Family Tips

If a woman expects multiples, she should follow general pregnancy guidelines as to the nutrition, including increased calcium and folic acid consumption. Pregnant women need additional calcium, so her died should be enriched with extra milk or fortified orange juice, broccoli, sardines, or other calcium-rich foods. Women who expect more than one baby should take approximately 1,600 to 2,000 milligrams of calcium each day.
Folic acid is also extremely important for a pregnant woman. Taking folic acid prior to and throughout the first 3 months of pregnancy decreases the danger of neural tube defects.
One more dietary requirement if you are pregnant with multiples is protein. It serves as the building materials for body tissue and functions as enzymes that regulate chemical reactions.
During pregnancy one also needs an increased supply of iron for sufficient hemoglobin level, as in multiple pregnancies, anemia is often met.
It is quite clear that additional fetuses mean an increased need for all other nutrients (including zinc, copper, vitamin C, and vitamin D). So it’s important to take your vitamin supplement every day. But more than one baby doesn’t mean that you should take more than one prenatal vitamin. One is enough.

Healthy women during a multiple pregnancy
Any expectant mother who wants to stay healthy should eat properly, get enough rest, and make regular trips to the doctor. And a woman who expect more than one baby might need even more frequent appointments with her gynecologist.
Frequent and intensive medical care is very important during the multiple pregnancy. You may try to find a doctor who have experience with multiple births. Such pregnancies are at once considered a high-risk and specialized care is very important to secure you and ensure your babies receive the best care.
Taking into the account comparatively small amount of multiple pregnancies, asking your friend may not be productive. Instead, ask your doctor to recommend a facility that specializes in multiple births. You should undergo a pre-term birth prevention program and have necessary access to a specialists if one of your babies is born with a health problem.

The most direct danger involved with multiple births is premature birth. The common, one-baby pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks, but a twin pregnancy often lasts shorter: between 35 to 37 weeks. Nearly half of such babies are born before 37 weeks, and the danger of having a premature delivery increases with higher-order multiples.
Premature babies can have many health problems. These can include jaundice, apnea, anemia, serious infections, respiratory distress because of underdeveloped lungs, and gastrointestinal, visual, and neurological problems just because of premature birth. These babies are usually placed in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) after delivery. The risk of developing health problems increases with the degree of prematurity — babies born closer to their due time have a lower risk.
Besides problems connected with premature births, there is a number of other medical conditions that are more likely to occur: preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, placental problems, and fetal growth problems.
Because of these possible problems and concerns, many doctors specializing in fertility treatments require that future parents undergo intensive counseling on the possibilities and risks.

Identical twins appear from a single fertilized egg divided into individual halves and continuing to develop into some separate but completely identical babies. Such twins are genetically identical, with the same chromosomes and similar physical characteristics. They’re always the same sex and have the same blood type, similar appearance, color of hair and eyes.
Fraternal twins appear from two eggs that are fertilized by two separate sperm and are alike as siblings born to the same parents. These babies may or may not be of the same sex. This type of twins is much more common and abundant, and only this type doesn’t depend on heredity, maternal age, race, and number of prior pregnancies.
Triplets and other higher-order multiple births, such as quadruplets or even quintuplets are often called supertwins. Such gemini can be identical, fraternal, or a combination of both. But higher-order births occur seldom; triplets occur in 1 in 7,000 births, whereas quintuplets are likely to be born only once in 47 million births. These babies, as a rule, are very small and small-for-date newborns, who are often prematurely born.

Multiple pregnancies in most cases are not casual and there are several factors which may influence it:
The first and the main one is heredity: multiple births on a woman’s side of the family increases her chances to have twins.
Race is also important. It appeared that women of African descent are the most likely to have multiple pregnancies.
Number of prior pregnancies. If a woman had more than one previous pregnancy, especially a multiple pregnancy, the chances to have a multiple pregnancy encrese.
Delayed procreation. Older women who are pregnant more likely will have multiples.
Barrenness treatment. Fertility drugs, which stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs, or assisted reproductive technology (ART), which transfers multiple embryos into the womb (such as in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, IVF & ET), greatly increase chances to have twins or even triplets. 
The last two factors are probably responsible for the increase in multiple births in the last couple of years.

