Births are something that takes place on a daily basis. Even though a child is born just about every second, each birth serves as its own miracle. Humans just can’t resist the charms of a baby and there is also a pregnancy glow that simply cannot be denied. Now that we have become hopelessly addicted to the concept of living our whole lives on camera, we are able to showcase these special moments to the world.
One mother decided that she was going to show everyone her baby bump recently. This is typical behavior that is to be expected from a happy and expectant mother. She never could have predicted what would end up happening next, though. The process of pregnancy can be a very bizarre one, as this video clearly shows. The human body is far more peculiar than we could have ever imagined.
Women essentially give their bodies over to the children during a pregnancy. They do not know what will happen or how they will feel on a daily basis. This can lead to some very overwhelming moments and this can also lead to some moments that remind us of just how precious human life can be. Mothers who are in the midst of a pregnancy often feel as if they are the luckiest women alive.
The mother in this clip wanted to show off her pride and joy. Once she turned the camera on, it became clear that this was not going to be a garden variety pregnancy clip. Her skin began to ripple in a way that she had never noticed before. It was almost as if her baby had become an alien and was trying to get out of her at this exact moment.
The footage is quite captivating as a result. Before we know it, all of our worst fears have come true. Those who are familiar with Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise are well aware of what is about to take place. The baby applies an extreme amount of force to her stomach and amazingly, the mother is able to maintain focus. We cannot believe that she can keep filming under these circumstances.
The Internet had a conniption when they saw the footage. You may find it disturbing or you may find it beautiful. One thing is for sure: this baby wanted out and this baby wanted out right now! Please be sure to share this astonishing story with your closest loved ones.
The spark that is her potential grows more intense, yet she'll have to fight against gender norms that threaten to diminish it.
Those expectations might convince her to sacrifice ambition for popularity, or shame her for rejecting feminine beauty standards. There are countless ways she'll feel pressured to hide or change her authentic self.
Most adolescent children, regardless of gender, feel that tension, but girls often face distinct challenges. Research shows, for example, their self-esteem plummets compared to boys.
"Girls are at their fiercest and most authentic prior to puberty," says Rachel Simmons, author of three books on girlhood and cofounder of Girls Leadership, a national nonprofit that provides training, education and workshops to girls and the adults who support them.
Parents can prepare their daughters for the trials of being a teenage girl by teaching them vital skills early on. These include honest communication, assertive behavior, self-compassion and developing a positive relationship with their body.
Talking about these and other issues, says Simmons, should also be an exercise in learning about your daughter's interests and who inspires her. Draw from pop culture examples after you've asked about, for example, her favorite song, celebrities and YouTube videos.
"That’s your best way to get an education," says Simmons, "and win some love and respect from your kid in the process."
Here are seven skills to consider teaching your daughter by the time she turns 13.
1. How to respect and express her feelings
Popular stereotype portrays girls (and women) as in touch with their feelings and naturally good at communicating them. That idea, however, has a harmful corollary: When girls and (and women) are overcome by their emotions, they become incapable of making decisions.
We so frequently assume that girls and emotions are a natural pairing, for better or worse, that we neglect to actually teach girls emotional intelligence. That skill, says Simmons, means having the ability to describe and convey the full range of human emotion. But when girls are taught to value being happy and liked, they often suppress or can't acknowledge their more difficult experiences.
Instead, parents need to show their daughters how to "flex the muscle of expressing their strongest feelings," says Simmons. They can do that by modeling their own emotions with an expansive vocabulary using words like happy, nervous, excited, scared, angry, frustrated and confused.
They can also "authorize" their daughters' emotions by honoring their experiences as opposed to diminishing or questioning them.
"When your girls express authentic emotions — even if they’re difficult — you take them seriously," says Simmons, "you don’t deny them or challenge them."
2. How to feel self-compassion
It's easy to be one's most unforgiving critic, no matter gender. But girls, says Simmons, get a lot of messages that it's important to please others. So when they experience a setback, it often feels like letting someone else down.
Research shows that adolescent girls may be exposed to more interpersonal stress than boys. That makes them more likely to ruminate on negative feelings, which puts them at greater risk for depression.
To help prevent this cycle of suffering, Simmons recommends parents teach their daughters how to deal with failure: "What we want is for girls to have is the capacity to move through a setback without beating themselves up."
This means teaching a girl how to relate to herself and practice self-compassion in a moment of crisis. It's important that instead of criticizing herself harshly, she focus on the universality of disappointment and practice self-kindness. By realizing others share that experience, she'll be better prepared to treat herself compassionately and develop resilience.
3. How to develop a positive relationship with her body
Lost in a sea of selfies and reality television, where the lines between self-objectification and self-empowerment are frequently blurry, girls might not know how to view themselves beyond objects of desire.
One way to help them develop a holistic, positive relationship with their body is to introduce them to sports. The physical activity gives them an opportunity to see their bodies as capable of strength and stamina, rather than being defined by appearance only. Research shows that sports can directly affect a girl's self-perception and self-confidence.
