So I went to the appointment went through all the routine questions not a problem, it was after that the problems started. With no warning what so ever the doctor performed a pelvic exam which had me climbing the walls. She then tried to fit the coil, unfortunately what should have been a straight forward procedure was extremely painful, unsurprisingly my cervix went into spasm and the whole thing had to be abandoned.

I had to book another appointment, this time I was told to take 6mg of Diazepam. So I turned up for the appointment, went through the same routine as the 1st attempt only this time after 6 attempts they finally managed to get the bloody thing in.

Since then it’s all gone downhill, I feel like crap, I’ve had bleeding heavier than my usual period; which I didn’t think was possible. To add insult to injury I found out that I’ve got a few torn ligaments in my pelvis and I have pelvic Inflammatory Disease from the damn thing. So all in all not a happy bunny.

For more information about the coil or PID see these websites:
Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
Mirena Coil

But the report found “genuine attempts” were made to address her concerns. Dr Kim Holt, a senior consultant paediatrician, had warned the clinic’s appointment system was “chaotic”. She was one of four who wrote a letter detailing problems at the hospital’s clinic a year before the failed diagnosis. They warned the clinic – run by Haringey Primary Care Trust and manned by Great Ormond Street Hospital doctors – was understaffed.

There had once been four doctors at the clinic, but two posts were cut before Baby Peter’s death. Since the case, the number has risen to nine. The independent report found “delays in seeing children must have the potential to affect patient safety”. It described Dr Holt as highly intelligent and committed, and added that communication between doctors and senior administrators needed to be managed “more effectively in the interests of patient care”.But it also said “genuine attempts” had been made to improve the situation after Dr Holt’s letter.

The report’s authors described the workload of consultants at the clinic between 2006 and May 2008 as “excessive” and said the consequences of cutting a consultant post “were not adequately considered” by management. They also noted complaints of a “very hostile environment” at the clinic with poor communication between staff and managers. But they concluded: “We do not consider, however, that this descended into a bullying regime.”

After the publication of the report, Dr Holt said said she and her colleagues’ concerns were about the “quality of care” given to children at the clinic. Tracey Connelly was jailed for her part in Baby Peter’s death
She said: “We followed internal Trust channels, only going outside when they had been exhausted.
“I hope now that everyone will be able to learn from this report and move on. “I also hope that in future it will be far easier for NHS staff, in Haringey or anywhere, to speak out in the interests of their patients, particularly those who have no voice of their own.” Professor Trish Morris-Thompson, chief nurse at NHS London, said: “We accept in full the findings of this independent report, and we are working with NHS Haringey to make sure recommendations are put in place.”This report shows that Dr Holt’s concerns were taken seriously.”

The British Medical Association (BMA) is supporting Dr Holt’s claim to be reinstated to her original post.
In a statement Great Ormond Street Hospital said: “The Trust welcomes the report, accepts its recommendations and now wants to move to try to resolve outstanding issues swiftly and amicably.”
It added: “The Trust has apologised for its mistakes in the care of Baby Peter and has acted on all recommendations made.

Baby Peter died from abuse despite 60 visits from the authorities. His mother Tracey Connelly, 28, her partner Steven Barker, 33, and Barker’s brother Jason Owen, 37, were all jailed for their part in Peter’s death.
Haringey Council’s social services department was heavily criticised following the killing.

This is just one instance of a clinic where a child died as a result of abuse injuries being ignored due to being short staffed. This is just one of many, indicators that the NHS needs to be reviewed

Diet pills only actually make you lose water because the majority of them contain a diuretic (it makes you pee alot). Some of them can interfere with contraceptives such as the pill. Add into the equation that diet pills are pretty expensive too, for example a packet of alli costs approximately £32.95 for 42 tablets. You have to take 1 3 times a day so a packet of 42 will last 14 days so you end up spending approximately £70 a month.

So here is a link to a website that I found helpful beauty secrets for you. The information on this site is useful provided that you don’t pay attention to the adverts on the page.

