No, lying flat after sex won't increase your chances of conception. By Jen Gunter, MD| April 15, 2020 Photo: Armando Veve"As an ob-gyn, I’ve personally encountered many fertility myths in my office or online — some of them even during my training. Why do they persist? Sex education, particularly about the physiology of reproduction, is typically incomplete and subpar. And when we do talk about fertility and reproduction, we don’t talk about it directly — euphemisms for the uterus, menstruation, the vagina and the vulva are still common, and when you can’t use a word, the implication is that the body part is shameful. And, of course, many myths persist simply because they’re alluringly fantastical, and we’re inclined to believe these tall tales over the stodgy facts. Here are seven fertility myths that need to be forgotten.
1. Phases of the moon affect menstruation This is not an uncommon belief-some women even refer to menstruation as their "moon time." The confusion is understandable: The 29.5-day lunar cycle (from new moon to new moon) is very close to the average 28-day menstrual cycle. But studies show no connection between the moon and menses. Moreover, it is hard to envision how a moon-menstruation would be biologically beneficial to human reproduction. 2. Reproductive hormones need to be ‘in balance’ This is a common modern myth in gynecology exam rooms all across North America-and it results in a lot of unnecessary testing of hormone levels. The truth is that, for women of reproductive age, the hormone levels for FSH, LH, estrogen and progesterone change not only day to day, but also often hour to hour. When a women has certain symptoms-for example, an irregular menstrual cycle or infertility-hormone testing may be recommended to make a diagnosis. But in these situations, doctors will look at individual levels in conjunction with symptoms, rather than comparing levels with some mythical "balance." Being "in balance" may sound natural, like a person who is "in tune" with her body. But it is simply not a factual statement, or even a good analogy, for what happens biologically."
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By Kristen Rogers, CNN April 22, 2020 "(CNN)Becoming a mother is a variable experience, fluctuating in its joys and challenges before, during and after birth.
These phases are of equal importance, but the postnatal period (post-birth) is key to a mother's well-being, her adaptation to changes and the formation of a positive relationship with her baby. The postnatal period is also an underserved aspect of maternity care, receiving less funding, service and attention from health providers, according to a new review on what matters most to women after giving birth, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. Add to that a worrisome pandemic, and it becomes even more crucial to prioritize a woman's well-being during this time of adjustment. "Once the baby's out healthy, then people are kind of less bothered," said co-author Soo Downe, a professor in midwifery studies at the University of Central Lancashire in England. And commercial hospital systems may not see as much profit in keeping up with the wellness of the mother after birth, she added. "There's all this intense focus on women's health during the three trimesters of pregnancy and then women deliver and there's really very little support after that," said Dr. Denise Jamieson, chair of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Emory University and chief of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory Healthcare. Jamieson wasn't involved in the study." By Carmela K Baeza, MD, IBCLC| Art By Ken Tackett "Some dyads (mother-infant pair) start their breastfeeding relationship in harsh circumstances. Frequently, due to medicalized births and unfavorable hospital routines, there are so many interferences to initiate breastfeeding that by the time mother and baby arrive home they are already using bottles and formula – despite mother having desired to exclusively breastfeed.
These mothers often feel that they do not make enough milk and that their babies prefer the bottle. They will make comments like “my baby doesn't like my breast”, “I cannot make enough milk”, “the more bottles I give my baby, the less she likes me”, and so on. This can become the road into postpartum depression. Those mothers who are intent on breastfeeding will often look for support, and may find it in a midwife, a lactation consultant or a breastfeeding support group. These health care professionals or counselors may offer the mother to work on her milk production by expressing milk from her breasts (either with her hands or with a pump) and feeding that milk to the baby, as well as putting baby on the breast. And this is what we call triple breastfeeding. Imagine: mother puts baby at her breast. Baby suckles for an hour and a half, falling asleep frequently. Mother will tickle him, speak to him, encourage, often to little avail. After an hour and a half, mother will unlatch the baby (he never seems to come off on his own), put him in the crib, set up her breast pump and begin pumping, going for at least 15 minutes on each breast. Halfway through, the baby wakes up and cries – he´s hungry. But he was just on the breast for almost two hours! Mother turns off the pump (and so little milk has come out!) and feeds her baby a bottle of formula. She cries. She feels exhausted, useless, and unable to meet her baby´s needs. She has not left the house for days, because she is immersed in a never-ending cycle of breast-pumping-feeding." By Penny Simkin| October 27, 2009 "Author/lecturer, doula, childbirth educator, Penny Simkin, PT, talks about pain in labor and the concept of "when pain becomes suffering."
