Thomas Beatie, was born a woman and became a legal man through a sex change operation. He had chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but did not have his uterus removed so the couple was able to conceive via artificial insemination.

Unfortunately the couple has met with some hostility from the medical community and some members of the public. It is a shame. We feel that all new life should be celebrated and we offer our congratulations and wish them luck!

Read more at:
Telegraph.co.uk
SMH.com.au
malepregnancy.com

“Do you dissolve into tears at the slightest provocation? Is your husband starting to call you “Mariah Scary”? Do your friends say you’re a “diva” and you know they don’t mean the operatic kind?” – You Know You are Hormonal When…… An I Village Top Ten

Author: Belinda Johnson
Finding out that you are pregnant is usually a very emotional experience - you are either delighted, terrified, or somewhere in between. However you felt when hearing that you were pregnant, the chances are that you were not surprised to be a bit emotional about it. Such things are to be “expected”. What does surprise many women -and their partners- on the other hand is the ongoing emotional changes which may occur during the course of the pregnancy. This is perfectly normal, but understanding what to expect, and why, will help both you and your partner get the most enjoyment out of this amazing experience.

Hormones
During your pregnancy your body is going to undergo some tremendous changes in hormone levels. Mood swings are very common because of these hormone changes - it is not something you have much control over. Nearly all pregnant women are prone to emotional ups and downs. Common “side effects” include bouts of feeling unsure and panicky, extreme reactions to minor things and even crying.

The important thing to realize is that all of this is perfectly normal, and has nothing to do with you as a person. As soon as you and your partner accept this, the low points become so much easier to deal with. Some women suffer from terrible guilt or feelings of inadequacy because of these mood swings, which just makes it harder for your “moods” to pass. There is no need for you to feel guilty at all! Accept that you will feel down from time to time, make sure your partner knows this, and look forward to the “up” part of the mood swings.

Self Image
As your body shape and size changes during your pregnancy, you may begin to feel very strange about yourself. At times you may even feel that you are trapped in someone else’s body, or worry that you are getting “fat” and unattractive. We live in a very image conscious world, so these concerns are natural. However, pregnant women are in fact extremely sensuous, and there is no more potent symbol of womanhood than being pregnant. You should feel proud of the obvious signs of your fertility! You should remember, too, that pregnancy gives you some advantages from a looks point of view. The increased blood flow normally improves your skin and gives you that healthy “glow” that pregnant women have.

Your image of yourself while you are pregnant is very important. If you feel good about being pregnant, you will probably look good too.

“Anxiety in regard to how a woman may feel about herself and the way her body is changing is normal, and her concerns regarding her own health and the health of the fetus are paramount. Anticipation of the new role of being a mother and the changes a new baby will bring to the family may be overwhelming. The pregnant woman should be encouraged and supported by her spouse, family, and health care providers in all her concerns.” Expectantmothersguide.com

Anxiety about the baby
It is normal for pregnant couples, but especially the mother, to spend a lot of time worrying about the health of their baby: What if there is something wrong? Will he or she be “normal”? Keeping up to date with all your checkups and visits to your health care provider will help calm you. Making sure that you follow a decent diet plan and keep yourself physically well will also be reassuring.

If this is your first pregnancy you will probably feel a bit of anxiety about how good a parent you will be, and whether or not you will cope with the strain of caring for your newborn child. Again, this is perfectly normal - most women worry about accidentally harming the baby or not being able to deal with the day to day baby care. Having a good support network (partner and family) in place before the birth will go a long way towards making you feel confident that you can do it, so make sure you discuss your fears and worries with them. Try and learn as much as you can about caring for a newborn baby, and speak to other mothers that you know. Having this knowledge will make you feel more equipped to “do the right things” when the time comes.

You may find yourself having bad dreams or nightmares about your baby. This is just your subconscious dealing with the fears you are probably trying hard not to think about while awake. It’s important to remember that no matter how disturbing these dreams are, they are not reality. Try and think of them as your subconscious mind blowing off steam.

