the resident of the English city of Plymouth, is only 23 years old now. In 2006, when she met her future husband, she was a very young girl. Their love was passionate and mutual, but soon Gemma noticed a strange thing: all the contraceptives, which she resorted to, were completely ineffective.

As a result, she has given birth to three children during 5 years, and two pregnancies ended in miscarriages.

But the most piquant is the fact that the woman with three children and a young mother – judging by modern standards – is pregnant for the sixth time, although she took every precaution to prevent pregnancy.

Gemma and her husband Glenn made love no more than three times from the beginning of September until early December – once a month, as it turns out. The woman was very worried that she would get pregnant once again. But there was no way to escape her fate. Neither pills, nor intrauterine devices and hormone injections could help her. During the fall, she and Glenn used condoms, but Gemma still got pregnant.

At first, the doctors, whom she spoke with, only smiled and advised her to comply with the prescribed rules for the use of various contraceptive methods more carefully. But now they look at the woman as a kind of a medical phenomenon.

Gemma complains she has forgotten what a party with friends is like. She has forgotten the taste of champagne, whiskey, and wine. She will never be able to find a good job again, and all of that is because she is constantly pregnant. Gemma loves her children and her husband, but she is terribly afraid to once again discover that she is pregnant.

The woman decided that in future she would take advantage of this feature of her organism. After giving birth to their fourth child, Gemma is going to become a surrogate mother.

As reported by The Daily Mail, the midwife felt premature contractions a few hours after she went home from her work at hospital in the evening of December 10. According to the 28-year-old woman, it was the first birth, so she knew that the contractions would be long. The woman decided to wait, until they subsided.

Despite this fact, the frequency of the contractions continued to increase, and the pregnant woman decided to move to the bathroom. The woman’s relatives called the team of doctors. However, Clarke-Wood managed to give birth to a child before their arrival. She delivered the baby, using a small make-up mirror and towels.

The midwife gave birth to a daughter in the morning of December 11. The weight of the newborn girl was about three kilograms.

Clarke-Wood has been working as a midwife at Croydon University Hospital since 2008. According to the newly formed mother, she had assisted the delivery of thousands of women during the period of her work, and many of those women gave birth at home.

Since 1991, the researchers have been studying 1364 mothers from the moment of birth and to the period when their children became 10 years old. The scholars were interested to know the impact of the career on the mothers’ welfare (the experiment involved the mothers, who worked full time or part-time and who were housewives).

The verdict is as follows: the mothers, who work, have the best health and psychological balance. There is no much difference, whether the mother works full-time or part-time.

The mothers, who work part-time, also showed the best resistance to depression, and the mothers, staying at home, were more prone to depressive states.

The mothers, working part-time, pay more attention to the raising of their children, while the mothers, working full-time, and housewives have little or no opportunity to participate in their children’s education (the children of pre-school age are taken into account).

So, we are right, when we demand more lenient working conditions, but at the same time do not abandon the job altogether.

And that is because these expectant mothers were not at all prepared for what they will have to encounter with.

The film is based on the bestselling book by Heidi Murkoff, which tells about five couples, who go through all the difficulties and joys of pregnancy. Some of them decide to have children despite their age, some of them come to this decision spontaneously, and the others are aimed at adopting a child. What unites the characters is that they are making funny discoveries, while getting ready to become parents (one of them is the phrase uttered by the character of Cameron Diaz: “If I knew I was going to have a rack this gorgeous, I would have gotten knocked up years ago!”).

The cast of this romantic comedy is star-studded: the movie involves Jennifer Lopez, Brooklyn Decker, Rodrigo Santoro, Anna Kendrick, Chace Crawford, and Matthew Morrison. They all promise to please the audience with the film next May.

The 28-year-old Iraq war veteran shared with PEOPLE exclusively that he and Gonzalez-Jones had learned last week that they are going to have a girl – their first child together – late next spring. “We are over the moon,” says Martinez.

