Stress and Children

My Experience in Poverty

As a child I went through what many families today are going though with the current economy.  When my parents were married I enjoyed a comfortable life.  We had a nice house, plenty of food, great toys, etc.  Then, when my parents divorced and my mom and dad both lost their jobs our lifestyle dramatically changed.  It started by losing our house, our car, and from there things got worse.  My mother was left to care for my sister and I while my father left the state to work.  She did her best, but at first she didn't know what to do.  My sister was just born and I was just starting school.  She couldn't afford daycare and work, so she had to find local resources to help her out.  She did her best and this experience made me the person I am today.  My sister was too young to realize the drastic change in lifestyle, but my world came crashing down.  Especially when we began eating the cheap food from the fantastic food my chef parents had always provided for us.  I learned about managing little money at an early age, and I also learned to be independent.  This time was very stressful for my mom, and I learned to take care of myself so I wouldn't add any stress to her plate.  My mother's family helped out a lot, and we received financial assistance for most of my elementary school career.  My sister struggled to make it through elementary school, and when she entered Jr. high she received a large amount of support from my dad's pension and life insurance.  The two different lives my sister and I lived under the same roof made us two very different adults.  I learned independence and she learned dependence.  I had six years of stability before she was born, and that stability provided me with the coping techniques I needed to get out of poverty.

Poverty in Canada

Canada has weathered the world financial troubles relatively well.  The came out of the recession strong, and their economy continues to flourish.  However, "when it comes to child poverty, it ranks 22nd-worst out of the 31 countries in the OECD, a rich-country grouping. More than 3m Canadians (or one in ten) are poor; and 610,000 of them are children"  (The Economist, 2010, p. 1). My providential governments have launched poverty-reduction programmes.  The focus of many is to help people back into work.  One providence, Newfoundland, has been successful and cut the poverty rate in half.  In 2010 a House of Commons committee urged the federal government to adopt a national strategy. "The response of Stephen Harper’s Conservative administration was that the best long-term strategy to fight poverty is “the sustained employment of Canadians” (The Economist, 2010, p. 1). 

Resources

The Economist (2010) Mean streets the persistence of poverty amid plenty. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/17581844

Public Health: Child Nutrition

My Thoughts on Nutrition

After having my own child; nutrition has become very important to me.  I also work for Head Start, and part of our program is promoting good nutrition.  I have saw the effects of poor nutrition on how children interact in the classroom, and regularly help families to become more aware of what they feed their children.

 

Child Nutrition Programs in Chile

The child nutrition programs in Chile are among the best in the world.  The program is administered by the government and implemented by privite contractors.  Chile's child nutrition programs have improved the nutrition in the nation and has increased school participation rate to nearly 100 percent.  This program is not only for school aged children, but also serve infants and toddlers in government run free child care centers.  Government support and public-private partnerships are credited with the programs' success (Winch, 2009)

"We realized education is the base of everything. So by having students with better nutrition, we will assure that students perform better. That is why the school feeding program is so central to us."  -Ramón Solís Cácares—Chief of the School Feeding Department, JUNAEB (Winch, 2009, p. 12).

How This Will Impact my Future Work

Proper nutrition is important for all children, and in the future I will work to provide more information on proper nutrition as well as ways to provide nutritious food for families in poverty. 

References

Winch, R. (2009). International Approaches to School Feeding: Country Experiences from Mali, Chile, and India. Global Child Nutrition. Retrieved From http://www.gcnf.org/library/International-Approaches-to-School-Feeding.pdf

Birth Around the World

When doing research for this blog assignment I cam across a website about birth customs around the world.  The first experience it describes the an american woman who gives bith in the Netherlands.  She described the experience as good, and outlined the many differences between there and the United States.  She stated that only about half of the women chose to go to the hospital for delivery, and that when pregnant women were referred to midwives.  Each woman is given a kit for a home birth, and even in the hospital it is less invasive and women are seldom given epidurals.  This is such a different experience from what I had.  My experience was stressful, but the medical staff was alway respectful of my wishes, and did what was best for me and my daughter.  The attitude of the Netherlands seems to be a more natural one, whereas it seems in the United States it has become more of a medical procedure than a natural experience in the development of life. 

This website also offers other experiences from around the world. 
http://www.parents.com/pregnancy/giving-birth/vaginal/birth-customs-around-the-world/?page=1

Birth Story

Brylee 10-16-2008

My daughter was born two weeks late after a healthy uneventful pregnancy, I can't say the same about the delivery.  After my NST (non stress test) on Monday my midwife scheduled for me to be induced on the two week late date which was that Thursday.  On Wednesday I tidied up everything at work and prepared for the sub, went home and decided I didn't want to cook dinner the night before I was to have a baby.  So, we went to Chili's and I enjoyed a delicious meal of steak fajitas, and to complete the meal my water broke.  From dinner I drove to the Hospital laughing all the way!  From triage I headed to the room where I would deliver.  My water had broken 12 hours before I was scheduled to be induced.  It took a couple of hours before contractions began, and then many more hours before they would produce any progress.  However, by 6 a.m. Thursday morning I was too exhausted to go any further, so I conceded and requested an epidural.  The epidural was scary, but incredible!  I was finally able to get some rest.  Then at 7a.m. I awoke to alarms, lights, and all the staff in my room.  They had lost my daughter's heart beat, and couldn't reach my midwife or the on-call doctor in the practice.  The doctor who was available prepared me for a c-section, and at the last moment my midwife and ob walked in.  After assessing the situation the OB was able to find the heartbeat and decided to give her time to rebound from the tachycardia.  After several hours of watching the heart-rate monitor the doctor suggested Pitocin to help both her and me.  At hour 23 I got the news I had progressed far enough to begin pushing, by 26 she was born at 8:32 p.m.!  She was immediately taken to the examining table in the room and the NICU staff and her pediatrician worked to clear the meconium from her airways.  After what seemed like forever I heard her first cry.  The nurses cleaned her up, let me hold her, and took her to the NICU for further monitoring.  She had swallowed a significant amount of meconium, and needed to recieve 7 days of antibiotics to ensure she didn't contract pneumonia.  This was the best and worst day of our lives!  She is now a healthy three year old preschooler!