Most adults can remember days when they didn’t want to go to school. There would be claims of illness, and of the danger of passing on an unpleasant disease, before the eventual acceptance that the journey into school was inevitable. So it is not surprising that many might react with scepticism to the idea that there is such a thing as “school phobia”.

According to Nigel Blagg, author of School Phobia and Its Treatment, it is a condition that has been recognised since the 1960s. “They will experience extreme anxiety. They are off school, typically with their parents’ knowledge and approval. And they often have symptoms like tummy aches, head aches and nausea. Some of them suffer severely with depression. “Any attempts to get them to school, when they are at their worst can lead to quite extreme behaviour – temper tantrums, screaming, kicking. It is very distressing for the adults.”

The sceptics categorise these children as truants, but, says Mr Blagg, a former local authority educational psychologist who now runs a private practice, they are quite distinct in background and behaviour: “They are typically well behaved, socially conforming who are usually doing quite well. Normally they come from caring families. The truant group are the ones who [miss] school because they want to… often involved in delinquent behaviour.”

It is thought the worst ages for school phobia are five to six and 11-14, says Mr Blagg. There are no precise numbers for how many children suffer the condition, but he notes one estimate is that 1% of children will have it at one point during their school careers. A day at school is not every child’s idea of fun.

But the diagnosis is not without controversy, and even the term is subject to dispute, says Mr Blagg. “In the psychological world the preferred term these days is school refusal. [But] school refusal doesn’t convey the extreme distress, anxiety and panic, the physical symptoms that these children experience or the fact that it isn’t a volitional state.” There is a recognition among psychologists and other education professionals that school phobia/school refusal covers a range of different problems.

Some of the younger sufferers can be diagnosed as having “separation anxiety”, leaving them distressed at parting from their parents at the school gate. But some psychologists say this is more about refusal, not phobia – a true school phobic will experience a reaction even if their parents are present. “Other children could be classified as having a social phobia to do with performance aspects of school – reading out loud or changing for PE,” says Mr Blagg. Other children might be off sick for a prolonged period, fall behind with work and fall out of a routine. Some might simply have changed school and lost friends they relied on to feel secure at school. Still others may have had a single distressing experience. “More typically what you have is an accumulation of stresses to do with home and school that add up over time and cause the child to be anxious,” says Mr Blagg.

School phobia – irrational fear of school or the school situation
School refusal – Refusal on the part of a child to attend school
Refusal to go to school may be caused by a school phobia but most school refusals due to separation anxiety
In a true school phobia a child will show the phobic reaction even if his or her parents are present
Source: Penguin Dictionary of Psychology

“The avoidance leads to greater problems. They fall behind with school work. They worry what friends will say. The longer they are out the worse the problems get. If they are told they don’t have to go they feel fine and the symptoms disappear.”

Not only is there disagreement over the name for the condition, but also how to treat it, and whether it exists at all. Sociologist Prof Frank Furedi, author of Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, is not convinced. “You take an understandable anxiety about going to school and turn it into a disease… Children will internalise it and play the role that’s been assigned to them. It cultivates the idea that these [exaggerated medically diagnosable] anxieties are normal. You do begin to encourage children to think in these terms.”

Even if you do accept that school phobia exists, there can still be disagreement over the best approach to tackling it. Mr Blagg insists that while educational psychologists, teachers and parents must be sensitive to the child’s needs, they must recognise that confrontation and getting the child back to school is necessary.
“They need that very firm handling and confronting them and getting them back to school. You might have to take them to school and escort them [in].” For those who have been away schools should assign tutors, help them catch up and offer them quiet space to be in while they are adjusting.

There are some advocates of home schooling who believe that rather than being a psychological aberration requiring a cure, the symptoms of school phobia may simply indicate that the child is best educated away from the school, at home. Ann Newstead, a spokesperson for the home tuition charity Education Otherwise, says school phobia is a “very real condition”. “I see a lot of families where they are in that situation – you only have to meet the children and families to see that it’s not a made up condition. It’s genuine. Not sending your child to school is something parents can be prosecuted for. You don’t risk prosecution lightly. You wouldn’t dream of forcing an adult to engage in an environment that wasn’t beneficial to them. So why do we think it’s ok to treat children in this way?”

