The Belly-Rubbing High
Since I have just had a couple of wonderful new grand babies born into my family within the last six months I came across this article on msn health and found it quite interesting and I thought I would share some of it with my readers.
The Belly-Rubbing High
Are some women addicted to having babies?
By Martha Brockenbrough, Women's Health
It's not just in your head. There really is a bumper crop of baby bumps out there, from the famously fertile, like Heidi Klum, who's flirting with her fourth set of stretch marks in five years, to the infamous Nadya "Octomom" Suleman, who earlier this year bore eight babies at once even though she already had six other kids at home that she could barely afford to take care of.
In 2007 alone, American women birthed more than 4.3 million babies — the highest number ever. More than a quarter of those were to women having their third or fourth child, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And despite the infertility freak-out the entire country seems to be currently engaged in, only a small number of these babies — perhaps 100,000 — resulted from medical interventions such as in vitro fertilization, says Jamie Grifo, M.D., Ph.D., director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at the NYU School of Medicine.
That doesn't mean that we're transforming into a nation of Duggars (the Arkansas family with 18 kids often seen announcing their latest conception on NBC's TODAY show) and Novogratzes (the New York City clan of seven kids soon to be the focus of a new Bravo reality show) — the average number of children per American family is still hovering right around two.
Still, certain mothers, like 31-year-old Meagan Francis, who is raising her flock of five in Michigan, have big broods because that's what they're used to. "I grew up in a relatively large family and always loved having lots of people around," she says. "So it's natural that I'd try to re-create that experience with my own family."
But it's not always quite so simple, psychologists say. Some women may like being pregnant a little too much, often driven to rapidly reproduce out of insecurity, a craving for attention, or feelings of abandonment by their own parents.
The high of pregnancy
Having babies isn't addictive in the way that alcohol and narcotics can be. But bumpaholics feel compelled to procreate for many of the same reasons that substance abusers turn to booze or drugs.
"Women who are obsessed with being pregnant are literally filling an emptiness inside of them, just as alcoholics and drug addicts use substances to fill a psychological void," says Beverly Hills psychiatrist Carole Lieberman, M.D. Every one of us at some point encounters this void, adds New York family therapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, Ph.D., author of "Financial Infidelity." "You want to have a purpose in this world. You want to feel less lonely."
In 2007 alone, American women birthed more than 4.3 million babies — the highest number ever. More than a quarter of those were to women having their third or fourth child, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And despite the infertility freak-out the entire country seems to be currently engaged in, only a small number of these babies — perhaps 100,000 — resulted from medical interventions such as in vitro fertilization, says Jamie Grifo, M.D., Ph.D., director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at the NYU School of Medicine.
That doesn't mean that we're transforming into a nation of Duggars (the Arkansas family with 18 kids often seen announcing their latest conception on NBC's TODAY show) and Novogratzes (the New York City clan of seven kids soon to be the focus of a new Bravo reality show) — the average number of children per American family is still hovering right around two.
Still, certain mothers, like 31-year-old Meagan Francis, who is raising her flock of five in Michigan, have big broods because that's what they're used to. "I grew up in a relatively large family and always loved having lots of people around," she says. "So it's natural that I'd try to re-create that experience with my own family."
But it's not always quite so simple, psychologists say. Some women may like being pregnant a little too much, often driven to rapidly reproduce out of insecurity, a craving for attention, or feelings of abandonment by their own parents.
The high of pregnancy
Having babies isn't addictive in the way that alcohol and narcotics can be. But bumpaholics feel compelled to procreate for many of the same reasons that substance abusers turn to booze or drugs.
"Women who are obsessed with being pregnant are literally filling an emptiness inside of them, just as alcoholics and drug addicts use substances to fill a psychological void," says Beverly Hills psychiatrist Carole Lieberman, M.D. Every one of us at some point encounters this void, adds New York family therapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, Ph.D., author of "Financial Infidelity." "You want to have a purpose in this world. You want to feel less lonely."
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