But even girls who feel physically capable and confident might still feel ashamed of their body and its sexuality. Simmons recommends talking with girls about their bodies from toddlerhood. Parents should know and use the right names for genitalia and do their best to "represent sex as a healthy, beautiful experience that should be had with joy and consent." And yes, that means talking about what consent means early on and emphasizing that a girl's body belongs to her alone.
Parents who are uncomfortable discussing sex and the body communicate those feelings to their daughter. "When girls feel uncomfortable with their bodies," says Simmons, "they can also disconnect from how they are really feeling, and worry more about how someone else is feeling, or what they want, instead."
4. How to learn from friendships
Girls are frequently told that friendships are paramount, and that may be why they can be so singularly focused on those relationships. There's a reason why Taylor Swift's "squad" was the subject of numerous news stories and think pieces this year.
But we shouldn't take female friendship for granted, says Simmons. Relationships help girls learn to assert themselves, compromise and set boundaries.
Parents should view friendships as an opportunity to show girls what healthy relationships look like and how they can relate to others and themselves.
One example might be helping your daughter respond when her friend doesn't save a seat for her on the swing. That could start with asking her what choices she has in the situation and working with her on role-playing an assertive response. Encouraging her to communicate honestly and reasonably assert herself, says Simmons, provides her with skills that she'll need to push for a raise as an adult.
5. How to deal with bullying
No parent wants to learn his or her child is being bullied — or has become the bully.
Dealing with either situation is challenging because it involves so many factors: communication, friendship and a parent's own emotional intelligence. Digital bullying, the subject of multiple education campaigns this year, adds another layer of complexity.
"Girls will bully because they don’t have the tools to deal with their feelings," says Simmons. And when girls are bullied, they often feel powerless to stand up for themselves. In both cases, Simmons recommends making sure they ask for help from an adult as needed and practice assertive but respectful communication. She admits, though, that approach won't always work, so girls must know when to step away from a situation that is "unkind" and "unethical."
These are critical skills to teach a girl, but many parents don't even possess them. Some will encourage bullying behavior or intervene every time their daughter complains about a difficult interaction. Parents, says Simmons, have to accept responsibility for their own role: "They have to set the tone early on for what’s OK in relationships and not."
6. How to embrace her gender identity
From exposure to stars like Caitlyn Jenner and Miley Cyrus to Facebook's 50-plus gender identification options, girls are learning about gender identity and fluidity at increasingly early ages, says Julie Mencher, a Massachusetts-based psychotherapist and educator who specializes in gender diversity and LGBT issues.
The message they're hearing is that gender is not simply male or female anymore. This increased attention to gender, says Mencher, "gives us the opportunity to teach [children] that there's not just a spectrum of masculinity to femininity out there in the world, but inside each of us as well."
Mencher recommends parents use language that expands the gender binary beyond boy and girl to include identities like transgender, genderqueer, gender-fluid and gender-neutral. It's also important to describe human characteristics and emotions not just in gender-based terms (see: girls are always emotional).
Parents should reflect on their own identities as well, noting how much they embrace their "female masculinity" and "male femininity."
Creating this kind of openness in your language and relationship will help a girl develop confidence in her own gender identity — no matter what that might be.
7. How to lead
We have more powerful female role models than ever before: Hillary Clinton, Serena Williams and TIME Person of the Year Angela Merkel, to name a few. But girls still find it difficult to develop leadership skills amidst the stigma of being called aggressive or bossy.
It's even harder when they don't know how to communicate their honest feelings, assert themselves, practice self-compassion, handle bullying or embrace their identity will probably have a tough time becoming a leader. That's why it's so important for a girl to cultivate a diverse set of life skills.
There are, however, specific strategies parents can use to encourage their daughter to take a leadership role. Fathers who evenly share household duties are more likely to raise daughters who believe they have a broader ranger of career options. Mothers can set their own example by taking on a leadership role at work or in a volunteer capacity.
Sports, says Simmons, is another way to teach leadership skills to girls; it's a "pre-professional environment" that can help them succeed well past the season's end.
"There's a very powerful and painful unwritten communication code among girls that you’re not supposed to say what you really think to someone’s face and you're not supposed to promote yourself," says Simmons. "Sports perverts all of that; they can do that and be rewarded for it."
These important skills aren't easy to master, but the more chances a girl has to practice them under the guidance of a trusted adult, the more likely she'll feel confident and self-assured as a teenager.