But aren’t children more malleable? Doesn’t keeping them back from school indulge their fear rather than tackle the problem? “I agree with the tackling but not the forcing of it. That’s like treating someone who is scared of spiders by putting a spider in their hand. You tackle these things gradually, help someone to overcome a phobia and home education is a way of doing that.” More generally, many schools seek to make some of the changes for children less stressful, for example working on acclimatisation for children moving up to secondary school but Prof Furedi does not believe that such a sensitive treatment is necessarily always helpful. “Kids going from primary school to secondary school often get transitional counselling. If you tell them enough times this is an extremely difficult, painful step, you make the kids more anxious.”

The sceptics of this theory are making their voices heard here are just a few:

• Bill Thorpe: “Thirty years of teaching in inner city schools has shown me that as soon as a “syndrome” is named, you can be sure that you’ll have a rash of ‘diagnosed’ sufferers within a few weeks. (Tourettes for example). Even if “School phobia” is real; and the pupil who have been prosecuted is a sufferer.. Why should the school apologise? Presumably the evidence of non-attendance was real and provable. The “syndrome” is a circumstance that can be considered by the court. The school is right to pursue truants, their only evidence is attendance records.”
• Yes, phobias exist in school settings, but I don’t think that there is actually a school phobia. The reason why the profile of all these school phobiasts are “well behaved, socially conforming….” is for the simple fact that they are suck ups that probably get whatever they want, and their mommies and daddies cradle their kids until their out of college. I think everybody at some point or for a period of time didn’t want to go to school. This was probably because we had to deal with something we didn’t want to, like: giving a speech, a bully, or maybe getting up too early. These fears or anxieties are normal for everybody. Being afraid of a public institution is just another way to label something else we want to have as an excuse to coddle our kids.
• This is ridiculous. There is always a name for anything that makes us as adults uncomfortable. I am a teacher and i have dealt with children who don’t want to come to school, one is now okay as he realised nobody was going to put up with his nonsense. The other left the school as he was very good at manipulating his mother who just did whatever her children wanted. We need to stop labelling children and helping them to come up with excuses. I am sure when they grow up with no qualifications and become yet again another burden on society we will think of another psychological condition to excuse. The problem with the west, too many excuses for bad and manipulative behaviour!!

To be honest me and my partner accept that there is anxiety for some children with regards to school but we’re are uncertain about whether there is such a thing as school phobias. With things like this it raises concerns about the impact on both the education system and the NHS. The education system will become too afraid to act if they suspect truancy and the NHS will be inundated with claims of children who allegedly have school phobia; Not only that but you risk creating a self fulfilling prophercy, if you tell someone something often enough they start to believe it. You are also providing truants with another excuse to skip school

Intake levels are currently 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 for men. However the panel stresses that people should only eat more if they exercise more, given rising levels of obesity. The committee says its report provides a much more accurate assessment of how energy can be burnt off through physical activity.
A 16% increase would mean that adults could safely consume an extra 400 calories a day, equivalent to an average sized cheeseburger.

The proposals, seen by The Times and The Grocer magazine, are due to go out for a 14-week consultation period. Final recommendations will then be made after that time. Health campaigners say the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency could seek to “sweep this report under the carpet” in a bid to avoid sending out mixed messages in the middle of an obesity epidemic.

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said it was a “dangerous assumption” to say that adults could safely consume an extra 400 calories a day. “This is not a green light to eat yourself silly,” he said.

This seems to be another one of those situations where there is conflict such as the situation with alcohol some say that a glass of red wine is good for you where other say alcohol is bad, so I guess as long as you eat healthily and are not overweight then don’t worry about how many calories you are consuming as these figures are only guidelines anyway. Everyone’s calorie intake varies depending upon their activity level and their metabolic rate.