By Penny Simkin| Oct 30, 2015 "Author and educator, Penny Simkin offers an introduction to the serious topic of traumatic childbirth including symptoms of PTSD and suggestions for facilitating postpartum recovery from a traumatic birth experience.
Traumatic childbirth occurs in as many as 25-34 percent of all births. Approximately one-third of those women may develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). For more information, visit pattch.org. Penny is one of the founders of PATTCh, Prevention and Treatment of Traumatic childbirth, whose vision is "a world where women, infants and families, experience optimal physical and mental health in pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period." Research on this condition is only about 10 years in the making. By Julie Revelant "When I had my first child six years ago, I was grateful breastfeeding turned out to be, for the most part, a smooth ride.
After a visit with the hospital lactation consultants, who showed me the best breastfeeding positions and gave me the support I needed, I was on my way, and continued to breastfeed exclusively for the next 12 months. In those early months, though, I'd experience something odd-and often frightening-that I never told anyone about. When my daughter latched on and my milk let down, an intense feeling of anxiety, panic, and doom would wash over my entire body. For a brief moment-about 20 to 30 seconds-I had a sudden irrational fear that something bad was going to happen. And as quickly as the feelings came, they went. It was always unsettling and, at times, scary, but becuase I had struggled with anxiety for as long as I could remeber, I chalked it up to biology and hormones. When I gave birth to my second child two years later, I wasn't surprised those same feelings surfaced once again. It was still unsettling, but thankfully, it didn't affect my ability to breasfeed her for 13 months. Yet it continued to nag at me, and as a health journalist, I wanted to know why I'd often write about breastfeeding, and when I asked my sources if this was common, most of them had no idea what I was talking about. Then one day, I spoke with a lactation consultant and she told me what I had experienced was real and it had a name: D-MER: Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex. By Sara Petersen| February 12, 2020 at 11:30 AM EST "He only sleeps if he's being held," I told my pediatrician at my son's 2 week checkup. "Or," I paused, fearful of shame, "in the swing."
Without looking up from his doctor computer thing, my pediatrician immediately lectured me about safe sleep and SIDS. When I told him we had tried everything and nothing else worked and sleep deprivation had plunged me into postpartum depression after the birth of my two older kids, he lectured me about therapy. When I told him I was on Zoloft and in weekly communication with my therapist, he told me to hang in there. I left the office in tears, feeling unsupported, feeling as though I had no workable options, and mostly feeling as though I was somehow wrong, that I was a bad mother. To many mothers, my story is simply another drop in the bucket of ways our health-care system abandon mothers. Babies recieve at least six well-visits with their pediatricians in the first year of life. The mothers of those babies, whose bodies and emotional lives have been entirely upended, recieve one well-visit. I was lucky enough to turn to my postpartum doula after that demoralizing appointment, and together, we had a nuanced conversation on how to attend to my son's sleep safety while also prioritizing my own sleep needs so I could show up for my family and feel like myself. But far too many mothers are left unsupported and exhausted, desperate for sleep." The mother-son duo made up after the adorable incident By Kelli Bender| February 28, 2020 1:10PM "Its a familiar scene: a mom trying to do her best with a tired, whiny kid refusing to budge from their spot on the floor or a public place.