Concerns about Labor
Almost all women worry about childbirth and how they will handle it. Fear about the pain and worries about whether or not you will embarrass yourself are common. You will find yourself thinking of this more and more as your pregnancy comes closer to full term. Learning about labor and childbirth, and practicing your exercises and breathing techniques will go a long way towards making you feel confident about the birth process. You will be more aware of what is going on around you, and you will likely feel less pain too.

Final Words
Although it might sound like your pregnancy is going to be nothing but a long string of emotional crises, this is not the case for most women. You will have various ups and downs, but for the most part this will be perfectly manageable, especially if you have a supportive and involved partner. Just remember that all the emotions you experience are felt by most pregnant women, they are perfectly normal and you shouldn’t allow yourself to be stressed by them. Pregnancy is a wonderful experience, so don’t allow normal emotional changes to ruin that experience for you!

Finally, remember that one of the main tasks for you during the nine months of your pregnancy is to mentally prepare yourself for motherhood. Your future planning and lifestyle are going to have to include this new human being. For most people, these are big changes. You might even find yourself having second thoughts at some stage during your pregnancy. Having these thoughts does not make you a poor mother, or a bad person. If you are to successfully prepare yourself for becoming a mother (or father), you and your partner need to be completely honest about these feelings. Very often just talking abut your concerns will make them easier to deal with.

Sheryl’s comment:
If stress in your life is contributing to your rollercoaster of emotions during pregnancy, then try to take every opportunity to relax. Take a walk each and every day to tone and strengthen your body for childbirth. Sign up for a prenatal yoga class or get a DVD. Drink chamomile, raspberry or nettle leaf tea which can help you relax while providing many fertility and pregnancy benefits.

(Learn more about herbs for pregnancy
Pregnancy Calendars

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The word ‘Mother’ is synonymous with care, love and all good things on the earth. Mothers who smoke, however, can be inadvertently killing and maiming their children – born and unborn. Shocked? It’s true. Mothers who smoke are potentially gifting their children with lung cancer and many other similarly devastating diseases through second hand smoke. Women who smoke during pregnancy harm their unborn babies directly in the womb.

Here are more unsettling reasons to bear in mind when smoking during pregnancy or around your newborn child. It will not only interfere with your health, it will also interfere with the health of your child:

1. First of all, smoking makes it hard to conceive. Reports show that fertility in both men and women are heavily affected by smoking. In women, smoking interferes with the egg movement toward the fallopian tubes as well as the hormones that are produced during pregnancy; while in men, it lowers the semen count, and the motility of the sperm. In many cases smoking also affects the shape of the sperm making it incapable of penetrating the egg.

2. Children born of smoking parents potentially inherit a low fertility syndrome and suffer from a great number of infertility problems.

3. Smoking in many cases is the main cause for impotency in men as it interferes with the blood supply to the penis.

4. The baby in the womb of a pregnant smoking woman gets its nicotine addiction right from pre-birth as its blood imbibes the nicotine that the mother’s blood shares with it; hence it is more likely that when born they would become a smoker – and also contract all smoking related diseases.

5. In rare cases the placenta is directly affected by smoking causing a miscarriage of the fetus, or death in the womb.

6. Babies of smoking mothers will be most likely to be born premature and under weight.

7. Babies are also likely to have less developed vital organs than their counterparts (babies of non-smoking mothers) – there is a great likelihood that these babies have an undeveloped liver which will affect them throughout their lives.

8. The babies of pregnant smoking women have poor lung functions right from birth.

9. These babies are twice as prone to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) than the babies of non-smoking women.

10. The babies of those women who smoked 15-20 cigarettes a day are more likely to be sickly.

Any one of the above causes should be sufficient enough to make you quit smoking – if not for yourself, for your little miracle that is being formed in your womb. Read the above lines again, and then once more – is that what you want to give to your most precious creation? Would you really be comfortable thinking that you are voluntarily and consistently harming your child even before childbirth? These are some questions that you should seriously consider.