The couple met in 2008 when Martinez got a part to play on All My Children and Gonzalez-Jones was assisting the executive producer. They hit it off almost instantly, but first as friends. They stayed bosom friends for two years before they decided they could opt for more. According to Gonzalez-Jones, they proceeded smoothly without any hard-felt adjustment. “We just clicked right away,” she told PEOPLE.

Martinez says that he is going through psychological adjustment getting used to being a father. He finds it hard to take in all of the year’s surprises, blessings and opportunities. He calls Diana’s baby bump “the cutest thing ever” and is sure that 2012 is going to be even better for them than the passing year!

When brothers Wyatt and Jonas were getting on to four, Wyatt began to show his preference for dolls; he also loved donning girls’ clothes and high heels and walk about the house like this.

No-one paid much attention to that until the day when Wyatt stepped out dressed in his mother’s shoes and a sequined shirt. His parents wanted to know then if he felt comfortable in that kind of clothes and got an affirmative reply, according to the Boston Globe. Brother Jonas also told his dad that he’d better accept his brother as a girl and daughter.

It was an idea that didn’t sink in at once. Father, Wayne Maines, had been dreaming of handing down his passion for hunting to his sons and couldn’t wait until he would take them out to the Maine woods and hunt deer together. He admitted to the ABCNews that he fretted over the transition and felt as if he was “losing a son.”

Deciding to live with it, the Maines held a family council when the children turned nine, explaining to them the meaning of freedom, but also about fear, evil and hate that may also become part of their lives.

Other lessons their father taught them were to walk through life with integrity and pride taking care of one another and staying loyal to their friends.

The parents went on to engage help of the Children’s Hospital Gender Management Services Clinic that offers ground-breaking services for teaching parents how to handle a transgender child and recognize his or her emotional and medical difficulties.

Now, at 14, Wyatt is definite that his is a girl’s life. She is known as Nicole and acts like a sister to his brother Jonas. She says she has always been looking on herself as a girl and it makes her “cringe” whenever she thinks of being a boy.

The only thing Nicole lacks is having a female body and she means to get it! She needs a body “that matches up to my image of myself’’ and intends to undergo gender reassignment surgery as soon as she can.

In the common course of events such a surgery isn’t performed before the applicant turns 18; moreover, in New England where the Maines family lives there are no hospitals that do that kind of operation. It will be either Montreal or Philadelphia for Nicole to finally realize her wish. Meanwhile she is half excited, half anxious about the possible pain and the outcome of the surgery.

The doctors insisted on a surgery, especially since the woman in labor was 40 years old, weighed 240 kg and suffered from gestational diabetes. However, the brave mother not only refused to give birth in any other way, except the natural one, but she did not even try to change her habits before delivery (the woman used to eat about a kilogram of sweets each day) and would “ease” the contractions with chocolates.

Nevertheless, she gave birth to a baby without any problems. And it is not surprising since it is her 14th child.

In fact, she can even be considered young in comparison with the new generation of parents, who prefer using reproduction methods and have their first-born babies in the age, when their peers are already nursing their grandchildren.

Getting Pregnant Despite Menopause

60-year-old Ann Maloney, the mother of two children (her elder daughter Isabella is 10 years old, and her younger daughter Lily is 7), gave an open-hearted interview to the New York Magazine telling about how her girls had been born. She met her second husband, John Ross, when she was 47, and a year later the spouses decided to have a child (a donor ovule was used for the conception). To have her second baby, Ann resorted to hormonal drugs and addressed the doctors, who managed to draw her out of the menopause. Today, the couple is happy, despite their age. The elderly parents say that they have enough strength and energy to raise both daughters.

Getting Pregnant at 53

A similar thing happened to a 53-year-old Kate Garros, who had lost her chance to become a mother at an early age. This story also involved a second marriage. Kate’s husband had been dreaming of having twins. The couple also used donor ovules for the IVF. Now, Alexandra and John have been making their mom and dad happy for seven years. However, the mother is now 61 years old, and she suffers from arthritis, which constantly reminds her of her age. From her personal experience, Kate says that people are baffled if you do not look like a typical mom, whom they expect to see.

