Module 3

     I read this week’s chapters in Life Smart and immediately began to think about all of the beautiful and unique faces in my classroom and the process that it took for each of them get here.  That process started well before they looked into their mother’s eyes.  It took a well cared for fetus and Mom to give them their bright eyes and functioning brains.  Mom not only had to make the decisive choice not to engage in risky behaviors prenatally, but also the special precautions that they should have made once baby was born. 

     I remember the choices that I made as a mother.  Much like my own mother, I believed that my health was synonymous with the health of my baby.  With those choices that I made, I still prayed every day for a healthy child.  In reading this weeks chapters that talked about the physical metamorphosis that the fetus goes through to make a healthy arrival into the world, I think that giving a baby a healthy home is something that every child should have.  I know young people who have been affected by the harmful effects of drugs, smoking and alcohol in utero.  It is so unfair that they should start their life’s journey at a disadvantage. 

     There are so many things that an unborn baby can be effected by without adding the effects of things that are within the mother’s control.  Anoxia is the term used when insufficient oxygen supply reaches the baby during labor.  The complications can derive from the umbilical cord, placenta or lungs, and can lead to death or brain damage.  The Rh factor is a type of protein located on the surface of red blood cells.  If the baby is Rh positive and the Mom is Rh negative, infants risk miscarriage or death after birth. 

     As we all know, those first few years of life go unremembered.  I always felt that this phenomenon was God’s way of letting parents make their mistakes without emotionally scarring children for life.  Infantile amnesia is the inability to remember events early in life.  Those precious brains that absorb and grow so much, won’t remember the time that they spent just a little too long in a wet diaper, or maybe even the depression that shown on their mothers face while they cried from colic.  Maybe when we think about Piaget’s theories on child development we can also think about how our children grow and reach milestones, we should also grow and reach milestones as parents.  As I look into my classroom and view all twenty-six of those faces, I know that each of their roads weren’t the same.  I know that some of those journeys were rocky, but I think God’s plan for us as parents, are to grow with our children and learn from our mistakes.