Get in touch with your doctor today and enlist his/her help to quitting smoking. You owe it to your child to be healthy and give them a healthy beginning to the start of their life. As a mother, you are the nurturing contact of the child – do not become the poison in your own child’s life.

Jared Mitchell manages websites in the field of quitting smoking such as http://www.gumauctions.com. Using nicotine gum reduces the negative health consequences of cigarette smoke inhalation and cigarette by-products.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

Sheryl’s comment:
Smoking and children simply do not mix. As this article suggests, smoking can keep you from becoming pregnant in the first place, can cause spontaneous miscarriage, can cause a number of potentially deadly childbirth complications such as placenta previa, can cause infant death from SIDS, and can lead to a myriad of health problems that will haunt your child for life.

Even if you conceive and everyone survives ok, do you really want a child that is never as healthy as other kids, has asthma, is never quite as smart and seems to get sick all the time? Do you want to wonder why your baby got some form of cancer in her thirties or was never able to conceive?

It is not OK to start smoking the second you are finished with childbirth either. Nicotine passes through breastmilk and will create an addiction in your little one. Forget about co-sleeping because you will release toxins in the air as you sleep increasing your child’s risk of SIDS even further. Think you can smoke outside and get away with it? Nope! Toxins will cling to your clothing and be released into the air around your baby when you come back in. You can try to rationalize, justify or find a way around it, but there is no way around it. If you smoke - you are harming your child. Period.

Even if you cannot quit totally due to stress or some other influence, then cut back. Start by doing prenatal yoga every single day. At least you will not be smoking while you are watching the video. Start meditating for 15 minutes a day and work up to 30 minutes. Both yoga and meditation will also reduce your stress levels and should allow you to cut back further. Start taking a brisk walk every day on your lunch or first thing in the morning. Make sure to leave your cigarettes at home while you workout. Take up swimming, tai chi or prenatal pilates. If you do all of these things, you will feel great, look fantastic and you will not have the time or the inclination to smoke (at least not as much).

Do it because you love yourself and your baby.

Buy the book: Smoking and Pregnancy
Buy the book: The Easy Way to Stop Smoking

A paternity test is conducted to prove paternity, that is, whether a man is the biological father of another individual. This may be relevant in view of rights and duties of the father. A maternity test can also be carried out but this is much less common, because except in the case of a pregnancy involving embryo transfer or egg donation, it is obvious who the mother is.

Older methods of paternity testing have included ABO blood group typing, analysis of various other proteins and enzymes, or using HLA antigens. For the most part however, DNA has all but taken over all the other forms of testing.

The DNA of an individual is almost exactly the same in each and every somatic cell. >Sexual reproduction brings the DNA of both parents together randomly to create a unique combination of genetic material in a new cell, so the genetic material of an individual is derived from the genetic material of their parents. This genetic material is known as the nuclear genome of the individual, because it is found in the nucleus.

Comparing the DNA sequence of an individual to that of another individual can show if one of them was derived from the other or not. Specific sequences are usually looked at to see if they were copied verbatim from one of the individuals genome to the other. If that was the case, then this proves that the genetic material of one individual was derived from that of the other (i.e.: one is the parent of the other). Besides the nuclear DNA in the nucleus, the mitochondria in the cells also have their own genetic material termed the mitochondrial genome. Mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother, without any shuffling.

Proving a relationship based on comparison of the mitochondrial genome is much easier than that based on the nuclear genome. However, testing the mitochondrial genome can only prove if two individuals are related by common descent through maternal lines only from a common ancestor and is thus of limited value (for instance, it could not be used to test for paternity).

Non-paternity rates
Meta-analysis of a wide variety of genetic studies appears to show that the rates of non-paternity in the general population are on the order of 4% [1] to over 30%, depending on the social group involved. Many find these rates surprisingly high.

