Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What mental effects can a mother experience after childbirth?
Depression often starts at young age and affects women more commonly than men. One or two mothers out of 10 have depression after childbirth. Depression also limits a mother’s capacity to care for her child, and can seriously affect the child’s growth and development. A study showed that exposure to maternal mental distress is associated with undernutrition in 9‐month infants in urban Pakistan.
Female fertility declines after age 30 and ends with the menopause. Female physical experiences vary depending on external forces such as diet, marriage patterns, culture, and other aspects. In Western nations menstruation begins to affect females at 13 and menopause starts around 51. In non-industrialized countries, on the other hand, most females begin menstruation at a later age. More lactation in the lifetime of non-western females inhibits ovulation and extends the number of fertile years. Pregnancy in the 40s or later has been correlated with increased risk of Down syndrome in the children. Males are capable of fathering children into old age. Paternal age effects in the children include multiple sclerosis, autism, breast cancer and schizophrenia, as well as reduced intelligence. Adriana Iliescu was reported as the world's oldest woman to give birth, at age 66. Her record stood until Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara gave birth to twin sons at Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, Spain on December 29, 2006, at the age of 67. In both cases IVF was used. The oldest known father was former Australian miner Les Colley, who fathered a child at age 93.
The act of reproduction, regarding the female, leads to an increase of digestive enzymes. This allows her to eat more prey and to stock more nutrients. The digestive enzymes then start to digest the inside of the organism itself, except for the heart, guts, and mostly the ovaries. Once the offspring are born, and until the mother dies, the mother regurgitates for two weeks the fluids stocked inside as highly nutritive food for the progeny. Ninety-five per cent of the mother's mass is digested by the offspring. They will grow to three times their original size between their birth and dispersion. During the period when female spiders are caring for their hatched offspring, the mothers do not eat, and their offspring only eat the food that the mother regurgitates along with the mother's body at the end of this time.
Investigations into the prevalence of these practices have been conducted by the World Health Organization. Their studies demonstrate that this is a global problem. Women experience disrespectful, abusive or neglectful treatment during their childbirth when the birth occurs in medical and health facilities. The abusive relationship and trust between women and health providers can create a great reluctance to obtain medical assistance during birth. Disrespectful and abusive treatment can be experienced during pregnancy. During childbirth, a woman is very vulnerable and cannot protect herself. The results of this abuse can have very negative consequences for the infant and the mother.
In a series of relatively small studies of the combination of low-dose CPA and ethinylestradiol as a birth control pill, depression was reported to have occurred in 1.3 to 4% of cycles. This is similar to the rate of mood changes (<3.5%) observed with birth control pills containing other progestins. A pharmacoepidemiological study using data from the United Kingdom General Practice Research Database found that the incidence of depression with birth control pills containing CPA was identical to that of birth control pills containing other progestins ( = 0.99). In clinical studies of the combination of low-dose CPA and estradiol valerate for the treatment of menopausal symptoms, preexisting adverse mood symptoms have been found to be significantly improved.
Oxytocin (Oxt) is a peptide hormone and neuropeptide. Oxytocin is normally produced by the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary. It plays a role in social bonding, sexual reproduction, childbirth, and the period after childbirth. Oxytocin is released into the bloodstream as a hormone in response to stretching of the cervix and uterus during labor and with stimulation of the nipples from breastfeeding. This helps with birth, bonding with the baby, and milk production. Oxytocin was discovered by Henry Dale in 1906. Its molecular structure was determined in 1952. Oxytocin is also used as a medication to facilitate childbirth.
Obesity has also been shown to increase the prevalence of complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Babies born to obese women are almost three times as likely to die within one month of birth and almost twice as likely to be stillborn than babies born to women of normal weight.
The number of children born to one woman can vary dependent on her window from menarche to menopause. The average window of fertility is from 13.53 to 49.24. Taking into consideration lactational amenorrhea and the period between conception and birth, the average woman is capable of experiencing around 20 births. However, if the duration of lactation is cut short due to use of a formula substitute or the woman has multiple births, the number of offspring could exceed 20.
Psychologically, the earthquake had a profound impact on its victims and not just in the immediate aftermath. As a result of the quake, two hospitals in Bam collapsed leaving the remaining hospitals to be overcrowded. Emergency centers were set up to care for the injured, though many centers did not have enough room to do so. Of all of Bam's health workers, half were killed in the rupture. The World Health Organization (WHO) appealed for $4 million in medical relief. One of the priorities in this operation was to help mental health patients, many of whom were traumatized over the experience. A situation report released by the U.N. Disaster Assessment Coordination Team noted a rise in post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Isotretinoin is a teratogen; there is about a 20–35% risk for congenital defects in infants exposed to the drug "in utero", and about 30–60% of children exposed to isotretinoin prenatally have been reported to show neurocognitive impairment. Because of this, there are strict controls on prescribing isotretinoin to women who may become pregnant and women who become pregnant while taking isotretinoin are strongly advised to terminate their pregnancies.
