Archive for the ‘Pregnancy’ Category
fter recently making it through her own pregnancy, Registered Dietitian Michelle Dudash became convinced that for every pregnant woman, a new mom’s tale is born.
It’s no wonder that there are more Old Wive’s Tales regarding pregnancy than anything else. Along with “carry low it’s a boy” and “castor oil can induce contractions,” most of her friends’ new found nutrition knowledge is, well, just myth.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1047180/the_lie_of_the_edd_why_your_due_date.html?cat=25
We have it ingrained in our heads throughout our entire adult lives-pregnancy is 40 weeks. The “due date” we are given at that first prenatal visit is based upon that 40 weeks, and we look forward to it with great anticipation. When we are still pregnant after that magical date, we call
ourselves “overdue” and the days seem to drag on like years. The problem with this belief about the 40 week EDD is that it is not based in fact. It is one of many pregnancy and childbirth myths which has wormed its way into the standard of practice over the years-something that is still believed because “that’s the way it’s always been done”.
Pregnant women who stop smoking before the 15th week have rates of preterm birth and small-for-dates babies comparable to those of non-smoking women, new research indicates.
The findings show that these severe adverse effects of smoking may be reversible if smoking is stopped early in pregnancy, Dr. Lesley M. E. McCowan, from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues comment in the British Medical Journal.
The results come from an analysis of data for 2500 women who were having their first baby. At 15 weeks’ gestation, the women were classified as non-smokers, stopped smokers, or current smokers.
Overall, 80 percent of the women were non-smokers, 10 percent were stopped smokers, and 10 percent were current smokers, according to the report.
http://www.euronews24.org/health/smokers-who-quit-early-in-pregnancy-aid-baby/
The movement for Family Centered Maternity Care is several decades old. Interested readers may want to consult Celeste R. Phillips‘ book Family-Centered Maternity Care some of which can be read on Google Books. Phillips, a pioneer in the field, defines FCMC as “a way of providing care for women and their families that integrates pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and infant care into the continuum of the family life cycle as normal, healthy life events.” She developed the following 10 principles for FCMC…
http://www.socialmedicine.org/2009/01/19/alternative-health-care/family-centered-maternity-care/
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The Pregnant New Yorker
The Pregnant New Yorker provides alternative, fun health events in Manhattan and Brooklyn. We bring the best guest speakers together to teach the pregnant community something they may not have known about before. We are not here to judge but only to inform. The events provide an opportunity to learn something new about different services and products and a chance to meet other pregnant women. We also have started events for new moms and starting next year will provide events to those trying to get pregnant.
The Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy advocates statewide and mobilizes communities to prevent teen pregnancy, to increase opportunities for youth and young parents and to empower young people to make healthy decisions about relationships, sex, parenting and life.
If there ever was a love/hate relationship for the record books, it’s the relationship between a pregnant woman and food. On one hand, it’s a time when food cravings go on overdrive, and the body shouts “More, more, more!” On the other hand, certain foods can trigger discomforts such as nausea, causing a “Less, less, less!” reaction. Here are some common myth busters about pregnancy and nutrition.
http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2008/12/09/food/7709.txt
Despite the well-known dangers of first- and secondhand smoke, an estimated ten percent of pregnant women in the U.S. are smokers. Exposure of a developing baby to harmful cigarette byproducts from mothers who smoke affects an estimated 420,000 newborns each year and poses a significant health care burden.
Now, in the first study of its kind, a team of researchers has completed a global assessment of newborns’ umbilical cord blood to better understand the fetal health risks from smoking mothers. The research was led by Johns Hopkins University and included Rolf Halden, a researcher from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081203184409.htm
In the Netherlands we treat pregnancy and birth as natural events. A pregnant woman will be looked after a by first line midwife as long as that is possible. In the event of complications a woman will be immediately referred to a hospital-based gynaecologist to provide special care. The Dutch midwifery system differs dramatically from those in other western countries, where pregnancy and birth are viewed more in terms of complications for mother and baby. Pregnant women in those countries are cared for by gynaecologists and midwives almost always work in hospitals under the supervision of a gynaecologist.
http://www.parentinginholland.com/pregnancy-and-birth/midwives.php
Performing water aerobics during pregnancy may ease the pain of delivery, a small, randomized trial found. Women who participated in the moderate-intensity exercise program were significantly less likely to request painkillers during labor than those who didn’t exercise (27.3% versus 64.9%, P=0.004), Rosa Pereira, M.D., of the University of Campinas, and colleagues reported online in Reproductive Health.
