Mali, Africa

I chose this region of Africa because I do not know much about it and also because I know an acquaintance who moved to Mali as a US government worker to teach people in the villages how to use agriculture to sustain food in their lives.  I was always interested in finding out more about this area.  The first article I came across talked about the potential water shortage the people of Mali could be experiencing soon.  The water shortage will cause the cattle to die, which causes a food shortage for everyone.  It said that children were being taken out of school due to the possibilities of this occurring.  This can have many negative affects on children and I would assume that those who live in poverty will be impacted more greatly by this water shortage.
  The topic I found more interesting though was a PBS story that came up about child brides.  To be a child bride you have to be married before the age of 18 and I included the chart from the story.  It is shocking!!!  I knew that this occurred, but I didn't not realize how often it occurred.  The story goes to talk about all of the affects of child brides (which are all negative) and almost everything that is on the list of topics this week was discussed:  maternal mortality due to young women having children, premature pregnancy, high infant mortality rates, an entire slew of health issues, especially higher rates of HIV, higher levels of poverty, abuse of all kinds and violence in the household, mental health issues and isolation.  Can you imagine what this does to the children in living in this environment???  These children would experience violence or watch violence at home, live in poverty and probably have some kind of health issues.  They may never receive an education and if they do, they will not go very far in school.  It was a sad article, yet very eye opening.  This is occurring all over Africa and also in Latin America and the Caribbean.  I was pretty shocked reading it and felt kind of ignorant for not realizing how often it occurs.


Resources:

http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/west-africa-food-crisis/mali-water-scarcity-causing-food-insecurity

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/341/facts.html

Child Marriage Around the World
Percentage of girls marrying before the age of 18

1 Niger 76.6
2 Chad 71.5
3 Bangladesh 68.7
4 Mali 65.4
5 Guinea 64.5
6 Central African Republic 57.0
7 Nepal 56.1
8 Mozambique 55.9
9 Uganda 54.1
10 Burkina Faso 51.9
11 India 50.0
12 Ethiopia 49.1
13 Liberia 48.4
13 Yemen 48.4
15 Cameroon 47.2
16 Eritrea 47.0
17 Malawi 46.9
18 Nicaragua 43.3
18 Nigeria 43.3
20 Zambia 42.1

Source: ICRW 2007

War=deployment

When I think of war, I immediately think of deployment.  My boyfriend is in the National Guard and has done two 12 month deployments overseas.  His first was a combat mission of 6 months in Iraq and 6 months in Afghanistan and then he did a one-year peacekeeping mission in Egypt (he was there before, during and after the protests broke out in Cairo and in other places in Egypt).  We do not have children, but when he deployed to Egypt, I became close with a group of women who husbands are in the Guard too and they have children of all ages.  I learned through their experiences about what their children were going through, so those are what I will share with you.  One mother, who had a child in high school, talked about how her son struggled with school work and became defiant towards her when her husband first left.  Her husband was the one who did the disciplining, so she had to take a more active role in learning how to do that in his absence and find a way to communicate with her son to help him in school.  Another mother talked about how her children would feel resentful at times towards her husband and not want to talk to him on skype because he was missing certain things in their life.  Another had an almost one year old, so he missed the first steps and first birthday of his child and that extremely important bonding time with his little guy.  All of these women are great mothers and strong women and they were able to cope in many ways, which lead to their children being able to cope as well.    They made new routines for themselves, got themselves and their children involved in positive activities to make the time go faster, gained support from friends and family members, and kept up an almost daily connection with their husbands, so they were able to communicate and keep them up to date on what was going on at home.  All of these were positive for the spouses, which directly relates to being positive for the child.  Children can easily pick up on the mood and feelings of those around them and they are easily influenced by the environment they are surrounded with.
    For my full-time job, I work at an Army installation, so I have military children and I also had a child of one of the guys that deployed with my boyfriend to Egypt, so I saw first hand how things affected him.  He had a very hard time potty training, partially because mom was busy working, going to school and trying to raise him on her own, so we really had to try some different things to get him motivated and wanting to continue to potty train.  There were times when he would be playing and all of a sudden just get sad and go sit in his cubby.  I would sit by him and ask what was wrong and he would say, "I miss my daddy."  Usually I would have him make a picture or something else that we could send to dad and that really seemed to help.  He was also a very restless sleeper and I always felt like it was due to the stress of his mom's busy life and dad being gone.  Children can pick up on that stress and I felt like he displayed that in his sleeping patterns.
   Even though we are ending one war, we are still fighting in another in Afghanistan and there are many children that have moms and dads over there and they are affected by this everyday. There are many resources out there that can help caregivers that have children with deployed parents.  Your local VA office will have information and so will Army Community Services on your local army installations, if you're near one.  A lot of the websites I have are specific to Illinois National Guard families, but one website everyone can look at is militaryonesource.com (lots of free goodies). 

