Amra Circle

Amra Circle

By DeekshaParentingKids & Family
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Amra Circle episodes

  • Maternal Health : Midwifery Model of Care

    The Midwifery Model of Care considers pregnancy and birth as normal physiologic events in a women's life. Midwives work with women in the promotion of reproductive health, family planning, preconception care, antenatal care, care during labour and postnatal care including newborn care. 

    The Midwifery Model of Care is a fundamentally different approach to pregnancy and childbirth than contemporary obstetrics. It includes:

    ·  monitoring the physical, psychological and social well-being of the mother/birthing parent throughout the childbearing cycle

    ·  providing the mother/birthing parent with individualized education, counselling, and prenatal care, continuous hands-on assistance during labour and delivery, and postpartum support

    ·  minimizing technological interventions and

    ·  identifying and referring women/birthing people who require obstetrical attention.

    21 min
  • Maternal Health : Choosing a Health Care Provider for Childbirth

    Pregnancy involves making multiple decisions and one of the most important decisions a mother along with her family makes is the choice of a healthcare provider for pregnancy and childbirth. In today’s episode, we will be discussing the various childbirth options, healthcare providers and how you can go about choosing the right partner and optimal birth setting.

    Pranjul Tandon, a Certified Childbirth Educator based in London, shares her thoughts on how to choose the right healthcare partner. She is the founder of Womb & Beyond and ReadyBabyGo and has worked with parents from across the globe.

    http://www.wombandbeyond.info/

    https://instagram.com/womb_and_beyond/

    23 min
  • Nutrition - Weaning Methods and Division of Responsibility in Feeding

    During the growing years between infancy and adolescence, adequate nutrition is of utmost importance. Choosing what and how to feed your baby has life-long effects for your baby and for you. What you have seen and learned about infant feeding from your family, friends, and teachers is likely to influence your attitude and perceptions. Infants typically breastfeed or are given formula the first 6 months Fluids besides these two are not typically recommended. These substitutes, such as milk, juice, and water do not possess what the infant needs to grow and develop, cannot be digested correctly, and have a high risk of being contaminated.

    How to wean:

    Traditional weaning:

    • Purees and “pish pash” from the time the child is 4 or 5 months old.
    • Adult uses a spoon to feed, and eventually, the child starts feeding themselves finger food.
    • Don’t force-feed. Let your child open their mouth and come towards the food before you put it in their mouth, rather than using various games and distraction techniques to “fill the child up”

      • Baby Led Weaning

      • This is the new kid on the block, many paediatricians in India don’t even favour it.
      • The idea is that children learn to chew and swallow, and apparently this is adaptive because the gag reflex is really far forward in the mouth at this age. Whereas if you introduce purees, children learn to swallow before they chew and so when they are working on chewing, the gag reflex is further back in the mouth, which makes it less safe.
      • You don’t introduce solids until children can sit up in a tripod position independently. You introduce single foods at a time until you check for allergies
      • Introduce a glass to drink water from
      • You cut all food into finger food for children to self feed. All food should be of “kaju katli” consistency or softer. Theoretically, children eat what adults eat just cut into larger chunks so they can gnaw on it.
      • They begin to eat off a spoon later
      • You’ve got to be prepared for children to gag
      • Eat with your child to model eating - and this goes for later too. Eat with your child, eating is a social experience and children tend to eat more and more variety when someone is modeling for them.

        • Whether you wean using baby led weaning or traditional weaning focus on:

        • Unsalted food, too much salt is not good for baby
        • Focus on savoury foods, not just fruit and sweeter vegetables like pumpkin
        • Focus on whole foods, do not introduce processed food or refined sugar
        • Family foods and traditional foods are most convenient and best. Introducing a variety of flavours is important.
        • By around 9 months, introduce finger food. This does not have to be fancy - cutlets, rotis, idlis, dosas all count as finger food.
        • Counterintuitively, introduce allergens early and often, and discuss with paediatrician about course of action for any family history of allergies

          • Division of responsibility.