Parents or Grandparents?

Fiona Palin from Los Angeles is 48 years old. Five months ago, she gave birth to a baby, Katherine. By that time, Fiona and her husband Nick had almost lost hope of ever becoming parents. It took them 10 years and 6 IVF attempts; three cases of pregnancy ended tragically. During the last attempt a frozen embryo was used. Fiona confessed of her thoughts that nothing would happen again, and they did not have any hopes left. But after nine months of an ‘ideal’ pregnancy, Catherine was born, and everyone would call her Kiki with affection. The baby is nearly six months old, and her mother still cannot quite believe that a miracle has happened.

Her husband is well aware of the fact that he could have been the grandfather of his daughter. He was not kidding when he said with irony that he did not have any grandchildren, so he decided to have his own child. He realizes the bitter truth that he can not be there when his daughter turns 30. His wife plans to send their daughter to a boarding school when she becomes a teenager, so that Kiki could have at least some “sisters”.

Here is how the psychologist Julianne Zweifel commented on the emerging tendency: “Children have the right for at least one parent alive and well.”

Why Are Pregnant Women “Getting Older”?

Mothers are getting older with every year. Over the past 10 years, the number of the women giving birth after 45 has increased more than twice in the USA. The number of those who gave birth after the age of 50 has increased by 375%. The reason for this rapid growth is the improvement of medical technologies, such as freezing of embryos, which allows women to postpone motherhood for the time being. Obstetricians and gynecologists claim that the biological age of many 50-year-old women is 10-15 years less than the real age, so they are fully capable to bear children. The studies have shown that those, who decide between pregnancy and career and prefer to pursue a career, postponing their pregnancy “for later times”, are wealthy, educated, and, consequently, physically healthier than their average statistical peers. Richard Paulson, fertility expert at the University of Southern California, says that these 50-year-olds are very young.

According to La Liberte Angel, who runs a California website for older mothers, women are too much under pressure which is often quite unreasonable. Women are expected to be responsible for the household duties, to earn money and to give birth within a certain period of time. However, the risks remain significant. Mothers aged 35 or more are 20% more likely to experience preterm labor, which leads to an increase in health problems for the child (the risk involves the lungs, the gastrointestinal tract and neurology, and the chances that the baby will be autistic also increase). However, the mothers themselves are having difficult times. Pregnant women, who are over 40, face the risk of preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and hypertension. That is why many clinics, specializing in IVF, set strict age limitations.

What Makes Older Women Decide to Get Pregnant?

There is no doubt that getting pregnant is a balanced and deliberate decision. The children, who are born with “older” mothers, could hardly be more desired and loved. Sometimes their appearance can save a marriage that has been crumbling on the eyes, as if it were a house of cards. That is what happened with the relationship of John Travolta and Kelly Preston. After the death of the elder son, 16-year-old Jett (he had died of epilepsy in the Bahamas), the star couple was about to divorce. Fortunately, Ella Blue now has a younger brother Benjamin. The happy father says his son is so smart, cute, healthy, and wonderful. He is simply delighted with the kid, who “makes every day of his life better.”

The new meaning of life, no more and no less – that is what babies give their “adult” mothers.

Preterm delivery in a Mexican hospital was the result of the pregnancy of the 10-year-old girl. The premature baby is in a rehabilitation ward, and its condition is considered good. The mother is also recovering, she is allowed to visit the baby and to feed him with the breast.

The case attracted the attention of Attorney General of the country, and the law enforcement agencies are now trying to find out whether there was the fact of raping, or the girl had a sexual contact voluntarily.

According to the outdated laws of the country, a girl voluntarily can have sex at the age of 12. The girls, who become pregnant before the age of 12, must prove they have been raped in order to appeal for the right to have an abortion. It means that, according to the laws of Mexico, young pregnant women have no right to make an abortion, if they cannot prove being a victim of a sexual offense. If a girl is not 12 years old and she will make an abortion illegally, she may be sentenced to imprisonment or a fine. At present, the laws of the country are being revised because of the numerous demands of human rights organizations.

