By Ana G Uriarte MD, child & adolescent psychiatrist and systemic therapist. Love is the foundation of health – this is what I felt compelled to remember today. I am not giving recommendations of “what to do” with babies, toddlers and children during these times. There are many, and many of the good, ideas…
As the world prioritizes physical distance to detain or slow down the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), a new study from Florida Atlantic University shows that physical contact between mother and infant is essential for optimal neurological development, maturation and regulation during infancy. Mother-infant dyads show high oxytocin levels and are less impacted by stress, which…
Postpartum should not be a time of battle. It should be a time of wellbeing, of enjoying your hard-earned, beautiful postpartum – a time of mothering with pleasure, to lessen the print of these scary times we are forced to live, by kissing, holding, hugging, loving your baby and being together hours on end. By Esther…
Birth Activism and Obstetric Violence: Interview with Ibone Olza by Elena Skoko I met Ibone at my first meeting of the COST Action BIRTH in Lancaster (UK) in 2015, as part of this European research project where researchers, policymakers, and activists work together to produce and disseminate scientific literature on the topic of normal or…
Maternity is a time of deep transformation, both of the brain and of the psyche, and of course a physical feat of strength. This makes postpartum an intense path to travel, one that is better tread in the company of other women. And this is not simply something women crave: more and more scientific evidence…
Finland has taken one more step in its policies to support families, not only to make it reasonable for them to have children, but also to favor their care. Let us not forget that the more intelligent a species is, the longer the exterogestational dependent period. Care of the young during those early years is…
Newborns have a series of highly conserved neuroendcrine behaviours that we see as the “breast-crawl”, when babies placed skin to skin on their mothers immadiately after birth crawl to the breast, attach and suckle. This behaviour has been called Widström’s 9 Stages of Newborn Behavior. A recent study by Widstrom´s group found a strong inverse…
By Carmela Baeza, MD, IBCLC My teenage daughter is not feeling well. She´s been running a fever for the last couple of days – possibly the flu. Tonight, around four a.m., I woke up because I heard her calling. She walked into our bedroom, crying softly, kneeled by my side of the bed, and said…
The quality of mother–child interactions is central in the social and emotional development of the child. It is the process by which infants are initiated into the social world. But interactions need time and space – they requiere mother and infant to be together. A recent study by Plotka, R. & Busch-Rossnagel…
