Blogs 12 Long Island: Are you smiling?

By Elizabeth Hashagen

I now know the joy of feeling my baby kick.

Actually I've begun to think I may have a soccer star in my stomach.

But when the baby starts going -- it's such a miracle-- it's just amazing!

I've felt other pregnant women's bellies but when it's your baby and you can feel all the pops and jabs there's nothing like it in the world! It's actually hard to put the joy and excitement into words and I thought I " got it"-- but now that I feel it-- I realize it's even better than I imagined.

But a new study says it will be the baby's smile that will really melt my heart!

Scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine say seeing your own child smile actually activates the pleasure receptors in the brain typically associated with food, sex - and drug addiction.

Talk about a natural high!!

The team used scans of moms' brain reactions to pictures of her own 5-month to 10-month-old babies and those of others in three emotional states: happy, neutral and sad.

As expected, the sight of their own happy babies sent blood rushing to the moms' brain regions associated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in addiction.

And I have to say with the recent baby boom in my life-- I agree!

The babies make me feel great-- they're like a drug-- they're intoxicating.

Look at this shot of my friend's daughter - Sophia-- here on the right-- when she looked at me with that smile I instantly felt like a million bucks!

We watched the girls on a Friday night-- and it was a blast-- just the littlest things they would do were amazing to us-- and any little glimmer that they liked what we did and we were over the moon.

My best friend had a baby girl and just having the newborn open her eyes --

I felt like she'd given me a present!!

She's here on the left with me-- and check out the smile on my best friend's face-- talk about one happy mom!!

And if 3 babies are fun then 5 is a party-- yep-- more bundles of joy just arrived!

My sister gave birth to twins-- a boy and a girl and they are addictive!

I'm holding them both here in the shot on the right-- and this is me with Sarah in the hospital on the left--

I keep finding reasons to stop by just so I can hold them for a few minutes and if researchers could take a look at my brain I think they'd watch all the stress and pressure that gets bottled up melt away.

Maybe this study explains why so many parents have their babies smiling faces as screen savers at work.

Just seeing that smile must make the day more bearable.

Get this: other studies have shown that using cocaine( it activates the dopamine reward systems) might interfere with the brain perks prompted by smiling babies.

So that could, in part, explain high rates of child abuse among cocaine-addicted mothers.