Stress During Pregnancy

If you truly want your pregnancy to be healthy, it is very important to keep your physical, mental, and spiritual state healthy and positive. Because getting tensed during pregnancy not only affect mother, it also affect the baby. Risk of miscarriage in the first trimester, premature labor and birth defects have been seen in severe stage of stress during pregnancy. The stress causes to produce certain hormones in your body, which have an adverse effect on your baby.
So the best thing you can do to make your pregnancy and your child healthy is to reduce the physical and emotional stress as much as you can.

Here are some tips that can help you in reducing your stress during pregnancy:

Get support
Get support from your friends, family, and your loved ones. Be with them and try to maintain good relation with them. As pregnancy is a time of emotional changes, if your loved ones are around, you will feel less stress. And do remember that you shouldn’t try to do everything by yourself. If people are willing to help you, be glad that your loved ones want to relieve some of the burden you are facing. Let them know when you need them. Also keep a good communication with them. Don’t think that they can read your mind or know what is going on with you. So open your mind and talk to them how your feeling so that they can help you.

Believe the fact
Believe the fact that you are pregnant and you will have certain changes not only physically but also mentally. Don’t try to work in your busy schedule, which can worsen everything. Get some extra time for resting and relaxing yourself even during the week.
Believe the fact that you cannot control everything that occurs during pregnancy. Like, many women experiences pains and aches during pregnancy that cannot be avoided, but you can try to reduce them. Also some symptoms of pregnancy like nausea, fatigue, and morning sickness. Even you may need to take bed rest for some reason. These cannot be avoided and you have no control over them. So if you bear this in your mind it will be easy to handle with your pregnancy.

Massage therapy
If you haven’t started a pre natal massage, now it’s time you start it. It is very useful during your pregnancy not only for reducing stress but also to help in reducing pain felt in your body due to heavy load it is carrying. Massage can be simply done in your house by asking your partner to do so. Or else there are many qualified experts who offer pre natal massaging in the medical offices and even in traditional spa.

Imagination
Imagination plays an important role in reducing your stress. Always think positive and get yourself involved in reading pregnancy and baby books. Or just look for clothes or design books for choosing a design for your dress to wear during pregnancy.

While prolonged or severe stress can be damaging a pregnancy, it is important for us to know the things that are effecting our emotion and try to reduce them as much as possible. So that you go with a relaxing and healthy pregnancy.

Originally posted 2007-12-06 03:47:30.

Posted in Taking Care During Pregnancy | Leave a comment

Achieving Self Control with Autism

Self-discipline is a skill that most autistic children have trouble acquiring. This includes not only inappropriate outbursts, but also habits that can be potentially dangerous, such as being aggressive towards others or causing harm to themselves, such as banging their heads off walls.

To prevent these and other behaviors, one technique parents and educators can use to control autistic tendencies is self-management. Giving the child power over him- or herself is often the key to keeping control over violent situations and may be a positive step towards learning other behaviors as well.

Self-management works because the child is no longer fully controlled by others. By teaching self-management during specific times of day, such as while the child is at school or therapy, the child will be more likely to continue to practicing self-control during all times of the day.

The key is to implement a program in which he or she monitors his or her own behavior and activities. Begin with short amounts of time, and continue to monitor the child from a more passive standpoint. Every ten to fifteen minutes remind the child that he or she is in control and needs to monitor and be aware of good and bad behavior.

This monitoring is a form of self-evaluation. When a child is in control, he or she may think more closely about behavior in the past and present. Set clear goals with the child for example, an afternoon with no aggression towards others or a day at school with no self-injury. Every fifteen minutes ask the child how he or she is doing. Is the goal being met? If the answer is no, perhaps the child is not ready for self-management, or perhaps the goals are too unattainable.

You want to make sure that the goals are easy to reach at first, and then move the child towards more difficult goals in the future. When a child is successful at self-monitoring, he or she will have a more positive attitude towards the experience.

Of course, an important part of self-management is a rewards system. Have the child come up with his or her own reward, depending on interest. Reinforcement will make these good behavior goals more clearly marked in the child’s mind, and by choosing and rewarding him- or herself, the child will feel completely in control of the self-management system.

Choose simple rewards to start, such as smiley faces for every goal met and sad faces for every goal not met, and work up to a larger goal, such as a special activity or new toy when a certain amount of smiley faces has been attained. These types of programs do not develop overnight, so it is important that you and the child have enough time to devote to a self-management experience.

By reinforcing good behavior with rewards, as determined by the child instead of by an adult, he or she will be more likely to carry this on even when not participating in the program. If your autistic child is mature enough, this could be a good treatment program to try.

Originally posted 2008-02-11 08:12:00.

Posted in Special Needs Children | Leave a comment
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