New Parent Report Blog
Women Lose 90% of Their Eggs By 30
Article Courtesy of The Washington Post
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS NEW DATA? HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU CONCEIVED YOUR FIRST CHILD?
Whether you are aware of your incessantly ticking biological clock or not, the absolute last thing that any woman of steadily advancing childbearing age wants to hear when she flips on the morning news shows is: Women lose 90 percent of their eggs by age 30.
Thirty? Life has hardly begun at 30! Gulp.
The hard truth is that decades of research have proved that a woman’s fertility declines over time. But now it appears that the old biological clock may start ticking much earlier — and faster — than once thought.
A study from the University of St. Andrews and Edinburgh University, published last month by PLoS ONE, tracked the human ovarian reserve — or a woman’s potential number of eggs — from conception through menopause. Using a mathematical model and data from 325 women, the researchers found that the average woman is born with around 300,000 eggs and steadily loses them as she ages, with just 12 percent of those eggs remaining at the age of 30, and only 3 percent left by 40.
“That’s a greater percentage of loss at an earlier age than had previously been reported,” says reproductive endocrinologist Robert Stillman, of Shady Grove Fertility in Rockville. “One might be able to argue whether there are 12 percent remaining at age 30 or 22 percent or even 40 percent, but it is still clear that there’s a very rapid loss in the number of eggs available as women age and that the smaller pool of [older] eggs is also more likely to” contain a higher proportion of abnormal eggs, he adds, pointing out that from the mid-30s on, the decline in fertility is much steeper with each passing year.
Hot Dogs Considered Lethal
Article Courtesy of DiscoverMagazine.com
Pediatricians have declared that the trusty ol’ hot dog is in need of a makeover, setting the stage for one of the biggest engineering challenges known to man and causing some to worry, “Is it the end of the hot dog as we know it?”
The cylindrical sausage has been deemed a choking hazard by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which published an official statement on choking risks in the journal Pediatrics that included concerns about the snack clogging a child’s wind pipe. The pediatricians pointed out that 17 percent of all food-related asphyxiations among children are caused by hot dogs.
Talking about the proposal for a choke-proof hot dog, a doctor explains to USA Today:
“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”
New ‘Egg Timer’ Test to Determine Ovulation
The test – nicknamed the “egg timer” – detects approximately how many eggs are left in a woman’s ovaries, letting them know how fertile they are.
Medical Director of IVF Australia, Associate Professor Peter Illingworth, says the test will allow women to plan when it is appropriate to move into complex fertility treatment.
“The test is particularly helpful for women who’ve had cancer treatments or women who’ve had surgery on their ovaries, as this allows women to assess the effects of that treatment on their future fertility,” he said.
Professor Illingworth says it could offer reassurance to women who can continue trying to have children naturally.
“What the test will do is identify those younger women who may well be at serious risk of not having children easily when they’re older,” he said.
“It will identify women who are at risk of having a premature menopause for example and allow women to plan how active they should be about fertility treatment.”
Infertility information support and advocacy group ACCESS has welcomed the new test.
Cure for Peanut Allergies?
The largest ever trial to find a treatment for potentially fatal peanut allergies is to give sufferers tiny amounts daily to build up tolerance.
The Addenbrookes team will give increasing doses of peanut flour to 104 British children, up to the equivalent of five nuts a day.
Twenty out of 23 sufferers in an earlier study became able to eat more than 30 peanuts safely.
The new £1m three-year trial could lead to a widely available treatment.
About one in 50 young people in the UK suffers from peanut allergies which can cause breathing problems, itching and, in severe cases, a potentially fatal inflammatory reaction called anaphylaxis.
The new trial funded by the Department of Health’s Institute of Health Research will involve more than 100 seven to 17-year-olds.
They will be given daily doses of peanut flour, starting at about one milligram, added to yoghurt.
“This is going to be the largest trial of its kind in the world and it should give us a definitive idea of whether the approach works and whether it’s safe,” said Dr Andrew Clark.
Marshmallow Test is A Lot of Fluff
Article Courtesy of The Daily Beast
Judging a kid’s ability to delay gratification by whether they eat a marshmallow or not is a ridiculous way of predicting their future achievement, say Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.
No behavioral game has gained more publicity in the last year than Dr. Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow test,” an assessment of children’s impulse control. Four-year-olds are put at a table in a blank room, with a marshmallow in front of them. They’re told that if they can wait until the experimenter comes back, they’ll get two marshmallows to eat. Writing about this in The New Yorker last spring, Jonah Lehrer reported that preschoolers who waited the full 15 minutes grew into teens with SAT scores that were, on average, 215 points higher than the tots who ate the marshmallow in the first 30 seconds.
