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Pregnancy and Lactation Weekly Digest

For the Week Ending June 9, 2019. 

Baby Talk

On the off chance that you missed it, this video of a dad conversing with his baby is pretty much the cutest thing ever. Watch it here.

This is important to you because it’s a great reminder to talk to your baby – as much as you can, about anything  and everything. Just like this dad. It’s how she’ll learn to speak.

Modern family

LGBTQ parents have long challeged – and can now help us all define – what makes a family. It is much more than DNA; it is love, it is nurturing, it is history, it is stories. Read more here. And our own article Facts About Children Raised By LGBT Parents, which you can find here.

This is important for you because parents and children can end up with each other through a lot of different paths these days; constant caring for each other through the years keeps them glued together.

Moral moms

Morality comes from conscience, conscience comes from attachment, and attachment comes from – the mother-child bond. So argues the philosopher Patricia Churchland in her new book, Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition. Read more here.

This is important for you because this first social interaction that your baby will have – with you – will determine how he acts towards others for the rest of his life.

This week in CRISPR baby news

When He Jiankui altered the DNA of Chinese embryos, he was allegedly trying to create people  who’d be protected from HIV infection. But he later admitted to having regrets about pushing ahead with the gene editing without a scientific or ethical consensus as to if this is where humanity wants to go. His belated regrets are well founded; researchers have just reported that the edited gene he gave the twin girls- an all of their descendants may shorten their lives. Read more here.

This is important for you because now that gene editing of embryos has happened once, every piece of data about these girls will help determine whether it will (and should) happen again.

The most popular article on The Pulse this week was Getting “Whys” to Baby Hiccups. They are still poorly understood, but if the fetus hiccups in utero, the baby will likely continue hiccuping once she’s out. Read it here.

Diana Gitig
Dr. Diana Gitig has a Ph.D. in cell biology and genetics from Cornell University, and has been writing about issues in biology – from molecular biology to cancer to immunology to neuroscience to nutrition to agriculture - for the past fifteen years. She has three teenaged children.

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