However allowing that child to cry teaches them to wait and can in some cases stop them from becoming a mardy child. From a parents perspective it seems to be that the general concensus is that it’s ok to choose a little from colum A and a little from colum B. Basically what this means is that in some cases it is best to drop whatever you’re doing and in other cases to let the child cry. As parents you quickly learn to distinguish the diffference between different cries and if in doubt you watch what they are doing, so you know which ones it is ok to delay attending to.

If you child is in pain then NEVER ignore this one, or if your child is ill. However if your child is crying because they are tired it is ok to put them in their cot or pushchair, to sleep and leave them to settle themselves checking every 5 mins to make sure that they are ok. THis has positive benefits for the child as it teaches them to settle themselves. Which in turn is beneficial for you as it means that you don’t have to spend ages trying to get your child to sleep then attempt to change the habit when they get older, as one parent found out. She was a single mother and would sit cuddling her son till he fell asleep, sometimes it took 5 minutes other times it took hours. As the child got older and moved into his own room it took her years to get her son out of this habit, 5 to be exact. Not only does it take ages to change the habits but it can also cause other problems such as only you can put the child to bed thus meaning that if you wanted to go out, you wouldn’t be able to go very far in case the child woke up. Plus if you have a partner then in some cases the child wont settle if your partner tries to put the child to bed.

Some parents say that they find that they can’t get anything done. As a mother of 2 I’ve found that the following things can help:

• Putting the baby in a sling/baby carrier
• Putting the child in a bouncer and moving it from room to room with you
• Putting them on a mat surrounded by toys then move it when you leave the room (this only applies if you are out of the room for more than a few minutes)
• If your child is mobile a playpen with plenty of toys in can be helpful

At the end of the day it is your child you have to do what is right for you and your lifestyle.

They want the government to extend a ban on infant milk adverts to include “follow-on” milks for older babies.
England’s policy on the promotion of formula milk is currently being reviewed by the Food Standards Agency.
At present, companies are not allowed to advertise formula milk for babies under six months. But they are allowed to promote so-called follow-on milks, a range for children aged between six months and two years.

Many mothers feel an immense sense of guilt and failure when they move on to the bottle, and this latest debate about advertising is likely to make them feel even worse. The charities accuse baby milk companies of using their follow-on milks to promote their products for younger infants by giving them the same name and logo so as to make them “virtually indistinguishable” to parents.

“In similar ways to how tobacco companies found their way through loopholes in legislation restricting the advertising of cigarette promotion, formula milk companies are finding ways to exploit ambiguity in the law and to continue aggressively marketing their products to parents,” says Belinda Phipps of the NCT.
The World Health Organization recommends that babies are given breast milk exclusively for the first six months, and that a mother should continue to breastfeed up to the age of two years.

The charities note that those children who are breastfed are better protected from infections and potentially from even more serious conditions later on in life. Formula milk companies are finding ways to exploit ambiguity in the law and to continue aggressively marketing their products to parents
Belinda Phipps

At present, some 76% of UK mothers start out breastfeeding – up 7% from 2000. However most move on to formula within weeks, and fewer than half still breastfeed by the time their child is six weeks old. By six months, only 25% of mothers are breastfeeding at all. But Dr Ellie Lee of the University of Kent who has researched women’s experiences of infant feeding said the impact of advertising on the decision to switch from breast to bottle was “negligible”.

In a study of mothers commissioned by The Infant and Dietetic Foods Association (IDFA), Dr Lee found that the decision to bottle feed was a “pragmatic decision based on personal circumstances”. “Some do it because of the pain of feeding or so they can feed their child at more regular intervals, some so they can share responsibility for feeding the baby, others because they are thinking of going back to work.

It has also been suggested that the increasing reluctance of health professionals to discuss formula milk as an option may mean some parents are not aware of the thorough sterilisation of feeding equipment that is needed to limit the risk of infection.

The Food Standards Agency is currently working on new regulations for the promotion of formula milk which would take into account the latest EU directive. The charities involved in the report want the FSA to agree to a ban, noting that the new European recommendations in particular stress that information on formula “should not counter the promotion of breast feeding”.