The scientists were interested to know how much sweet soda the teenagers had drunk during the previous week. Also, the participants of the experiment were asked whether they had been aggressive towards their peers during the previous year. Moreover, they specified whether the teens had had a gun or cold arms with them.

The adolescents, who used to drink more than 14 cans of soda drinks per week, confessed of carrying a weapon twice as often as those who drank only two cans. Among the fans of soda, the probability of showing aggression was higher by 9-15%.

Carbonated soda drinks have long been in the physicians’ black list. The main remark concerning these drinks is the increase in blood sugar levels and the risk of pancreatic cancer. In addition, there is a research proving that carbonated drinks cause premature aging.

Source of the image: Photl.

The experts from Hebrew University in Jerusalem found that the brain changes, particularly associated with the perception of smells and sounds, help mothers to communicate with their babies, and especially to recognize the incoming signals from kids when they are asking for help.

Dr. Adi Mizrahi and his colleagues conducted tests on mice. For instance, they have investigated whether the primary auditory cortex of adult mice – a part of brain that is involved in the analysis of sounds – can serve for processing responses to the smell of young mice and their voice.

In the course of the research, the scientists have discovered that simple mice and mother mice reacted to the smell of mousekins differently. In particular, mothers demonstrated the connection between the processing of olfactory and auditory information. As the scientists have discovered, the mice did not have this quality, but rather acquired it after the birth of baby mice.

Source of the image: Photl.

Combo crib and change station

Some manufacturers make baby changing stations that are an exact match to a crib they sell. They are made of the same wood as the crib and are stained the same color. These stations can be set right beside the crib since both pieces of furniture seem to appear as one when put together. The changing table is pretty much as tall as the crib, which makes things a lot easier when your baby is crying in the middle of the night and you need to make a quick change before the feeding starts.

Changing stations with cabinets

If you want to keep your baby essentials hidden from view you can opt for one of these types of stations that have drawers instead of shelves. While these stations may be more aesthetically pleasing, the drawback is you may have to be fumbling with drawers while your infant is fussing for a change.

Baby changing tables can be made from a lot of different materials like wood, metal or polyethylene. It is a personal choice which one you choose based on the look of the nursery and price you can afford.

Safety factors

When you’re looking for a baby station make sure that you find one with a security strap to tie around the baby during the diaper change. Although the changing area may look secure and it may seem that there is really no need to tie up the baby, it’s amazing how fast an accident can happen. Babies seemed to wiggle and jiggle in all sorts of fascinating ways and all it takes is one wrong move and the baby can end up on the floor.

When it comes to safety for babies, you can never make a wrong call by choosing the safest option available.

Many parents won’t even completely trust this strap and tend to hold one hand over the baby while reaching for supplies underneath. For these cautious parents, stations with shelves instead of drawers are a better option. It is much easier to grab a diaper, baby wipes and a towel from a shelf with one hand than it is to have to maneuver to open a drawer and pull out all of these accessories.

Most parents don’t put a lot of thought into baby changing stations and just include it as an add-on when purchasing baby furniture. It is a good idea, however, to put some serious thought into it ahead of time since it is going to be one of the most used pieces of furniture in the nursery and in your whole home once the baby arrives!

Previously, the scientists have been making statements that during the period of strong stress and crises boys are less likely to be born. For instance, this tendency was observed in America immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Then the number of boys born in New York City reduced considerably. The same was observed in Germany in 1991, when the former GDR stepped into the period of economic decline and political chaos. Then there was a significant decline in the number of newborn boys.

The recent study not only states the fact, but explains it as well. The reason turns out to be in the increased level of the so-called stress hormone in pregnant women, cortisol in particular. The women, who had had a higher level of cortisol before pregnancy, more often gave birth to girls. High cortisol levels must in any way impede the implantation of male embryos in the uterus. But, of course, the process of determining the sex of the expected child is controled by the chromosome set in sperm, and this fact is never going to be disputed by scientists. In addition, male embryos are more prone to miscarriages, when cortisol levels are high.

Source of the image: Photl.