Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Sacrifice of Motherhood

Ask a woman who has been pregnant and givien birth to describe the experience and you will receive varying accounts. Some women enjoy and have the 'glow' of pregnacy while others find it a time filled with nausea and physical discomfort. A 2015 study by Polish researchers found mothers carrying sons had higher disgust sensitivity compared to mothers carrying daughters in the first trimester. While girl-moms’ queasiness decreased during the second trimester, boy-moms actually experienced elevated stomach-turning reactions.

Deliveries can be quick or drawn out with intense pain. There are those who want to be present and experience every nuance of giving birth, while others pray to be knocked out and awakened once the baby is delivered. Joanna was forced to remain in the tilted position 24 hours a day for two and a half months. After 75 days – and what is believed to be the longest labour ever recorded – Joanna gave birth to a healthy girl, Iga, and boy, Ignacy. The two babies were delivered by caesarean at a neo-natal clinic in Wroclaw, Poland.

Even with medical books available to walk a woman through pregnancy and delivery, there is always something the literature is unable to convey and could only be learned through the experience of BEING pregnant and GIVING birth. 

It surprises me how many people view being pregnant and giving birth as no more extrodinary or involved as going to the grocery store for food. They say it has been done for years, so there must not be that much to it. Many of the adverse effects of pragnancy women faced were turned into just old wive's tales. The old wives were on to something when they warned “gain a child and lose a tooth.” Women who have had three children forfeit four chompers more than those who have had two kids or fewer. Women whose first two children are the same sex, and who then go on to have a third child, are particularly at risk. Problems with gum disease and calcium absorption in pregnancy may leave moms vulnerable 

Carrying a child and giving birth, whether vaginally or by cesarean section, can stress muscles, ligaments, and nerves responsible for sexual function and bladder and bowel control. The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among developed countries, according to data from the Orginisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. There were 20 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2019, more than double the rate just two decades ago.

More than half of the women, 52%, died after delivery. The total numbers are likely higher thab reported, as deaths from suicide and drug overdoses among people who recently gave birth may not be listed as postpartum deaths. Black women are more than twice as likely to die as a result of chilkdbirth than White women, underscoring racial and ethnic diparities.

The most common complications women report after giving birth include pain after sex, incontinence, pain at the incision site following a cesarean section, and postpartum depression, Gunter said. Once the baby is born, a woman’s blood pressure may spike dangerously. She may hemorrhage or develop egg-sized blood clots. Her emotions may plummet or soar amid rapidly fluctuating hormones. Crippling lower back pain may sear on one side of the body, while on the other, the abdominal muscles separate after months of straining to contain a growing human. These changes happen while her newborn baby needs to eat once every two to three hours, if not more frequently.

In a first-of-its-kind, ground-breaking analysis of pre- and post-pregnancy brain scans published in 2016, researchers found mothers lose gray matter during pregnancy—and these losses endure for at least two years. 

Even with all we know about pregnany and childbirth, there are surprises. Because being pregnant and delivering a baby is much more demanding on the body, serious thought should be given whether to bnecome a mother or not and the choice should be made by the person affected the most - the potencial mother. Motherhood is a sacrificial act filled with mystery and can even be seen in the animal kingdom. Moms do and give in ways not even noticed by themselves.

One similarities moms have with an animal is how they carry their newborn. Regardless of whether they are left- or right-handed, human moms tend to cradle their babies on the left side of their bodies, especially in the early months. Observed off the coast of a Russian island, walrus moms tend to keep their babies on the left while bobbing along the waves, and their calves swam over to their mother’s left side before diving to suckle. 

We all know mother protect their children fiercely The widespread phenomenon of maternal aggression may involve oxytocin, a neurochemical also related to birth and lactation. In a 2017 lab experiment, rat moms stopped attacking a threat once oxytocin signaling in part of their brains was blocked. Some studies have found that oxytocin levels in moms increase at the onset of labor and during labor compared to 1 or 2 weeks before labor, reaching a peak just when the head of the baby is delivered. In another study, levels of oxytocin were found to increase slowly until delivery and then decrease up to 8 weeks postpartum. One group reported higher levels of oxytocin at 36 weeks of pregnancy than 1 day after delivery or later.

Mothers are willing to go to the death for their children. Here are some animals who go above and beyond for their offsprings. I ask you to picture a 'human' mom and the sacrifice she makes with her decision to become a mom. Motherhood (pregnancy and delivery included) is not for the faint of heart.

Ever the overachiever, the female octopus can lay up to hundreds of thousands of eggs in one go. Over the eggs’ development period — anywhere from 40 days to 53 months in the case of one record-breaking species, Graneledone boreopacifica, these maternal cephalopods gently blow water currents over the eggs to provide them with oxygen and keep them clean. Unwilling to leave her brood to hunt for food, the mother octopus often resorts to eating one or two of her own tentacles for sustenance while waiting for them to hatch.

Chicken moms take their duties very seriously. Creating an endless amount of calcium carbonate for eggshells is a difficult task, so if chickens don't get enough calcium in their diets, they'll actually dissolve their own bones to make baby-housing shells. 

Like bears, the mother Pacific gray whales go hungry for months while still needing to produce high-calorie milk for their babies. During this time they may lose as much as 8 tons of weight.

For many females spiders, they attach their egg cocoons to their webs and watch over them until the babies hatch. Once her children have hatched, the mother continues to eat, but regurgitates most of her meals as a nutrient soup for her offspring while the spiderlings stay in their mother's web. When the babies are around a month old, the mother spider rollover on her back allowing the spiderlings to clamber over her, kill her by injecting their venom and digestive enzymes into her body, and eat her. When the babies are around a month old, the mother spider rolls over on her back allowing the spiderlings to clamber over her, kill her by injecting their venom and digestive enzymes into her body, and eat her. 

In earwig nation, the idea of unconditional maternal love isn't a given. When earwig mothers have a clutch of babies (or nymphs), the mothers will sniff out a chemical signal from the healthier ones and proceed to provide more abundant care and feeding to those babies. The babies that are identified as hungrier and less robust will be given less attentive parenting and feeding. 

Mama Panda is a coldhearted, favorite-choosing shrew of a parent. Or a little less dramatically: Mama Panda will often give birth to two babies but almost always only raises one.  Panda moms have to expend an enormous amount of energy to even digest their own food, and providing milk or resources for little ones is extremely difficult. By concentrating their energy on one of the babies, the chance of having one healthy offspring seems better than having two weak progeny.

We have no shortage of stories about infanticide in nature. Most of us who have been in a fourth-grade classroom know that hamsters are one of the most well-known creatures to devour their young, along with mice and other rodents. But long-tailed skinks that inhabit the island of Lanyu (just off the coast of Taiwan) If they feel they're threatened by predators, the skinks immediately gobble up their own eggs.




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