Ramadan Blog: Week III

Week 3 had us read chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the LifeSmart textbook along with having us take a look at the “Life Through The Ages” handout on Moodle.

Chapter 3 is titled “Pregnancy and Prenatal Development”. It starts out with a biological rundown of how pregnancy occurs, which is via meiosis upon fertilization of the egg cell by the sperm cell. It also gives a brief genetic rundown on the basics like phenotypes and genotypes and moves into how genetic disorders occur. Along with telling us how they occur it goes into a few well known disorders like Klinefelter syndrome and Tay-Sachs disease (p.58).  Along with a general biology and genetics rundown, chapter 3 gives us a brief embryology rundown taking us through the germinal, embryonic and fetal periods of human development. The chapter then closes out with different factors that could lead to issues with the child during pregnancy and different scientific technologies that could be used to diagnose and possible treat the child before their due date.

Chapter 4 is titled “Birth and the Newborn Child”.  This chapter starts out giving descriptions of the different stages of childbirth and the different methods of childbirth used throughout history and today.  Along with the methods used it goes into the complications that may and have occurred throughout history and what has been done to counteract them. After going after childbirth, it goes over the characteristics and reflexes of babies up to 1 month old known as neonates (p.90).

Chapter 5, titled “Infancy” goes over the different types of development that occurs in the timeframe. In the time between birth and 2 years of age, children make leaps and bounds in their development. Babies rapidly grow, almost tripling in size by the age of 1 (p.103). Their brains are like sponges; actively absorbing and processing the information and world around them. Along with growing in size, they learn to control their tiny yet mighty bodies; first learning head control, then crawling and eventually standing and walking. Along with the physical and mental developments, babies also develop emotionally. On page 115 we get a callback to chapter 1 with a reference to Vygotsky and his stages of language development.  

The final thing we were assigned to look at a two-paged graphic called "Through The Ages". On page 1 it gives us a description of the time frame of prenatal to 13 years old. Prenatal being in the mother's womb, infancy being 0-5 years, late childhood being 5-10 years, and puberty being 10-13 years old. On the page it also gives certain disorders that are likely to occur during this time like fetal alcohol syndrome or dyslexia, to name a few. Page 2 continues the graphic, going from ages 13-100. Ages 13-20 is adolescence, 20-30 is early adulthood, middle age is 30-60 and old age is 60-100 years old. Some disorders listed on that page were postpartum depression, Parkinson's disease and seasonal effective disorder. Visual sources like these are very valuable to a large array of people!

There were a handful of things I found to be very interesting in this week’s assigned readings. At the top of page 83, there is a small section that talks about the cultural variations of birth procedures. This is something I learned about early in my undergraduate years in a sociology class. I found it interesting and practical that women in other cultures give birth kneeling or squatting, in contrast to how birth is done in the western world. Some view they way we birth in the west as a form of control or oppression over our women. Another thing that stuck out to me was the Infant Mortality Chart on page 103. I learned about this topic in a medical anthropology class in my last semester as a traditional undergraduate student. It is appalling how high our rank is for infant mortality, arguably the worst amongst the developed world. It’s ironic that we have risen in the infant mortality rate since 1960. You would think the leaps and bounds we have made in the field of health and science in that time would have our infant mortality rates at an all time low. What do you think of these things? I’d love to hear your points of views in the comment section below!