A Week in the News - 3rd May 2013

With the news today bringing the erosion of Conservative councils across the UK and the rise of UKIP it's perhaps a good time to look at another side of life. Whilst there have been sad stories reaching our screens and papers this week, including the trial in the case of the April Jones murder, more deaths in Iraq and the continued aftermath of the Boston bombings, there has also been some good news and a continued spell of good weather in the UK! There have also been some interesting developments in the world of pregnancy and babies, and as usual we'll cover the important, and possibly not so important, news from the past week.

Vaccinations

The past month has seen us learn how important vaccinations can be. The terrible spread of measles in the Swansea area has been well documented, as should be the condemning of the press who let the MMR jab become a topic for danger - when it certainly wasn't. This has led to The Telegraph and the BBC both running with stories that will change children's vaccination programs in the coming future. From now on school children will be vaccinated against the flu in an attempt to protect kids and stop the spread of the virus into vulnerable communities. This is a natural expansion of the attempts made by the NHS to encourage the take up of the flu vaccine, but will add another £100m to the NHS budget.

The BBC have also reported that babies in Scotland will receive the rotavirus vaccine, this infects over 1000 babies each year in Scotland so it looks like this will be a welcome change to NHS provision north of the border.

Sweaty Babies and the Brains of the Family?

Interestingly the BBC also reported on an interesting study coming out of Cardiff University which claims to show that babies who sweat more when scared are less aggressive as toddlers, an interesting conclusion! Their findings show that babies who responded to fear in a 'natural' way learnt to curb their aggression when faced with fearful situations at a later date, and hope that this can be expanded to learn about other aggressive or violent behaviour. So have a look and see how much your baby sweats when scared - you might find they don't hit out as much in a couple of years!

The Daily Mail stuck to their usual line of reporting when they reported on a study that apparently shows babies brought up by two parents are more intelligent, I'm sure this flies in the face of many successful and intelligent people from single parent homes. The Mail won't let that get in the way of their agenda though, even if the study is based on mice!

Preparing for Motherhood and More

In an interesting blog on The Daily Telegraph Bryony Gordon talks about how she isn't ready for her NCT classes and isn't looking forward to finding out how unprepared she thinks she might be. I'm sure she'll find them to be really useful in the end, but if she thinks her fiance is going to run away because of them perhaps I'm not the best judge.

The Mail provides us with our last few bits of news this week too, starting with their concern that one in three babies are born to a foreign parent, well we are a multicultural society nowadays, so I don't think this is too surprising, do you? Also according to the Mail if you have a baby you could develop OCD although Rebecca's condition sounds very serious I'm sure there are plenty of mothers who are more 'clean' with a baby around. Is that such a bad thing?

Finally there is a sad story involving the death of a baby girl after the ambulance got lost. Sad news like this should be brought to the attention of the public, but it seems like the Mail wanted to sensationalise the story rather than focus on the death of a poor baby girl. I'm sure the inquest will get to the bottom of this terrible situation.

We'll be back next week with another look at the news, let us know if you find anything interesting in the mean time!

About the author

James Brighton

Since 2011 James has been in charge of working with and organising all our writers to put together Pregnancy.co.uk and Babies.co.uk. Anna, his girlfriend, knows he will be an encyclopaedia of knowledge if she ever falls pregnant!

Click here to read my full biography.

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