Doctors Say Assessing Speech Delays is Vital
Article Courtesy of TheNYTimes.com“>
Every pediatrician knows the frustration of trying to quantify the speech and language skills of a screaming toddler. How many words can he say? Can she put two or more words together into a sentence? Can people besides you understand him when he talks? Questions like these, put to the parents, are the quick and somewhat crude yardsticks we often use.
Crude or not, the assessment is crucial: the earlier it is made, the earlier the speech-delayed child can get some help, and the earlier the help, the better the prospects.
“The physician who understands delayed speech understands child development,” said Dr. James Coplan, a neurodevelopmental pediatrician in Rosemont, Pa., who created the Early Language Milestone Scale to measure children’s language from birth to age 3.
Haitian government says “This is not the way” to help orphaned children.
The 10 Americans who tried to take 33 children out of Haiti were detained on Sunday.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE 10 AMERICANS WHO WENT OVER THERE? WERE THEY WRONG OR RIGHT?
Article Courtesy of The NYTIMES
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — “God wanted us to come here to help children, we are convinced of that,” Laura Silsby, one of 10 Americans accused of trafficking Haitian children, said Monday through the bars of a jail cell here. “Our hearts were in the right place.”
Whatever their intentions, the Americans who were detained late Friday at the Dominican border with 33 children struck a deep emotional chord in this earthquake-ravaged country.
Even as Haiti’s crippled government asserted itself in the name of defending the nation’s children, officials made it clear that more was at stake. In the wake of the worst natural disaster in Haiti’s history, the authorities have opened the country to a flood of international assistance, some of it coming uncomfortably close to infringing on national sovereignty.
The 10 Americans, the authorities said, had crossed the line. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive angrily denounced them as “kidnappers” who “knew what they were doing was wrong.” Justice Minister Paul Denis said, “We may be weakened, but without laws the Haitian state would cease to exist.”
And the chief of the National Judicial Police, Frantz Thermilus, said: “What surprises me is that these people would never do something like this in their own country. We must make clear they cannot do such things in ours.”CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY
Women’s Group Protest Tebow’s Superbowl Ad
Do you think this ad is appropriate for the Superbowl? Let us know what YOU THINK in the comments section below.
Article Courtesy of the NYDailyNews.com
Tim Tebow hasn’t even made it to the NFL, but his Super Bowl ad is already creating controversy.
Several women’s groups have argued that the spot, which is believed to be a pro-life ad featuring Tebow and his mother, is an advocacy ad and is inappropriate for Super Sunday.
“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year – an event designed to bring Americans together,” said Jehmu Greene, president of the New York-based Women’s Media Center.
Also joining Women’s Media Center in the protest are the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority.
A CBS spokesman said the script for the 30-second ad has been approved and did not feel that any protest would have an impact.
The Tebow advertisement “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” is sponsored by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, and is thought to revolve around the story of Pam Tebow.
Pam Tebow will likely recount how she became ill while pregnant with her fifth son during a mission in the Philippines. Ignoring doctors’ suggestions to abort the child, she gave birth to Tim who went on to become the celebrated Florida Gators quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner.
Study Finds Newborns Cry in their Native Tongue
According to a new study, babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents’ accents while still in the womb. A BBC New article reports:
The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German. The French newborns cried with a rising “accent” while the German babies’ cries had a falling inflection. Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.
The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb. It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices.
Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age.
Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: “The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life.
# of Wives Outearning Husbands Increases
Do you earn more money than your husband? Let us know in the comment section below!
The financial balance of power in American marriages is shifting.
A Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday found that 22% of men made less money than their wives in 2007.
By comparison, 4% of husbands earned less than their wives in 1970.
A shift in education patterns was a factor in the Pew report, which polled U.S.-born 30- to 44-year olds.
In 1970, 28% of husbands had more education than their wives. By 2007, that figure dropped to 19%.
Slightly more than half of spouses had the same education level in both 1970 and 2007, the most recent year for which data were available.
“For a long time, men didn’t need education to make a decent wage — they could go into manufacturing or other labor,” said Jenny Wittner, associate director of the advocacy group Women Employed.
“Women had to get an education to keep up, and over the years that has started to translate into a difference in wages,” Wittner added.
The report cited several societal and economic reasons for the jump. Marriage rates have declined across the board since 1970, and rates have gone down most sharply for the least educated.
The most educated are far more likely than those with less education to be married, and that gap that has widened since 1970. And since more education is linked to higher earnings, marriage especially boosts a household’s spending power.
Pew’s report was compiled from data collected before the recession hit, and said that the downturn will only exacerbate those trends as men have especially felt the job crunch.
The report cited government data that said males accounted for about 75% of the 2008 decline in employment among “prime-working-age individuals.” As a result, the percentage of women in the workforce continues to inch toward equilibrium, as women now comprise 47.4% of the total.
But Wittner noted “it may not stay a so-called ‘men’s recession’ forever, and that shift will hurt households as the woman’s income becomes more important.”