A baby wants to be held, hugged, carried and touched from the day it was given birth to. A parent’s tender touch does a lot, from promoting a baby's healthy growth to developing the baby's brain later on in life, a new research proposes. For various animals, touch is a powerful communicator of feelings, a beacon of a bond from parents to their babies . To an infant, a parent’s affection can be as essential as milk, as the newborn primates in Harry Harlow’s remarkable tests in the 1950s revealed to us when they hold on to a soft dummy although their milk came from another place. So many years following the popular monkey love tests, scientists in Singapore and Germany utilized brain imaging to verify if receiving a lot of affectionate touches changes the human brain in any fathomable way. “We investigated if the fondness parents show on their kids has consequences exceeding human bonding and alters functional features of the growing brain,” scientists Annett Schirmer, Jens Brauer, and their associates noted in a research issued in the August edition of Cerebral Cortex. The scientists gathered around forty kids of about age 5 and their mothers, then asked each mother and their kid to play with the Playmobil Farm toys in a time frame of about 10 minutes. The scientists observed and computed the number of times each mom touched their child and how frequent the child touched their moms. A few of days later, the scientists examined the brain of each child while she or he was at rest to understand its activity designs. Their focus was on the “social brain” ---which means , the amount of neuronal networks that enable people to relate with a person individually than we do with, for instance , an orange. It is what is at play when we act socially when we are curious about other individuals and try to see life through somebody else’s perceptions. Scientists saw that brain movement across these networks was powerful for children who get plenty physical attention from their parents. It is relatively improbable to undeviatingly authenticate a cause-and-effect relationship connecting a touch and brain development in human beings (scientists can not deny a baby of parental affection to see what happens), but studies involving animals insinuates such a causal connection exists, Schirmer said. The new investigations were taken from one piece of time in the kid's lives, though it is possible that the more tactile moms have perpetually been that way, and have continued to boost this brain improvement since their children were given birth to. “We can only hypothesize that this is the fact. However, our studies carefully adjust to facts from non-human mammals,” Schirmer said. “Therefore if what occurs in humans connects to what occurs in mice, then yes, the function of the body and the functionings of the social brain are being altered throughout the development by the quantity of touch children receive.” “Take note, nonetheless, that touch is apparently one of many things in a baby's conditions that develop social functioning,” Schirmer added. A tender, loving touch enters the brain via a set of nerve networks in the skin named c-tactile afferents. Some experts think this special collection of nerves has developed in social species, from rats to humans, and may be essential in the development of the social brain. These nerve fibers, identified later than temperature-sensing and pain nerves, react best to slow strokes and touch. They are seen often on the back of the body and seems not be present on the palms of humans. When stimulated by slow soft touch, the nerves causes a monument of hormonal outcomes in the brain, animal studies postulates. Harlow’s monkeys upturn a general school of thought in the beginning of the 20th century that sees unconditional affection as damaging to a baby's usual mental health and upbringing. We now understand that as a proper-papered social class of mammals, man is born with a brain longing to seek and develop social bonds. However, some social capabilities many of us do not take so serious, such as the capability to visualize another person’s perspective and thoughts , do not even begin manifesting until about the age of four or five. This implies that the social brain we began with nevertheless needs more years of learning, from the time of birth to the time of adolescence, and until when we are to fully grown. “Touch is an essentially primary caretaking behaviour that can have substantial advantages for our children,” Schirmer stated. “If newborns and young kids seek tactile compassion from their parents, their parents should lovingly satisfy them.”
Can we really buy sleep or qualify the price on our sleep somehow?! Now there is a doll called The Lulla Doll --which is invented to comfort fussy infants at nighttime. It is being sold at retail price of $71.00, but desperate mothers are paying up to $350.00 for the sold-out doll on eBay, as reported by the Daily Telegraph. Designed by Eyrun Eggertsdottir (an Icelandic mom and psychologist), the Lulla Toy mimic a human sound that makes infants feels as if they are laying next to a loved one. The website went further to explain how it work to achieve this purpose, “whenever the chest or heart region of the doll is pushed or pressed, the doll presents a human-like recording of the heartbeat and breathing of a resting mother. She is named Gudrun, she is a valuable companion, a mom of four and a Kundalini yoga mentor.”
This marvelous cradle friend is produced from smooth regular cotton and hypo-allergenic, ultra-fine microfiber. Based on what Eggertsdottir said, if mothers should rub Lulla doll on their skin,their scent will be absorbed by the doll, which has been demonstrated to encourage a baby to believe it is safe and secure. Eggertsdottir said the concept of Lulla Doll was birthed in her thought after a dear friend has given birth to a newborn girl untimely and had to leave the baby girl alone in intensive care unit for two weeks every night. According to her, the aim of the doll is to be the second reliable comfort for newborns whose mothers need to be away for whatsoever kind of reason. Although there are related merchandises on sale in stores like the Sleep Sheep, Eggersdottir stated that Lulla is outstandingly different due to the fact she is devised to encourage little babies to sleep a longer time. “Research reports reveals to us that when babies listen to the sounds of heartbeat and breathing, they harmonize into them and began getting used to the rhythm that they hear,” Eyrun Eggertsdottir revealed in a video created for the promotion of this doll . “When newborns feel more calm and relaxed, it encourages them to drift into sleep and to remain asleep for a long period of time.” As for the bidding wars of eBay: “We are very shocked,” Eyrun Eggertsdottir said. “We did not have any slight idea this was going to happen until these stories surfaced on the internet. Mothers are really willing to give a lot for the purpose of a good night’s sleep!”