Breastfeeding

   I chose my topic based on a few reasons.  The first is that I oversee an infant room at my center and I've had questions from new mothers on this topic.  I'll be honest, I don't know too much about breast feeding, since I've never had my own children, so I've never really had the answers for them. I thought this assignment would be a really good way for me to gain some knowledge. The second reason was that my cousin just had a baby in November and really struggled with breastfeeding and ended up not being able to breastfeed her daughter at all and felt very bad about it.  I wondered what, if any, would be the long term affect. 
   After looking up many different articles, I saw the same common trend in all of the articles:  Depending on what culture you come from depended on how long and where a child was breastfed.  These articles also discussed the controversy on the approriateness of breastfeeding in public. I found two very interesting articles that I have attached below. In the United States, breastfeeding is encouraged, however in public, not so much.  People are uncomfortable with a woman breastfeeding in public in the US.  This reminds me of when my boyfriend and I were on vacation in Italy last year and the Italian couple sitting across from us on the train had a baby boy with them.  The child started to fuss, so the mom breastfed him on the train without covering herself at all.  I didn't think much of it, but my boyfriend was very uncomfortable with it and wondered why her husband, who was sitting next to her,  would be ok with her doing that in public.  There culture in Italy though, is different than our culture in America, and Italians really don't think much of breastfeeding in public.  It serves a purpose.
  It was also interesting to me to read about the different ways women dress and the ways babies are cared for in cultures outside of my own.  In America, we believe that holding a baby for too long can spoil the child, but mothers in other countries carry there babies with them in a sling, so they can feed them as needed all day long.  In some countries, babies also sleep with the parents, so the mother is able to feed them as needed.  In Latin America, South Asia and Africa, women have 30-40 days where family members come and take care of things around the house, so the new mom can totally focus on providing care to the newborn.  (All of this info. I got from the second link)
  I also talked with my own mother about breastfeeding and she chose not to breastfeed any of us.  She said there was no specific reason why.  She just didn't want to.  My siblings and I have all grown up to be happy and healthy adults, with no major illnesses, so perhaps not breasfeeding is ok too.
  It was very interesting to look up all the information and to read about all the controversy with breastfeeding..do it, don't do it.  In my future work, when I am asked questions about breastfeeding from new moms, I feel like I can give them solid reasons why you should do it, but also tell them it's not for everyone and if they choose not to do it, then that is ok too.


http://www.internationalbreastfeedingjournal.com/content/3/1/11

http://www.attachmentacrosscultures.org/beliefs/bfeed_culture.pdf

Personal Birth experience and births around the world

   My personal birth experience hasn't actually happened yet.  While I have had many family members and friends that have had children, I haven't really had a personal experience yet.  I have gone to the hospital not long after the babies are born many times, held them, conversed with the mothers, but haven't had the personal experience yet.  But it will happen soon!! My sister is currently pregnant and due to have her third little girl on Feb. 20th.  She has to have a C-section, so unless things change in the next 6 weeks, we know that she will be having Chyler at 10 AM on Feb. 20th.  I have already taken the time off work, so that I can be there (she lives in a different state than I do and I will be traveling to be with her) and while I won't be in the room, I will be at the hospital waiting to hear the news on the baby's delivery. This will be the first time that I have been able to be there for the birth of any of her children and I'm very excited to get this opportunity.  I can't wait to see the expression on my nieces' faces when they see their little sister for the first time and I can't wait to meet our family's newest little one!!!

  After I saw the picture in our textbook about the mothers practicing kangaroo care with their children, I wanted to find out more.  I thought the concept of kangaroo care looked very interesting and when I looked up some sources, I found out it originated in Bogota, Columbia.  I wasn't too interested in looking up childbirth information on this area, so I chose to go back to that same picture and look up Manila.  I found a great article (link below) about the Phillipines in general and the following were some interesting things I found out:
-1 in 140 Filipino women die in childbirth.  They compared it to Ireland who has 1/8000 death rate in women in childbirth.  It was shocking to me that the numbers were so high!!
-Most of the deliveries in the Phillipines are outside of major medical facilities, at home with untrained individuals called hilots or comadronas and they are not able to handle emergency situations, which is the cause of so many infants and mothers dying.
-government  is beginning to help-setting up facilities with OB-GYN drs available in spots through out the country and encouraging mothers to use the medical facilities.  They are also expanding immunization programs for all children
-Infants are 14 times more likely to die in a developing country like the Phillipines than in a developed one.
-half of the deaths of children under the age of 5 in the Phillipines happen in first 28 days of life.

There were more differences than similarities between Filipino  and American births.  Most American's choose to have a child in a medical facility with trained doctors and staff, rather than at home.  Those that do choose to have a child at home in the US usually have them with someone that has some kind of training, unlike in the Phillipines, where it sounds like anyone can be a hilot or comadrona.  The US also has the luxury of having 911 and emergency staff available if something should go wrong with an at home delivery and can be there in a short amount of time.
  The article also made the connection between women having partner support through the pregnancy and delivery (not as high in the Phillipines as in the US) and the role good nutrition plays in the survival of both mother and infant, which is also not as high as in the US.
    It was very interesting to look at births in the Phillipines.  I knew that being a developing country, they would have a higher mortality rate of women in labor and infants, but I didn't know there would be such a huge difference.  It also made me realize how lucky I am that I have not only access to great medical care, but different choices of medical facilities in my area.  In the Phillipines, they are just now getting these clinics up and running and in some rural areas, they are still lacking.  I also felt that the government in the Phillipines is on the right track with immunizing children in their country.
  


http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/149580/news/specialreports/childbirth-still-a-grim-reality-for-many-filipino-mothers-and-babies