There are thousands of yoga videos out there and I've sifted through them joyfully to find these little nuggets.有成千的瑜伽影帶在市面上，經過篩選後，我很高興有地找到這些很棒的寶貝。 I hope in whatever stage of Motherhood you are in, that you enjoy your body and breath and learn something new. 不管你現在處於任何階段的母親，我希望你能享受你的身體、氣息和學習新的東西。
If you are not a Mom, you can be someone who can practice yoga and intentionally dedicate your practice to a mother today. 如果你不是一個媽媽，你可以成為一個練習瑜伽的人，而且可以把你的練習在今天特意地獻給一個母親。
(Our Mother's Day 母親節 Series Part 7: Yoga for Busy Moms)
Heidi Gauthier, left, helps jobseeker Jennifer Thomas look at job postings online at a community center in Washington on June 1. 海蒂‧高提耶（左）六月一日在華府一處社區活動中心，協助一位名為珍妮佛‧湯瑪士的求職者在網路銀行上找工作。
Photo: Bloomberg 照片：彭博社
In most common occupations women still make less than men doing the same job for an equal amount of hours, according to new data released on April 17. Overall they earn 77 cents for each dollar made annually by men and for some jobs, such as financial manager, the number drops to 66 cents.
“These gender wage gaps are not about women choosing to work less than men — the analysis is comparing apples to apples, men and women who all work full time — and we see that across 40 common occupations, men nearly always earn more than women,” said Ariane Hegewisch, a study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a non-profit research organization.
She added that the reasons are varied but discrimination law cases show that women are less likely to be selected for the best jobs, they get hired at a lower rate and don’t get equivalent raises to men over the years.
“Discrimination in who gets hired for the best jobs hits all women but particularly black and Hispanic women,” Hegewisch explained.
(Our Mother's Day 母親節 Series Part 6: Mommy and Baby Yoga)
A baby is seen at The Vatican on Jan. 13. 這是一月十三日攝於梵諦岡的一張嬰兒照片。
Photo: AFP 照片：法新社
People born during the summer are less likely to be CEOs, according to a new study from the University of British Columbia.
根據（加拿大）英屬哥倫比亞大學一項新研究，夏天出生的人較不可能當上企業的執行長（CEO）。
The study investigated the birth month of 375 CEOs from S&P 500 companies and found a significantly lower amount of CEOs were born in June and July compared to other months.
June babies accounted for six percent of CEOs, while July babies made up only five percent.
六月出生的CEO佔百分之六，而七月出生的只佔百分之五。
Babies born in March and April were most likely to be CEOs, accounting for 12 percent and 10 percent of the sample respectively.
三月及四月出生的寶寶最可能成為CEO，在樣本中分別佔百分之十二及百分之十。
Sauder School of Business professor Maurice Levi explained the “birth-date effect,” a phenomenon based on the way children are grouped by age in school, was to blame for the discrepancy.
The pattern is due in part to the cutoff dates that US schools use to determine when children start kindergarten.
這個模式要部分歸因於美國學校系統接收小孩進幼兒園的截止日期。
Because the cutoff generally falls between September and early January, summer babies are usually the youngest in their class. Those born in April enjoy a somewhat higher likelihood of becoming a CEO because children born in that month are sometimes held back a year, making them the oldest in their class.
“Older children within the same grade tend to do better than the youngest, who are less intellectually developed,” Levi said. “Early success is often rewarded with leadership roles and enriched learning opportunities, leading to future advantages that are magnified throughout life.”
(Our Mother's Day 母親節 Series Part 5: Postnatal 產後 Yoga)
A woman who just gave birth rests on a bed along with her newborn baby in the post delivery ward at a community health center in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh on Feb. 24. 一位產婦在床上與其新生嬰兒二月二十四日在印度中央邦社區健康中心的產後護理部休息。
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透
Are there any taboos that need to be respected when it comes to zuoyuezi 產後坐月子 (postnatal confinement)? Gynecologists are saying that as time progresses the standards of lying-in for the modern postpartum woman should be relaxed, and the old rules no longer need to be followed.
Chen Tsai-chuan, director of gynecology at Greater Taichung’s Lin Shin Hospital, says the belief that postpartum mothers must avoid showering or washing their hair to avoid catching a cold is not wrong, but advances in technology mean that we now have hair dryers and heaters, so there is not much risk of catching a cold if the postpartum mother dries her hair immediately after showering and stays warm.
Gender specialist Huang Rui-ru says that gender-related problems often have to do with communication and living habits. She says some new mothers suffer postpartum depression because they feel scared about having to fill so many roles at once. Huang says that friends of new mothers, as well as the families of the husband and wife, should show more concern for them.
Mothers-in-law might insist that their postpartum daughters-in-law follow traditional postnatal confinement norms out of concern for them, but when miscommunication occurs it can easily make a person feel burdened instead of loved.
Huang says that people should adjust their way of thinking to keep pace with the times, adding that many central air conditioning systems are excellent nowadays, so using air conditioning will not adversely affect a postpartum mother. She also says people should not get divorced simply because they have different views regarding postnatal confinement, because it is not a good thing for a child to be brought into this world only to be separated from its parents.
(Our Mother's Day 母親節 Series Part 4: Childbirth 分娩 Yoga)
Photo: AFP
照片：法新社
A woman has given birth to a 3,175g baby boy in a helicopter taking her to hospital from her home on the northernmost Shetland island of Unst in the UK.
Shetland Coastguard received a call from her doctor at 4:30am, asking about ferry times from the island to the hospital in Lerwick, capital of the island chain.
It was decided to send a helicopter, which landed on Unst 90 minutes later — but not soon enough, as it turned out.
The woman was quickly put on board, but minutes after the helicopter took off she started to give birth.
