MarynMunchkins
06-18-2005, 08:08 PM
This is amazing stuff! :D I was reading through The Bipolar Child last night, trying to figure out more about Doug, and I was reading about what might possibly cause bipolar disorder, and the things that are missing for those kids who are. It's a little deep (lots of big words :P), but it's worth the time to wade through it.
Dr. Myron Hofer and his colleagues at Columbia Universtiy in New York City performed a compelling series of experiments using a well-established experimental model: the separation paradigm in animals. They began to focus on a change in behavior that occurred in rat pups after 4 to 8 hours of seperation from their mothers. The rat pups because hyperactive.
To explore the regulatory processes of the mother-infant interaction, they attempted to selectively supply aspects of the mother's presence. For example, they found that by simulating the body temperature of the mother, her touch, or olfactory cues, the level of motor activity after sepearation from the mother lessened substanstially. This led the researches to propose that the mother herself provides a combination of signals that act together to exert a long-term control over infant behavioral responsiveness.
Paraphrasing, since I don't feel like quoting a bunch of long words, researchers know that certain chemicals regulate the amount of motor activity. And they injected the baby rats with these chemicals, while they were away from their mothers, and they stayed calmer and less active. So they theorized that the simple presence of the mother helps regulate the amount of chemical released by the brain, keeping the baby calmer and less active. It maintains the infants heart rate and oxygen consumption at ordinary levels. In addition, interaction with the mother dampens other activities: behavioral reactivity, arousals during sleeps, and suckling.
Here's stuff to encourage comfort nursing...:D
Rooting and sucking are the most reliable activities of newborn babies. When the mother offeres a breast or bottle and touches the newborn's cheek, the baby will turn his or her head repeatedly, than gobble the nipple firmly in the mouth. Infants have been observed to suck in regular patterns of bursts and pauses...Dr T. Berry Brazelton...had suggested that these pauses are important in the early mother-child relationship, since mothers uses them to stimulate the infant to return to sucking.
Dr. Brazelton has noted that mothers tend to look down to talk to and jiggle their babies when they pause between bursts of sucking. Infants, in turn, come to anticipate these responses, and over time, the mothers' shaking of the breast actually prolongs the pause as the infants become alert yet relaxed and attend to the signals given to by their mothers.
In exchange for these regular pleasurable interactions with the mother, the infant begins to postpone the immediate need to satisfy hunger and perhaps takes the first steps toward acquiring the capacity to regulate need and manage frustration. This patterning may provide one of the earliest experiences of self-other boundary formation and the development of an internal stimulus barrier, foreshadowing the capcity to postpose immediate gratification and to take turns in exchange for the pleasures of social contact with others.
Cool, huh? :D
Of course, Doug never did anything like that. :( He'd nurse voraciously and than want nothing to do with being snuggled or held. :/ Anyway...
Dr. Myron Hofer and his colleagues at Columbia Universtiy in New York City performed a compelling series of experiments using a well-established experimental model: the separation paradigm in animals. They began to focus on a change in behavior that occurred in rat pups after 4 to 8 hours of seperation from their mothers. The rat pups because hyperactive.
To explore the regulatory processes of the mother-infant interaction, they attempted to selectively supply aspects of the mother's presence. For example, they found that by simulating the body temperature of the mother, her touch, or olfactory cues, the level of motor activity after sepearation from the mother lessened substanstially. This led the researches to propose that the mother herself provides a combination of signals that act together to exert a long-term control over infant behavioral responsiveness.
Paraphrasing, since I don't feel like quoting a bunch of long words, researchers know that certain chemicals regulate the amount of motor activity. And they injected the baby rats with these chemicals, while they were away from their mothers, and they stayed calmer and less active. So they theorized that the simple presence of the mother helps regulate the amount of chemical released by the brain, keeping the baby calmer and less active. It maintains the infants heart rate and oxygen consumption at ordinary levels. In addition, interaction with the mother dampens other activities: behavioral reactivity, arousals during sleeps, and suckling.
Here's stuff to encourage comfort nursing...:D
Rooting and sucking are the most reliable activities of newborn babies. When the mother offeres a breast or bottle and touches the newborn's cheek, the baby will turn his or her head repeatedly, than gobble the nipple firmly in the mouth. Infants have been observed to suck in regular patterns of bursts and pauses...Dr T. Berry Brazelton...had suggested that these pauses are important in the early mother-child relationship, since mothers uses them to stimulate the infant to return to sucking.
Dr. Brazelton has noted that mothers tend to look down to talk to and jiggle their babies when they pause between bursts of sucking. Infants, in turn, come to anticipate these responses, and over time, the mothers' shaking of the breast actually prolongs the pause as the infants become alert yet relaxed and attend to the signals given to by their mothers.
In exchange for these regular pleasurable interactions with the mother, the infant begins to postpone the immediate need to satisfy hunger and perhaps takes the first steps toward acquiring the capacity to regulate need and manage frustration. This patterning may provide one of the earliest experiences of self-other boundary formation and the development of an internal stimulus barrier, foreshadowing the capcity to postpose immediate gratification and to take turns in exchange for the pleasures of social contact with others.
Cool, huh? :D
Of course, Doug never did anything like that. :( He'd nurse voraciously and than want nothing to do with being snuggled or held. :/ Anyway...