Having children later was not exceptional in the past, when families were larger and women often continued bearing children until the end of their reproductive age. What is so radical about this recent transformation is that it is the age at which women give birth to their first child which is becoming comparatively high, leaving an ever more constricted window of biological opportunity for second and subsequent children, should they be desired. Unsurprisingly, high first-birth ages and high rates of birth postponement are associated with the arrival of low, and lowest-low fertility.
The menopause transition typically begins between 40 and 50 years of age (average 47.5). The duration of perimenopause may be for up to eight years. Women will often, but not always, start these transitions (perimenopause and menopause) about the same time as their mother did.
In the United States, 82.5 million women are mothers of all ages, while the national average age of first child births is 25.1 years. In 2008, 10% of births were to teenage girls, and 14% were to women ages 35 and older. In the United States, a study found that the average woman spends 5 years working and building a career before having children, and mothers working non-salary jobs began having children at age 27, compared to mothers with salary positions, who became pregnant at age 31. The study shows that the difference in age of child birth is related to education, since the longer a woman has been in school, the older she will be when she enters the workforce.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines maternal health as the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. According to estimates from UNICEF, Uganda’s maternal mortality ratio, the annual number of deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes per 100,000 live births, stands at 435 after allowing for adjustments. Women die as a result of complications during and following pregnancy and childbirth and the major complications include severe bleeding, infections, unsafe abortion and obstructed labor.
There are variable results in between males of different species as to the effects of oxytocin on paternal care. Oxytocin is unchanged in California mice before and after becoming fathers, but the amount of paternal exposure to rats is associated with oxytocin and increased care. However, multiple studies on biparental species show an association between paternal care and oxytocin. Since the species in these studies are biparental, excluding rats, it is unclear as to why California mice do not have a change in oxytocin postpartum.
Over 21 million people were killed or injured in World War I; in many cases, all of the men in one family were killed, numerous cities in Europe were destroyed, and family life throughout the world was greatly affected. While the United States suffered the fewest casualties, family life was still greatly affected as husbands were deployed and wives had to begin working. As the war draft suddenly removed many men from factory work, the factories began soliciting for women workers in traditionally male-dominated areas. Therefore, women had less time to spend at home with the children, as many of them would have before the war. As fathers, uncles, brothers, and grandfathers deployed in military service, women filled their places in factories and offices, changing the ways young children and teens received home nurturing. Additionally, women moving into new roles in society had lasting effects on children and family life after the war. President Woodrow Wilson stated, "We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?" As women began working in the factories, more of society began to realize the need for women's rights; while women had been granted suffrage (voting rights) to varying degrees in several states beginning in the late 19th century, they were now guaranteed full suffrage throughout the United States by the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution passed in August, 1920. This also paved the way for the children of future generations by creating greater career opportunities for girls and women; as women gained a stronger voice, girls became more involved in the workforce and education and prepared for roles outside of the home. Additionally, family life was affected after the war as more and more women entered the work force, moving away from the traditional stay-at-home mother and housewife role.
Middle class women oftentimes delay motherhood until after the peak of their fertility at age 29–30, a delay that has become more common in the last two decades. Motherhood is delayed because of the higher educational and career aspirations middle class women oftentimes make—the career incentives are too great to pass up. While middle class women on average have children at age 29, lower class women typically have children much earlier in their lives because of the lack of incentives to delay childbirth. According to Edin and Kefalas, lower class women do not make the same delay because they are oftentimes lacking the career and educational incentives that middle class women have.
Even when childhood events are not remembered episodically, they can be implicitly remembered. Humans can be primed and implicitly trained earlier before they can remember facts or autobiographical events. This is most important in terms of emotional trauma. Adults can generally recall events from 3–4 years old, and have primarily experiential memories beginning around 4.7 years old. However, some suggest that adults who had traumatic and abusive early childhoods report an offset of childhood amnesia around 5–7 years old. It has been suggested that this is because stressful experiences can injure memory centers and possibly make it harder to form memories. This coupled with the fact that priming can occur at a younger age may indicate that children in abusive situations have implicit memory connections that were formed in response to the abuse. Whether or not these 'repressed' memories can affect individuals is a matter of considerable debate in psychology.