With the appearance of a baby, it can seem as if the laundry doubles! Many parents at once buy baby detergent to clean their baby’s clothes. It may be useful to know that this isn’t necessary for most babies.
If baby detergent can’t help you to get rid of stains and odors on your baby’s clothing, it may be time to change it for a regular liquid detergent. Unless your baby has allergies, eczema, atopic dermatitis or other conditions causing sensitive skin, washing your kid’s clothes with the rest of the family’s clothes is unlikely to irritate your kid’s skin. Liquid detergents are the best choice as they work for all types of clothes. You may even try to use stain-removing detergents for tough stains.
Before changing be sure to test one article of clothing first. If you notice any signs of irritation, try using a detergent that doesn’t contain colors or fragrances. If you still notice a skin reaction, use baby soap for a little while longer.
Swaddling clothes are the only items that need to be separated from your family laundry because harsh detergents can cause nappy rash. If you use swaddling clothes, wash them with mild baby detergent or baby soap, and avoid antistatic products or fabric softeners. Remember to use hot water and be sure to double rinse each load.

AIDS became epidemic and there is more growing understanding of how far-reaching the problem has become, and of the need to prevent HIV infection and to protect kids.
Mankind has made huge steps in understanding and treating HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but the epidemic continues to spread worldwide. According to a recent study within the next 25 years, AIDS will obviously join heart disease and stroke as the top 3 causes of death in the world. In the United States, half of all new HIV infections occur in teens and young people from ages 13 to 24. And a quarter of infected with HIV and AIDS don’t know about their disease.
To influence the development of the spread of HIV/AIDS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2006 recommended that all teens and adults ? from ages 13 to 64 ? were tested for HIV as a part of routine medical care.
Meantime, physician groups start to do more testing and provide more information about the risks of sexual activity and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Education and other preventive informational methods, together with better and more accessible treatments, can slow the spread and reduce the number of new cases. But the AIDS crisis is far from over.

Mass media put great deal of information about medicine abuse, but recent coverage of the dangerous, potentially deadly practice of intentionally overdosing on cough and cold drugs has force parents and educators to worry over and over again.
Medicines containing dextromethorphan are easy to find, available for teens to buy, and perfectly legal. Getting access to the dangerous drug is now as easy as walking into the local drugstore with a few dollars. And because it’s found in over-the-counter medicines and is available for everyone, many teens are naively believing that it be very dangerous.
For the past years teens not only got easy access to it through the Internet, but also learnt on that very Internet how to abuse it. Because drinking large amounts of cough syrup causes retching, the drug is being extracted from cough syrups and sold on the Internet in a tablet that can be swallowed or a powder that can be snorted.

As any other medicine, dextromethorphan can be safely taken in 15- to 30-milligram doses, which are sufficient to suppress a cough; sometimes teens tend to consume as much as 360 milligrams or more. Taking huge quantities of products containing DXM can cause hallucinations, loss of motor control, and disassociative sensations.
Users may also experience other possible side effects: confusion, impaired judgment, blurred vision, dizziness, paranoia, excessive sweating, slurred speech, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, headache, lethargy, numbness of fingers and toes, redness of face, dry and itchy skin, loss of consciousness, seizures, brain damage, and even death.
When taken in large quantities, dextromethorphan can also cause hyperthermia, or high fever. This is a real problem for teens who take this drug being in a hot environment of a party or in a dance club, where it can be sold and passed off as similar-looking drugs like ‘angel dust’.

If you have suspicion that your child may be abusing over-the-counter drugs or if your teen often visit raves or dance clubs where he can easily find dextromethorphan, you should think over the fallowing:
Lock your medicine cabinet, or keep those OTC drugs that could potentially be abused in a place with no excess for your child. 
Avoid reserving OTC medicines. Having too many OTC medications at home you could make abusing them more tempting for your teen.
Control how much is in each bottle or container in your medicine cabinet.
Be on the alert out for not only commonl-looking cough and cold remedies in your child’s room, but also strange-looking pills (DXM can be sold on the Internet and at raves in its pure form in various shapes and colors).
Look for possible warning signs of DXM abuse. 
Observe your child’s Internet usage. You may find suspicious websites and emails that seem to be promoting the abuse of DXM or other drugs, both legal and illegal.
But first of all, talk to your children about drug abuse and explain that even though taking of a cough or cold remedies seems harmless, it’s not. When taken in large amounts dextromethorphan is still a drug that can be just as fatal as those sold by drug dealers.