          Ellyn Sattar’s division of responsibility in feeding:

          • Adult decides when, what and where to feed
            • Make sure there are meals and snacks
            • Make water available throughout the day
            • Regulate grazing - some families allow grazing, for some - that doesn’t work. But make sure that children’s “allowed” foods follow the same rules.
            • Child decides which food and how much to eat
            • Children are great at listening to their bodies, much better than we are. They eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. And their bodies really tell them what they need. We should not be over-riding their natural hunger and fullness cues.
              • 19 min
            • Sleep - New Infant Sleep Recommendations and Strategies

              In the first few months of life, children don’t really distinguish between day and night. They have short periods of being awake, followed by longer periods of being asleep, with feeds in between. Most children need to be fed in two hourly intervals. However, children may need to feed much more frequently than that during growth spurts, teething and other periods of growth and change. Eventually, sleep consolidation tends to happen, and children are able to go longer stretches at night, but may still wake for a feed, or for comfort.

              Recommendations:

              • On their back, awake but sleepy, warm, no blankets, no pillows.
              • Also, don’t nurse to sleep, unlatch when baby is still awake
              • Put baby to sleep in the same room as parents for the first year, but in a crib
              • Co-sleep only with a full-term baby, when the mother is well and sober. No sharing of covers across baby

                • Good practices:

                • Make sure children are napping adequately
                • Establish predictable sleep routines
                • Create a pattern for returning to sleep
                • Give it time

                  • Sleep regressions

                  These tend to happen during periods of intense growth. The four month sleep regression and the six month sleep regressions are well documented, and throw many a newly-sleeping longer stretches parents completely for a loop. Basically, as children begin to learn new skills or enter a new phase of their development, the impending changes can basically make it difficult for them to self-soothe.

                  Sometimes, difficulties putting children to sleep can be a result of them being overtired or overstimulated.

                  There are also serious medical concerns that can make sleep difficult including:

                  1. Silent reflux
                  2. Obstructed breathing
                  3. Low iron stores
                  4. Temperament


                    5. 18 min
                  5. Holiday Special Episode!!!

                    Finding the right gift for your children or their friends this holiday season just got easier. We realise how tricky picking an appropriate and useful toy for a child can be, so our team did all the research for you and put together the perfect Gifting Guides for different ages. We tried to shed light on different ways a toy can help a child. Oh! It gets better. We even added links to the sellers websites so just click on a particular image and save yourself a million hours of browsing.

                    Newborns & Infants

                    https://bit.ly/AmraGiftGuideNewborns

                    6 to 12 months

                    https://bit.ly/AmraGiftGuide6to12months

                    1 to 2 years

                    https://bit.ly/AmraGiftGuide1to2years

                    2 to 3 years

                    https://bit.ly/AmraGiftGuide2to3years

                    22 min
                  6. Amra Coffee Chat

                    In Amra Coffee Chat, we interact with parents to hear their side of the story :)

                    Enjoy our conversation with Nishant Boorla - Associate Vice President at Oyo, father to a 15 month old and a fellow podcaster. His podcast The Airball Diaries is a daily dose of NBA updates.


                    20 min
                  7. Play - Different Kinds and Stages

                    Play consists of activities performed for self-amusement. These activities have behavioral, social, and psychomotor rewards. It is child-directed, and the rewards come from within the individual child; it is enjoyable and spontaneous.

                    Play takes different forms for different children, and its definition entails many aspects. Play is the direct opposite of work.

                    Parten’s Social Stages of Play

                    1. Unoccupied play :   Infants appear to make random movements with no clear purpose,

                    2. Solitary play : From three to 18 months, children will spend much of their time playing on their own.

                    3. Parallel play :  From the age of 18 months to two years, children begin to play alongside other children, often mimicking them, but without any interaction.

                    4. Associative play: When children are around three to four years of age, they become more interested in other children than their toys.

                    5. Social/cooperative play : Children around the age of three are beginning to socialize with other children.

                    Beyond Parten’s Stages, play can also be described by these additional categories or types of activities children can engage in during play.

                    6. Motor – Physical Play : When children run, jump, and play games such as hide-and-seek and tag, they are engaging in physical play. Physical play offers a chance for children to develop muscle strength, coordination, and exercise and develop their bodies appropriately, while maintaining healthy weight. 

                    7. Constructive Play : In this type of play, children build and create things. Constructive play starts in infancy and becomes more complex as your child grows. 