Every year, an estimated 342,900 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. Worldwide, for every 100,000 live births, about 251 women die. In some industrialized countries such as the U.S, this is 13 deaths for every 100,000 live babies born with American women having a lifetime risk of 1 in 2,100 of dying from childbirth related complications. However, in some countries, such as Afghanistan up to 1,600 women die for every 100,000 live births and women have a 1 in 11 lifetime risk of maternal death.
Neuroplasticity is most active in childhood as a part of normal human development, and can also be seen as an especially important mechanism for children in terms of risk and resiliency. Trauma is considered a great risk as it negatively affects many areas of the brain and puts strain on the sympathetic nervous system from constant activation. Trauma thus alters the brain's connections such that children who have experienced trauma may be hyper vigilant or overly aroused. However a child's brain can cope with these adverse effects through the actions of neuroplasticity.
In 1953, the AEC ran several studies at the University of Iowa on the health effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women. In one study, researchers gave pregnant women from of iodine-131, in order to study the women's aborted embryos in an attempt to discover at what stage, and to what extent, radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In another study, they gave 25 newborn babies (who were under 36 hours old and weighed from ) iodine-131, either by oral administration or through an injection, so that they could measure the amount of iodine in their thyroid glands, as iodine would go to that gland.
Tanzania is a country with concern on abuse on women during childbirth. In 2011, Shannon McMahon and others explored whether or not the supposed interventions to lower abuse during childbirth have been in effect. When interviewing women, they referred to their experiences as neutral or better. However, after being shown the different aspects of abuse, a overwhelming majority of the women in turn had actually experienced abuse during childbirth.
In 2014, Hannah Ratcliffe and others did a study to explore possible interventions to improve the experiences of disrespect and abuse during childbirth. This study was conducted between 2013 and 2014. They implemented a "open birth day" which was to facilitate communication between patients and providers and to educate on the procedures surrounding birth. Aside from open birth day, they also implemented a "respectful maternity care workshop" which was to help create conversation surrounding respect between staff and towards patients. What they found was that this approach was successful in helping reconstruct systems without being high in cost. There was an increase of 60% in satisfaction with women's delivery experience.
During the same time as Ratcliffe's study, Stephanie Kujawaki and others did a comparative study of before intervention to reduce childbirth abuse and after. The baseline for the study was conducted in 2011-2012 and the final half of the study was conducted in 2015. What they found is that there was a 66% reduction in experiencing abuse and disrespect during childbirth. This study shows that with community and health system reforms can change and reshape norms in which women are mistreated during childbirth.
Perineal pain after childbirth has immediate and long-term negative effects for women and their babies. These effects can interfere with breastfeeding and the care of the infant. The pain from injection sites and possible episiotomy is managed by the frequent assessment of the report of pain from the mother. Pain can come from possible lacerations, incisions, uterine contractions and sore nipples. Appropriate medications are usually administered. Routine episiotomies have not been found to reduce the level of pain after the birth. Comfort is enhanced with changing linens, urination, the cleaning of the perineum and ice packs. Privacy also in implemented to promote comfort.
During pregnancy, family members take care to please the pregnant mother and protect her, and her unborn child, by relieving her of household duties. The pregnant woman's mother, grandmother or mother-in-law supervises meals. While pregnant, women may experience "Doladuka", or suffering of two hearts. This experience includes unusual desires to eat particularly sour fruits or indulge in specific acts. These wishes must be fulfilled to protect the fetus from physical or mental defects. Pregnant women avoid eating twinned foods as they are thought to lead to the birth of twins. Relatives and friends visit often to give gifts of fruits and boiled rice with curry wrapped in a banana leaf. Traditionally, baby showers are considered bad luck and gifts are not given until after the birth of the child. When preparing clothing for the new baby, care is taken to never complete the garment before the birth of the baby, as this assumes the birth is a certainty.
Women who experience miscarriage are at risk of PTSD. Those who experience subsequent miscarriages have an increased risk of PTSD compared to those experiencing only one. PTSD can also occur after childbirth and the risk increases if a woman has experienced trauma prior to the pregnancy. Prevalence of PTSD following normal childbirth (that is, excluding stillbirth or major complications) is estimated to be between 2.8 and 5.6% at 6 weeks postpartum, with rates dropping to 1.5% at 6 months postpartum. Symptoms of PTSD are common following childbirth, with prevalence of 24-30.1% at 6 weeks, dropping to 13.6% at 6 months. Emergency childbirth is also associated with PTSD. Some women experience PTSD from their experiences related to breast cancer and mastectomy.