There were no significant differences between the groups in cardiovascular capacity, type or duration of delivery, or neonatal outcomes.
“We’ve shown that the regular practice of moderate water aerobics during pregnancy is not detrimental to the health of the mother or the child,” Dr. Pereira said. “In fact, the reduction in analgesia requests suggests that it can get women into better psycho-physical condition.”
Mothers or fathers who smoke during pregnancy may create lasting vascular damage for their children, researchers here found. At about age 28, individuals whose mothers smoked during pregnancy had a carotid artery intima-media thickness 13.4 µm greater than those whose mothers did not smoke (P=0.001), found Cuno Uiterwaal, M.D., Ph.D., of the University Medical Center Utrecht, and colleagues.
Those whose fathers smoked had a carotid artery intima-media thickness 12.4 µm greater (P=0.002), the researchers reported online in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The increased thickness was greatest in participants’ whose parents both smoked during pregnancy (P=0.001).
Dr Anthony Mbonye is among the 105 individual scientists worldwide who have won grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve global health.
The assistant commissioner in charge of reproductive health in the Ministry of Health and an associate professor of public health at Uganda Christian University, Dr Mbonye will be researching on involving the Private Sector in the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Uganda. He talked to Kakaire A. Kirunda on his upcoming three-year-study and PMTCT in general.
Women who have had a miscarriage could be at greater risk of miscarrying again if they are obese, research suggests. A team from London’s St Mary’s Hospital followed the progress of 696 women whose miscarriages were classed as “unexplained” by a specialist clinic. The team told a conference in Canada the risk of a further miscarriage was raised by 73% if the woman was obese. However, an obesity specialist said it was potentially dangerous to try to lose weight when already pregnant.
Eating a high-fat diet in pregnancy may cause changes in the foetal brain that lead to over-eating and obesity early in life, research suggests. Tests on rats showed those born to mothers fed a high-fat diet had many more brain cells specialised to produce appetite-stimulating proteins. The Rockefeller University team say the finding may help explain why obesity rates have soared in recent years.
Researchers studying a critical stage of pregnancy – implantation of the embryo in the uterus – have found a protein that is vital to the growth of new blood vessels that sustain the embryo. Without this protein, which is produced in higher quantities in the presence of estrogen, the embryo is unlikely to survive. This is the first study to detail the mechanism by which the steroid hormone estrogen spurs cell differentiation and blood-vessel growth in the uterus during pregnancy, the researchers report.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080910111109.htm
Music therapy can reduce psychological stress among pregnant women, according to research just published in a special complementary and alternative therapy medicine issue of the UK-based Journal of Clinical Nursing. Researchers from the College of Nursing at Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan, randomly assigned 116 pregnant women to a music group and 120 to a control group. “The music group showed significant reductions in stress, anxiety and depression after just two weeks, using three established measurement scales” says Professor Chung-Hey Chen, who is now based at the National Cheng Kung University.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081006093020.htm
Teams from the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) are struggling to provide free, quality emergency care to pregnant women and their babies in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Over the last month, hundreds of women have desperately sought emergency obstetric care at Jude-Anne hospital in Port-au-Prince. In October, hospital staff assisted a record high of 56 women giving birth in one day and received 160 women waiting for hospitalization. The hospital has been so overwhelmed by demand that mothers have given birth in the hospital’s waiting room, the staircases, and in the washrooms, essentially anywhere they could find space. For this 60-bed emergency hospital (including five delivery beds), with an average rate of 35 births per day, this is an untenable situation.
Pregnant teenagers are taking up smoking in the hope of having smaller babies so that childbirth is less painful, a Government minister warned. Labour’s public health minister Caroline Flint made the extraordinary claim after discussions with health professionals and young mothers. Miss Flint warned women that the practice was futile because the commonly-held idea that giving birth to a large baby is more painful is a myth.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-408367/Pregnant-teens-smoking-avoid-pain-childbirth.html
Pregnant women who consume caffeine — even about a cup of coffee daily — are at higher risk of giving birth to an underweight baby, researchers said on Monday. The new findings published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) also linked any source of caffeine, including that from tea, cola, chocolate and some prescription drugs, to relatively slower fetal growth.