                    8. Expressive Play : Children learn to express feelings and emotions during expressive play. Art, music, and writing help children develop creativity and symbolic communication through expressive play.

                    9. Fantasy / Dramatic Play : Children learn to create and imagine beyond their world during fantasy play. They may assume adult roles and learn to think in abstract ways. Children stretch their imaginations and use new words and numbers to express concepts, imaginations and historical concepts. 

                    10. Competitive Play : Competitive play begins in the late preschool period. The play is organized by group goals and established rules. There is at least one leader, and children are definitely in or out of the group.


                    25 min
                  8. Early Childhood Philosophies or Methodologies

                    Some of the more common early childhood education philosophies that people may hear are:

                    • Montessori: founded by Maria Montessori, “follow the child,” the teacher as a guide, the environment is always referred to as a “prepared environment” because teachers create or make material available as they see children become ready for the next stage of learning. Many of the materials are self-correcting materials, and at the early stages children do a lot of independent work at their own pace. Most children do make their way through the entire curriculum, but at a different pace. There are also three-year work cycles - so children are exposed to concepts at different levels over time in a particular environment,and it takes a full three years to consolidate their experiences in a particular environment. There are three-hour work cycles, or three uninterrupted hours where children may pick and choose their material from what is available to them, which must be honoured. There is multi-year grouping, and children stay with their teacher and in their environment for three years at a time.
                    • Reggio: emerged out of a community need in Italy, and while Loris Malaguzzi is often referred to as the founder, it was a collaborative approach. They focus on the strength and curiosity of children, and talk a lot about the 100 languages of children - or myriad ways that children can express themselves. The teacher is seen as a “co-learner” in a Reggio environment, so whereas the Montessori teacher is a guide and unobtrusive, the Reggio teacher may be seen actually facilitating discussions and leading explorations. There are small group projects that children take on, together with a teacher. There is a lot of documentation of children’s work.
                    • Waldorf/Steiner: Rudolph Steiner is the founder of the Waldorf curriculum. The Waldorf method focuses on creating a home-like atmosphere, where a lot of imagination and fantasy play is encouraged.Waldorf toys are, by design, natural and with very minimal detailing - so a child may fill in the remaining details with their imagination. Waldorf also believes that children thrive from predictability and routine, so there are specific times for whole group and small group work, baking and cooking and arts and crafts.
                    • Kindergarten: Freidrich Froebel is considered the father of the modern kindergarten, and he is responsible for putting forth the idea that  "play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in the child's soul.” He essentially believed that children had to construct their idea of the world through direct experience, or play, that would help them understand the world around them. To promote learning in this way, he had a series of gifts and occupations which included things like wooden blocks, sticks, clay, sand, slates, stones, etc. He emphasised the importance of open-ended exploration with this material.
                      • 28 min
                    • Conversation with Ashok Rajagopalan - Children's Book Author, Illustrator and the brains behind Gajapati Kulapati Series

                      Ashok Rajagopalan is an Indian writer and artist for over 500 children's books. He is also known under the blogging pseudonym Kenny Wordsmith. Rajagopalan has worked as a graphic designer, freelance cartoonist, and has contributed to the children's magazines Impulse Hoot and Impulse Toot. He first began illustrating children's stories with a piece in the 1989 magazine Junior Quest.

                      Listen to us pick his brain.

                      19 min
                    • Books for Children - The role they play in a Child’s life and how Parents can go about choosing them.

                      Reading books together with children is among the most important daily routines that we can build. There is plenty of research that proves the benefits of reading to children. Children love the sound of language, and they love looking at pictures with their parents and other caregivers.

                      However, apart from simply being enjoyable, there are plenty of other reasons to read to children.

                      Reading builds children’s vocabulary. Reading also helps children understand the directionality of text - simple things such as English is written from left to right, and from the top of the page to the bottom. You turn pages from right to left to get to the next page of text etc. Children begin to understand that words on a page have meaning, that words have spaces between them etc.

                      But also, reading helps children understand more about the world. It teaches them about things and people who are different to them, and helps them understand situations that they have not yet experienced themselves.

                      20 min

                    About Amra Circle

                    From the publisher's feed

                    Amra Circle brings weekly conversations and discussions about all things parenting and child development.

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