What I Want To Find Out About My Topic

           My topic can offer a good amount of research. Some questions that I want to do research on are: Should women know what kind of diseases their child will be born with? Why are mothers not aware of the different birth defects that may affect their child’s health? What can a doctor do to prevent the birth defect during prenatal care? What are the most common birth defects? Is there any specific reason why a child is born with a type of defect? Can the mother do anything to prevent her child from being born abnormal? All the questions I asked will help me find the research I need to know. These questions can inform me and others who do not know anything about birth defects.

Research Memo #1

Research Memo #1

Women whose tests are normal will most likely have a baby born with a type of disease, condition, or a mental illness.  Three to five percent of women will receive abnormal results and only ten percent may actually have a baby born with a birth defect. That leads me to the question, why do doctors not look for diseases, such as hernias, during a mother’s prenatal care?  When my mother talked to me about my birth defect, she informed me that she did not know exactly what I was going to be born with.  She only knew that I was not going to be born healthy. This leads me to a conclusion that women are uninformed or wrongly told everyday about their unborn child. It hurts to be told that your child will be normal, but when he/she is born he/she is abnormal. It makes you angry to be told that your child will be abnormal, but when your child is born he/she is all normal. Can doctors do something to inform women the truth about their unborn child?

I conducted a survey on birth defects. I started   targeting females first. I targeted them because they are the ones who gave birth to the child. I thought my respondents  will agree with my opinion, but they did not. My results had added up to a conclusion that both of the parents are affected equally. As a result, I spoke with my father about when I was born. He had mentioned to me that not only my mother was emotionally hurt but he was also. The talk with him gave me the idea to change my targeted audience to both male and female.

Results:

	Male	Female
Do you know someone who has been born with any type of birth defect?	Yes:  10 out of 14	Yes:  6  out of 11
Do you know about the different types of birth defects a child can be born with?	Yes: 12 out of 14	Yes : 6 out of 11
Every thirty seconds a child is born with a birth defect.	True: 14 out of 14	True: 6 out of 11
When having a child with a birth defect, who does it affect the most?	Both: 8 out of 14 Mother: 5 out of 14 Father: 1 out of 14	Both: 8 out of 11 Mother: 3 out of 11
Please range the following in order of importance. Greatest to Least. Hernias, Down Syndrome, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome	Did not answer: 4 out of 14	Did not answer: 2 out of 11
It is important for a mother to know her child will be born with a type of birth defect.	Strongly Agree: 6 out of 14 Agree: 4 out 0f 14 Disagree: 1 out of 14 Strongly Disagree: 3 out of 14	Strongly Agree: 6  out of 11 Agree: 5 out of 11
How important is it on a scale 1-10 to be informed about the different birth defects?	All picked a number between 6-10	All picked a number between 6-10
Please briefly answer the following question in the space provided below it. How would you feel if a doctor told you your child will be normal but was born abnormal?
One out of ________ babies are born with birth defects.	Correctly answered it: 4 out of 14	Correctly answered it: 1 out of 11
It can emotionally hurt a parent to know their child is born with a birth defect and the doctor did not know anything about it.	Strongly Agree: 5 out of 14 Agree: 9 out of 14 Disagree: 0 out of 14 Strongly Disagree: 0 out of 14	Strongly Agree: 2 out of 11 Agree: 9 out of 11

            Both females and males had mostly the same opinion on all of my survey questions.  Separating my data by gender did not make a difference in the survey. When it comes to children, some men are just as worried as much as the women. Some results I calculated are below.

·          “One out of  ___ babies is born with birth defects.” That was a multiple choice question that I had included into my survey. Thirty-five percent of boys had correctly answered this question. More than 1/2 thought ten was the correct answer. Nine percent of girls had the correct answer. More than 3/4 thought the answer was 10. The right answer was 33.

·         “Having a child with a birth defects affects both equally”, was what mostly of my respondents answered with. .   Thirty-five percent of males had answered saying the mother would be affected the most. Seven percent of males said the father. Seventy-two percent of females said that it would affect both equally. Twenty-seven percent of females said that it would just affect the mother.  None of the women had answered saying just the father is affected.

·         How important is it on a scale 1-10 to be informed about the different birth defects? When I looked at the results I notice that 100% of males and 100% of females answered with six through ten being one of their answers. This lets me know that people other than me find it important to be informed about birth defects that may occur.

Connecting back to my hypothesis I was correct. Looking at my surveys, it would hurt emotionally if a woman was wrongly told about her child. What I found interesting is that some of my respondents believed the father will be more affected than the mother. I found that interesting, because the mother is giving birth to the child and may have a stronger connection. Based on my data I can conclude that women should be told the truth about their unborn child.

            From here I want to do a little more research on exactly why doctors do not tell women about their child being abnormal. I also want to research more about the types of birth defects.  As I was handing out surveys, people were telling me that doctors have a reason not to tell a parent. The reason was because they do not want the women to abort the child that they are in prenatal care with. My question that I want to know is; when doctors do tell women about their child being abnormal how does it affect the women when the child is normal? Also why would you tell a person that a problem is occurring, when you are not 100% about it? As a result to my research and findings, I did change my research question.

Survey

Circle your gender

Male             Female

Do you know someone who has been born with any type of birth defect?

Yes              No

Do you know about the different types of birth defects a child can be born with?

Yes                 No

Every thirty seconds a child is born with a birth defect.

True             False

When having a child with a birth defect, who does it effect the most?

1. Mother
2. Father
3. Both equally
4. None

Please range the following in order of importance. Greatest to Least

Hernias  Down Syndrome  sexually transmitted diseases  Fetal Alcohol Syndrome 1.

2.

 3.

4.

It is important for a mother to know her child will be born with a type of defect?

1. Strongly Agree
2. Agree
3. Strongly Disagree
4. Disagree

How important is it on a scale 1-10 to be informed about the different birth defects?

1   2   3   4   5   6   7    8   9   10

Please briefly answer the following question in the space provided below it.

How would you feel if a doctor told you your child will be normal but was born abnormal?

One out of ______ babies are born with birth defects.

1. 10
2. 30
3. 33
4. 5

It can emotionally hurt parent to know their child is born with a defect and the doctor did not know anything about it.

A Strongly Agree

B. Agree

C. Strongly Disagree

D. Disagree

This is a graph showing the most common birth defects among children. These are the amount of children affected yearly by the different defects listed. My topic question is; which type of birth defect is mostly related with prenatal care? According to my graph above, more children are born with Congenital CMV disease. Every year over 5,000 babies are born with this disease.  

U.S Children Born With or Developing Long-Term Medical Conditions Each Year . N.d. Photograph. google

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