Best4Future: DD’s baby blog since conception!

It is a common sense that parents are a child’s first teachers. They teach child the basic skills (walk, talk, self-control) and knowledge they need to survive in this world. But do you know parents are also child’s life-time teahers? The way parents treat their baby during the early stage of his life influces the child throughout his whole life.

In his paper Brain Child, Dr. Mark R. Pitzer, a post-doctoral neuroscientist of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, suggests that a child’s intellectual development is influenced equally by their inherited genetic blueprint and the early immediate environment.

While a child’s early environment, according to Dr. Pitzer, is largely controlled by its parents, through both direct interactions with the child and their decisions about the child’s surroundings. Therefore, parents play a critical role in their child’s intellectual growth.

In her book What to Expect the First Year (Second Edition) , Heidi Murkoff also points out that parents are the greatest influence during a child’s early age. The kind of a care a child receives during that time, no matter it is physical touch (touching, cuddling, or hugging) or communication (talking, singing, making eye contact, or cooing to the baby) or satisfying his/her basic needs (fed when hungry, changed when wet, held when frightened), determines to a large extent how successful, how content, how confident, and how competent to handle life’s challenges that child will be.

I never imaged being a parent can be this important. I am glad to find it out before I make any mistake.

I practiced prenatal/fetal education to DD since she was four month in my womb. I will continue the perinatal education after she arrived.

I believe the importance of pre- and perinatal education cannot be underestimated. They give a head start of parent-child bonding, organize the baby’s brain, and possibly shape a baby’s future personality and psychological, mental and behavioral developments.

I find support from Brain Child by Mark R. Pitzer, a post-doctoral neuroscientist of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. He writes, “Research suggests that a child’s intellectual development is influenced equally by their inherited genetic blueprint and the early immediate environment.”

A child’s early environment, Dr. Pitzer continues in his paper, literally sculpts and molds the brain, influencing how a child perceives his or her world each and everyday, for the rest of their life. This so-called “long arm of childhood” ultimately influences the adult’s capabilities, likes, dislikes, how they respond to stress, their abilities to complete problems, IQ, etc.

Dr. Pitzer’s idea is echoed by Dr. Thomas R. Verny, one of the world’s leading authorities on the effect of the prenatal and early postnatal environment on personality development and founder of the Association for Pre- & Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH).

In his 2002 book Tomorrow's Baby: The Art and Science of Parenting from Conception Through Infancy , Dr. Verny suggests that experience during the critical periods of prenatal life and early postnatal life organize the brain, and have more influence over intelligence, emotions and the structure of the brain than we thought before.

He advocates parents to consciously provide widows of opportunities to nurture a child’s brain during the early years and actualize their child’s full potential.

In her book What to Expect the First Year (Second Edition) , Heidi Murkoff further points out that the first three years of life have a huge impact on the quality of a child’s life.

Why the early life experiences are so important in to the formation of the human being he/she will eventually become?

Because this early stage, more than any other period in our lives, materially affects the architecture of the brain (from Tomorrow's Baby: The Art and Science of Parenting from Conception Through Infancy by Dr. Thomas R. Verny), causing its connections to strengthen and its neurons to survive and grow (from Brain Child by Mark R. Pitzer).

While a child’s brain, according to researchers, grows to 90 percent of its adult capacity during those first three years (from What to Expect the First Year (Second Edition) by Heidi Murkoff).

That is why I pay great attention in pre- and perinatal education. So far, DD is doing well. She is very healthy physically and quite advanced mentally compared to other babies in her age group. Grandma said possibly it is contributed to my fetal education.

“WOW, your baby’s weight and height are both in the 95 percentiles at her age!” the doctor told us, after carefully comparing measurements on her chart.

In the 95 percentiles in weight and height?! In another word, DD might be among the top 5% of the fastest growing (maybe even the healthiest) babies nationwide!

This is really good news! But it took her a fairly long time to reach this level.

At birth DD didn’t fall into the top 5% in height and weight. She weighed 7.06 pounds (average weight is 7 1/2 pounds) and was 201/2 inches (average length is 20 inches long when she arrived. Two days later when she left the hospital, her weight dropped to 6 pounds 13 ounces.

She continued to lose weight until her first visit to the lactation nurse. The nurse thought DD lost too much weight after birth. She suggested us to use supplement after each nursing. Since then, DD began to grow and kept growing.

She gained 6 ounces within two days. At her two-week visit to the doctor, she regained her birth weight: 7.07 pounds (and 21 inches long). One week later, she gained another one pound and was exactly 8 pounds. She picked up 11 ounces more by her 4-week birthday. When she was 11 weeks of age, her weight reached 14.5 pounds and she was 24 1/2 inch long, making her a top 5% quality baby!

In spite of variations in weight, DD has been doing well in other health indicators. Her Apgar score* was 8 at one minute and 9 at five minutes after birth. She never had jaundice. In fact, her bilirubin level was only 5.8 compared to the standard of 12. She passed the PKU and hypothyroidism test as well as the hearing test without any problem.

Grow baby grow!

The Apgar score was devised in 1952 by Dr. Virginia Apgar as a simple and repeatable method to quickly and summarily assess the health of newborn children immediately after childbirth. Apgar was an anesthesiologist who developed the score in order to ascertain the effects of obstetric anesthesia on neonates.

The Apgar score is determined by evaluating the newborn baby on five simple criteria on a scale from zero to two, then summing up the five values thus obtained. The resulting Apgar score ranges from zero to 10. The five criteria (Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration) are used as a mnemonic learning aid.

Interpretation of scores: The test is generally done at one and five minutes after birth, and may be repeated later if the score is and remains low. Scores 3 and below are generally regarded as poor condition, 4 to 6 fair, and 7 to 10 generally good to excellent.