This time the tantrum didn't play out at a shopping mall, grocery store or playground; it was at the Pairi Daiza Zoo in Belgium. According to the Daily Mail, three-year old orangutan Berani didn't want to leave playtime when mom Sari came calling. when mom tried to move the little primate from his spot, the kid threw a bit of a tantrum. Instead of giving in, Sari, a skilled and doting mother, literally took matters into her own hands, grabbing Berani and dragging him to a different spot in the zoo exhibit. The relatable moment was captured by photographer Koen Hartkamp, who also witnessed the mother-son duo make up after the silly incident. "Just like all small children, Berani still has to listen to what mum says even though he's getting a bit more independent. ..and judging by the picture he didn't like it," the photographer told Daily Mail." By The Powerful Mind 6 Reasons Why Failue is Actually Good for You
"It can be difficult to get back up when it feels like life is constantly knocking us down. Blow after blow, we keep trying to trudge through our failed experiences to try and reach the moment of success. Each time we fall at a new venture, a new relationship, or a new career, it gets more and more difficult to keep going-at least with the same stamina and optimism as before. We start internalizing all these failures and it becomes a little voice at the back of our minds telling us we are a failure. Once this voice takes over, the threat of giving up and giving in becomes all too real. Contrary to that littel voice, failure is actually a good thing. Winston Churchill defines success as the ability of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. There are many benefits to experiencing failure, even though you may not think so initially." Grieving patients are encouraged to see and hold their stillborn infacnts--and in some cases even bring them home. By Sarah Zhang February 12, 2020 Katie Marin/The Atlantic"AARHUS, Denmark-When Ane Petrea Ornstrand's daughter was stillborn at 37 weeks, she and her husband spent five days in the hospital grieving with their dead daughters body. They held her and cried. They took photos. They welcomed family and freinds and visitors. And then they brought her home for four more days, where she lay on ice packs that they changed every eight hours.
If you had asked Ornstrand before she herself went through this in 2018, she might have found it strange or even morbid. She's aware, still, of how it can sound. "Death is such a taboo," she says. "You have to hurry, get the dead out, and get them buried in order to move on. But that's not how things work." In those moments with her daughter, it felt like the most natural thing to see her, to hold her, and to take her home. The hospital allowed--even gently encouraged--her to do all that. This would have been unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago, when standard hospital practice was to take stillborn babies away soon after birth. "It was and have another and forget about it," says, Dorte Hvidtjorn, a midwife at Aarhus University Hospital. Since then, a revolution in thinking about stillbirth has swept throught hospitals, as the medical profession began to recognize the importance of the parent-child bond even in mourning. These changes have come to American hospitals, too." July 4, 2019 By Lana Hallowes "How awesome are these NICU nurses? They are going about their important tasks while babywearing the bubs they care for when their parents aren’t able to." Nurses ROCK"The photos, shared by Kangatraining Austrailia show the hardworking nurses in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Germany doing what they do best-loving and caring for needy babies.
As any babywearing mama, or dad, will know, all babies love to be held close and carried, with the movement soothing them and often putting them to sleep." Women's Mental Health At Key Stages In Life
Photo: Katherine Streeter for NPR
Menopause Can Start Younger Than You Think: Here's What You Need To Know
By Emily Vaughn & Rhitu Chatterjee
"Would you recognize the signs that your body is going through the big hormonal changes that lead to menopause? Here's what to look for-and what you can do about it."
"Sarah Edrie says she was about 33 when she started to occasionally get a sudden, hot, prickly feeling that radiated into her neck and face, leaving her flushed and breathless. "Sometimes I would sweat. And my heart would race," she says. The sensations subsided in a few moments and seemed to meet the criteria for a panic attack. But Edrie, who has no personal or family history of anxiety, was baffled. She told her doctor and her gynecologist about the episodes, along with a few other health concerns she was starting to notice: Her menstrual cycle was becoming irregular, she had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and she was getting night sweats. Their response: a shrug. It wasn't until Edrie went to a fertility clinic at age 39 because she and her partner were having trouble conceiving that she got answers. "They were like, 'Oh, those are hot flashes. It's because you're in perimenopause,' " she says. If you haven't heard the term "perimenopause," you're not alone. Often when women talk about going through menopause, what they're really talking about is perimenopause, a transitional stage during which the body is preparing to stop ovulating, says Dr. Jennifer Payne, who directs the Women's Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins University."
HOW PUBERTY, PREGNANCY AND PERIMENOPAUSE AFFECT MENTAL HEALTH
Listen to the four podcasts below:
"January 14, 2020 • NPR's Morning Edition explores the key reproductive shifts in women's lives — puberty, pregnancy and perimenopause — and how the changes during those times could impact mental and emotional health."
"January 16, 2020 • Women with a history of depression and anxiety are at a higher risk of having a flare-up during the time leading up to menopause. And getting doctors to take the issue seriously can be challenging."
"January 15, 2020 • Nearly 1 in 7 women suffers from depression during pregnancy or postpartum. But very few get treatment. Doctors in Massachusetts have a new way to get them help."
"January 17, 2020 • NPR's Rachel Martin talks to menopause expert Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, division director of the Midlife Health Center at the University of Virginia, who answers listeners' questions."
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