It is unclear whether a ban is likely, but it is thought that companies will no longer be able to make claims about similarity to breast milk on their packets under new restrictions. A number of companies have slogans such as “even closer to breast milk”, “the closest to breast milk” on their packaging, pointing to the fatty acids and probiotic bacteria found in breast milk that are included in the ingredients.

From a parents point of view there is a huge amount of pressure on mothers to breast feed for some this isn’t always possible for a variety of reasons. For those who don’t manage to breast feed for the full recommended time there is often a feeling of failure, guilt or disappointment. Advertisers shouldn’t add into the mix feelings of confusion and uncertainty, I think parents should be given the facts about breast feeding and the different formula brands then parents can make up their own minds without being pressured down a specific route.

The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb. It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices. Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age.

Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: “The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life. Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother’s behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding. “Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the importance of human infants’ crying for seeding language development.” Dr Wermke’s team recorded and analysed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old.

The analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the infants’ cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue. They say the babies need only well-co-ordinated respiratory-laryngeal systems to imitate melody contours and not the vocal control that develops later. Dr Wermke said: “Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother’s behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding. Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother’s speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age.”

Debbie Mills, a reader in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Bangor University, said: “This is really interesting because it suggests that they are producing sounds they have heard in the womb and that means learning and that it is not an innate behaviour. Many of the early infant behaviours are almost like reflexes that go away after the first month and then come back later in a different form. It would be interesting to look at these babies after a month and see if their ability to follow the melodic contours of their language is still there.”

Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, they say the problems can be evident in children as young as three years old. They believe smoking in pregnancy may damage the developing structure of the baby’s brain. The researchers from the universities of York, Hull and Illinois looked at more than 14,000 mother and child pairs who were taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study. The mothers were categorised as light or heavy smokers depending on how many cigarettes they smoked every day during pregnancy.

They were asked to score their three-year-old children’s behaviour using a questionnaire called Strengths and Difficulties, which focuses on behaviour problems and hyperactivity, or attention deficit disorders. They took into account factors likely to influence the results, including the mother’s age at the child’s birth, her level of education and socioeconomic status, family stability and problematic parenting.

Mothers who were light smokers were 44% more likely to have boys who had problems with their conduct.
Heavy smokers were 80% more likely to have boys with these problems. Both heavy and light smokers were also significantly more likely to have boys who were hyperactive or had attention deficit disorders. For three-year-old girls, light and heavy smoking in pregnancy were significantly associated with conduct problems but not with hyperactivity and attention deficit behaviours.

Professor Kate Pickett, who lead the research, said their findings were consistent with previous research in older age groups. She said: “Smoking in pregnancy may have direct effects on the foetal development of brain structure and functioning which has been shown in studies of rats. “Or it may be a marker for the transmission of processes between the generations that are associated with both smoking in pregnancy and behaviour problems in children.”

“There are four thousand toxic substances in cigarette smoke and many of these will pass into the brain of the foetus and it is possible that they could have an effect on how the brain chemistry works.”

The advice, published under the headline “Get more than zeds in bed”, is one of several sexual health-related articles to be found on the NHS Direct website. Sex with a little energy and imagination provides a workout worthy of an athlete, the article says. “If you’re worried about wrinkles – orgasms even help prevent frown lines from deepening forget about jogging round the block or struggling with sit-ups. Sex uses every muscle group, gets the heart and lungs working hard, and burns about 300 calories an hour.”

The advice suggests “regular romps this winter” could lead to a better body and a younger look. Increased production of endorphins “will make your hair shine and your skin smooth,” it adds. “If you’re worried about wrinkles – orgasms even help prevent frown lines from deepening.” The article goes on to say that orgasms release “painkillers” into the bloodstream, which helping keep mild illnesses like colds and aches and pains at bay.

The production of extra oestrogen and testosterone hormones “will keep your bones and muscles healthy, leaving you feeling fabulous inside and out”. I don’t know about anyone else but to me this sounds like another fad but we’ll see as the saying goes only time will tell.