It was left to paramedic Marcus Wigfull, who had only ever visited maternity wards during his training, to deliver the child.
“To be honest, I wasn't nervous,” said the 40-year-old father of two children aged five and 10.
“It all happened so quickly and my training just kicked in. It all went very smoothly.”
(Our Mother's Day 母親節 Series Part 3: Prenatal 產前 Yoga)
Two babies are seen in this photo taken in Greater Taichung on March 26. 兩個嬰兒三月二十六日於台中合影。
Photo courtesy of Su Hsien-min 照片由蘇嫻敏提供
Many parents worry about their children being predisposed to allergies, but what most people do not know is that the month in which a child is born can make a big difference. A recent study shows that Taiwanese children born in October are the most likely to have problems with allergies and that their risk of asthma is 30 percent higher than other babies. Children born in May, on the other hand, are 20 to 30 percent less likely to develop asthma.
During a symposium held by the Taiwan Pediatric Association on April 27, Kuo Ho-chang, an attending physician at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Department of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, discussed the results of a recent health data survey conducted in 2010 that included 15,483 children between the ages of 7 and 15. The study analyzed three different allergic conditions — hay fever, atopic dermatitis and asthma — and the relationship to the month in which a child was born.
It found that the prevalence rates for hay fever and atopic dermatitis show no correlation to the month in which a baby is born. However, the prevalence of asthma among babies born in October was 10.59 percent higher, making them 30 percent more at risk than other babies, followed by August, September and November respectively, all of which had prevalence rates of nine percent. Babies born in May had the lowest prevalence rate of asthma and were 20 to 30 percent less likely to suffer from asthma.
Kuo says that the purpose of the study was not to scare women into choosing specific months to have their babies, but rather to remind women who will have babies during that particular time to watch their health, keep their surroundings clean and be careful about which baby foods they select for their baby. Kuo says that dust mites multiply during the fall, which could be what causes babies to develop bad allergies, so he says that it is important to keep one’s living environment clean.
Babies are also predisposed to allergies if their mother also has bad allergies, so Kuo says that pregnant women should avoid consuming potential allergens, including crab, shrimp, egg whites and milk, if they have an expected date of delivery in the fall months. When you start giving baby food to babies it is also important to avoid seafood additives and carefully observe which foods give the baby an allergic skin reaction, he says.
TODAY’S WORDS今日單字
1. asthma n.
氣喘 (qi4 chuan3)
例: Brian had an asthma attack but didn’t have his inhaler, so he was rushed to the hospital.
(布萊恩氣喘發作，可是他沒有帶吸入器，所以趕緊送醫。)
2. multiply v.
繁殖 (fan2 zhi2)
例: The bacteria in the food multiplied rapidly due to the hot weather.
(食物裡的細菌因天氣熱而迅速繁殖。)
3. additive n.
添加物；添加劑 (tian1 jia1 wu4; tian1 jia1 ji4)
例: Antioxidant additives do not necessarily make a food healthy.
(Our Mother's Day 母親節 Series Part 2: Fertility 生育能力 Yoga)
Chao Hsiang-chen, a 63-year-old employee at the Taipei Water Department’s Customer Service Center, and her 64-year-old husband never planned on having children. After family and friends suggested it to them two years ago, they decided to give it a shot, but never expected to she would actually get pregnant. At the ripe old age of 62, Chao gave birth to twins — a boy and a girl (dragon-and-pheonix twins in Chinese) — at the end of last year. With a smile on her face she says, “They are the most precious gift that God has ever given me.” She does, however, regret having kids so late in life and would like to encourage women to have children earlier in life.
“I just couldn’t believe it when the doctor told me that I was pregnant,” Chao says. Her husband had never really been fond of children and often said that having kids was unnecessary, which was why they still had no children after so many years of marriage. That all changed two years ago when they went on a trip to China and family and friends began encouragingly telling them that they were in great shape and healthy enough to have kids. Without actually trying very hard, nature took its course after they returned to Taiwan, but instead of merely becoming an expectant mother, Chao became pregnant with twins.
Chao attributes her lack of discomfort during birth to hiking in the mountains every day with her mother when she was young. She was able to get out of bed and start doing stretches using a towel the day after giving birth and was released from the hospital by the fifth day. On that day, Chao was immediately able to go to the market to buy food and life pretty much returned to normal. Her doctor has even encouraged her to have yet another baby next year to help increase the country’s birthrate.
Holding the twins — Chen Fong (girl) and Chen Lung (boy) — in her arms, Chao says that she never fathomed something like this would happen. When the babies were born they weighed 2,600g and 1,800g, but now at three months they weigh 7kg and 6kg. They do not cry much, only gurgling and babbling a bit when they are hungry, and spend most of their time sleeping. The twins are not shy with strangers either. As soon as they were brought into this world, they became the objects of doting and adoration among family members. “It turns out that kids are fairly easy to raise,” Chao says.
Ridiculing herself for being a mother who does not use her brain much, Chao has not read any magazines or books on parenting because she believes that children should be free to grow up naturally. Her octogenarian parents, on the other hand, are typically the ones who keep nagging her about how to raise the children.
TODAY’S WORDS 今日單字
1. babble v.
牙牙學語 (ya2 ya2 xue2 yu3)
例: The babbling babies played in the kitchen while their father cooked dinner.
(爸爸煮晚餐時，牙牙學語的嬰兒在廚房玩耍。)
2. dote v.
寵愛；溺愛 (chong3 ai4; ni4 ai4)
例: The grandmother loves doting on her grandchildren.
(奶奶很溺愛其孫子。)
3. parenting n.
育嬰；養育子女 (yu4 ying1; yang3 yu4 zi2 nu3)
例: Researchers say that warm, responsive parenting can offset the painful effects of strict discipline.
