Hurrican Katrina

                                                                    My Katrina Babies

 I think that Hurrican Katrina impact on a lot of people, but I can remember very clearly I was just clocking in at work when I saw the breaking news on television. The first thing I thought about was one of my best friends that was pregnant and lived right by the Superdome. I instantly called and called and got no answer and then I called her mom that was in Pasagula, Ms that wasn't far from New Orleans and couldn't get in touch with her either. At that moment I began  to panic so desperate calls for depserate meeasure and I called her child's father and thankfully I was able to get in touch with him and he told be some disturbing news, but at the end everything was okay.
 As time went on I found that when the storm hit it knocked every line of communication out no matter what at then right when I began to calm down I paniced again because I knew my best friend was pregnant and she didn't know what was going on or what was going to happen and was stressing to the 100th power and that was the last thing she needed to be doing.
As time continue she was able to get out of New Orleans and was able to go to Texas with the remaining of her family and receive the medical attention she needed. She was very shaken up and became depressed and stressed because of what she experienced and of her lost that she actually went into premature labor and at this time she was only 7 months close to delivery but not close enough because she had already been experiencing complications previously. It seemed that now because of her life-threatening experience my best friend thankfully got birth to a healthy child, but she wasn't mentally stable to care for the child. She had stay hospitalized for 5 months while her mom and her child's father cared for the child. It got to a point she was not herself and she would have thoughts of suicide because she didn't know what to do. The only thing I could think about was the child that she had just brought into this world and the lack of motherly love the child would receive if  she continued down this road of destruction. I knew that the child would receive love, and nurture and be cared for but, it is nothing like a mother's touch. I think that because the child was just an fetus during this time she would still experience some biosocial, cognitive, and psycosocial development at she began to get older especially if she would have found out the fatal thoughts her mom had about suicide after the disaster but prayfully her mom came to and realize what was important to her.



                                                                         
                                                                                   My Guina Friends
I am sure there are other parts of the world that experience worst things than a natural disaster like Africa. I have a friend that is from Guina and she has 2 young children and I can remember times she has talked to me about the lack of food supply, and diseases that was in her country and how her coming to the United States was the only option she had for her and for her children. She knew that if she would have stayed that she would have had the burden of finding proper nutrition for her children, find medical attention, and also the proper education. Even though her mom is still over there she feels this is the best decision she made.

Child development and public health

Breastfeeding
      Breastfeeding is one of the most effective ways to ensure child health and survival. A lack of exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life contributes to over a million avoidable child deaths each year. Globally less than 40% of infants under six months of age are exclusively breastfed. Adequate breastfeeding support for mothers and families could save many young lives.
WHO actively promotes breastfeeding as the best source of nourishment for infants and young children. This fact file explores the many benefits of the practice, and how robust help for mothers can increase breastfeeding worldwide.
         The reason I chose breastfeeding because I know that one it is the most effective way of bonding with the child, two it can be a healthy way to ensure that the child is receiving nutrition, but the downfall to breastfeeding is that it is an effective way to pass diseases to your child. The feel that with this particular topic this is information that will continue to change as years pass. There will always be way to were doctors try to keep breast-feeding as a number one source of nutrition for the child and it will allow people like myself that doesnt have kids yet to gain more knowledge of the topic and how it can effect the child. 
  However babies who are exclusively breast-fed are less likely to get sick, because breast milk provides them with antibodies against any disease that the mother is immune. Breast- feeding also decrease the risk of many diseases that appear in childhood and adulthood, among them asthma, obesity, and heart disease.
          Breastfeeding in other countries
The world's oldest and still most widely practiced form of birth regulation is breastfeeding. That statement draws much skepticism among ordinary people in Western culture, but it is recognized as still true by professionals in the fields of international demography and infant nutrition because they know how breastfeeding affects both health and birth intervals in primitive cultures around the world. A professor of pediatrics put it this way: "Demographic data recorded prior to the 20th century from birth records all over the world indicate that the average spacing of children was about two years when mother's milk supplied the major source of calories for infants during the first year to 1.5 years of life."
In the West African country of Rwanda, a culture in which there were no contraceptives or taboos against intercourse after birth at the time, there were no differences in the birth intervals of bottle feeding mothers in the city compared to those in the rural areas. On the other hand, among breastfeeding mothers, there were significant differences. Among the city mothers who were already developing patterns of separation from their babies, 75% conceived between 6 and 15 months postpartum. However, in the rural areas, mothers had their babies with them all of the time, and 75% of the rural breastfeeding mothers conceived between 24 and 29 months postpartum. An even more dramatic example of the effects of very frequent suckling is provided by the Kung tribe. (The exclamation point represents a clicking sound.) Anthropologists watched these people with stopwatches and found that the babies and toddlers were nursing an average of two minutes every 15 minutes, and the mothers were conceiving at about 35 months. Such extended periods of breastfeeding infertility are rarely seen in Western culture. First of all, only a few Western mothers nurse that long although their number seems to be increasing. Secondly, there is some speculation that the richer diet of Western women may contribute to an earlier return of fertility. 

My Birthing Experience

                I can remeber just like it was yesterday when one of my good friends told me she was having a baby and she wanted me to be to be the god-mother of her child. It seems like the pregnancy went so fast because one week she had just gotten pregnant and the next week I was getting a call from her child's father that her water broke and they were heading to the hospital. When I got the news of her water braking I stopped everything I was doing, but the funny part is I dont remember telling my boss I would be gone for the remaining of the day.
               When I arrive to the hospital I phone her child's father to see where they were and what was he conditions looking like. All he could do was tell me to hurry and bring my but on because she really wanted me there to experience the birth and she couldnt hold the baby in much longer. After about 20 minutes my god-daughter popped out and said " Hello World" . I can say that this was the happiest moment in my life to where I was able to experience a life being brought into this world and that I was apart of this new celebration. After days passed I would called my friend in the hospital because after she gave birth she kind of became sick and lost a lot of blood, but the doctor would say that she was okay and needed rest, but that was her way of not making me worry about her. At that moment I began to think about the baby's health and would she have any complications but the doctor confirmed that she was healthy. ( What a relief ). I knew whatever was going on with the baby and the mother both would be taken care of and the baby would definitely receive the love, nurture, and care that she needed.
                 Sometimes I sit and wonder about the child births in the island countries and if their medical field is as advance as the United States. I actually think about their religion beliefs as for as how and where they baby should be born, how the baby should be raised, and etc. After researching and talking to former colleagues I gathered that child birth in the island countires happen in the hospital but home births are more dominant. Natural care and feeding is imperative to the mother. They dont believe in to much organic or formuals. Unlike the islands the U.S families are more dominant to having babies in the hospital to where they know they both will be taken care of. U.S. believe in medicine and other procedures to get one healthy. At the end of the day both countires familes will do whatever it takes to ensure that their child is healthy.
                Froms  what I have learned thus far I realized that a child's birth place has a lot to do with his or her development. I have also learned that accorninng to Smidt child development is a duscipline which aims to identify, to describe and to predict patterns in children's growth where growth includes intellectual, linguistic, physical, social, emotional, and behaviorial development ( Smidt, 2009 ).