How is DNA Used in Paternity Testing?
Certain regions of human DNA show variations between people. At each of these regions a person possesses two genetic types (known as alleles), one inherited from each parent. By looking at a number of these variable regions in a person a DNA profile is produced. By comparing the DNA profiles of the mother and child it is possible to determine which half of the child’s DNA was inherited from its mother (maternal alleles). The other half must therefore have been inherited from the child’s biological father (paternal alleles). The alleged father’s profile is then examined to determine whether he has the DNA types in his profile that match the paternal alleles in the child. If the man’s DNA types do not match the child’s, he is excluded as the biological father. If the DNA types match, then he is not excluded as the father.

About the Author:
Smruti Ranjan Sarangi has authored many articles on a diversified topics like Technical, Management, and Humanity. For information on Paternity Testing and DNA Paternity Testing visit Testing Master

Buy the: Home DNA Home Paternity Testing System

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Pregnancy is one of the most special times in a woman’s life. The feeling of carrying another living being in your womb is a very unique experience. It is also a time of physical and emotional transformation for the woman. The hormones released by the pituitary gland, placenta and ovaries lead to a variety of physical and emotional changes. These physical changes include an increase in the basal metabolic rate, breathing rate and blood volume. Also, as the body prepares itself to support a new life, additional strain is placed on the abdominal muscles, internal organs, back, legs and the weight-bearing joints. These hormonal fluctuations also cause emotional mood swings that range from joyous exuberance to intense sadness. Symptoms such as nausea, constipation, urinary frequency, gastric reflux, varicose veins, edema, lower back pain and general fatigue are also common during this period.

To ease this transition, many health professionals recommend massage therapy as a complement to prenatal care. Prenatal pregnancy massage is designed to alleviate many of the common physical discomforts of pregnancy and provide emotional support.

How does Prenatal Pregnancy Massage work?
Prenatal pregnancy massage aims to alleviate the discomforts experienced during pregnancy through skilled touch and communication. This soft and gentle massage therapy soothes tired, achy muscles and joints. The massage is combined with a series of passive manipulations to increase the range of motion and lubricate the joints internally. The therapist also teaches the patient methods of correcting the postural imbalances that occur as a result of the pregnancy. Prenatal pregnancy massage also helps the patient to identify, isolate and strengthen the muscles that she will use during labor.

Prenatal pregnancy massage is usually started during the second trimester of the pregnancy. Before commencing the massage therapy sessions, the therapist will teach you some gentle exercises to improve your posture and strengthen your muscles. He or she will also teach you techniques of diaphragmatic breathing and relaxation. The actual massage is carried out in a series of gliding strokes with the application of a light, soothing oil.

Benefits of Prenatal Pregnancy Massage
Prenatal pregnancy massage reduces the discomforts associated with pregnancy and enhances the physiological and emotional well-being of both mother and fetus. It alleviates many of the conditions associated with pregnancy such as sciatica, back and neck pain, and stomach disorders. Prenatal pregnancy massage also promotes better functioning of muscles and joints, improves circulation and overall body tone. It also decreases mental and physical fatigue. Studies have shown that pregnant women who receive regular prenatal massages are more at ease than those who don’t.

Precautions for Prenatal Pregnancy Massage
Prenatal pregnancy massage therapy is not meant to be a substitute for thorough prenatal care. Before starting a course of prenatal pregnancy massage therapy, do consult your obstetrician. You must also ensure that your massage therapist is properly certified to carry out prenatal pregnancy massage. The massage should be stopped if you experience symptoms such as an increase in abdominal pain, vomiting, fever, heavy discharge of blood or water or high blood pressure.

Author: Sharon Hopkins
About the author: Sharon Hopkins manages sites related to Massage Health Therapy, your online guide that introduces pregnant mothers to Prenatal Pregnancy Massage. She also writes for Aromatherapy, Yoga besides many other health related sites.

Buy the Video (VHS): Massage Practice For Pregnancy

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