pregnancy: سبتمبر 2015

الثلاثاء، 29 سبتمبر 2015

I didn't get the prenatal tests for Down's syndrome. Here's why | Rachel Nolan

I have shocked shopkeepers, family and friends by openly declaring I would not abort if my baby was diagnosed with Down’s. I’m shocked by their shock

I am four months pregnant and, while I don’t feel remotely maternal yet, this will be a precious and much loved child. I have reached the point at which it will soon be possible to know the gender and so, wherever I go, people ask: “Will you find out if it’s a girl or a boy?”

Last week a friendly young sales assistant asked me just that as I trawled clothing racks looking for elastic waisted pants. I said “no” and added that I had not had the test for Down’s syndrome either because if I had found that my child was at risk, I would not have wanted to abort. “That’s the real question,” I said, “the one that people really should ask about.”

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Melbourne teenager who killed her newborn baby avoids jail sentence

Judge says girl suffered a rare mental disorder at the time of the birth and that ‘the loss of a child is a sentence in and of itself’

A Melbourne teenager who went into shock when she realised she was giving birth, then killed her baby and hid the body under a tree, has avoided jail.

The 19-year-old was sentenced to a one-year community corrections order in the Victorian supreme court on Wednesday after pleading guilty to infanticide.

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10 women receive go-ahead for first ever womb transplants in UK

Following procedure’s success in Sweden, ethical approval has been given for 10 transplants as part of local clinical trial

10 British women without wombs will get the chance to carry their own babies after doctors received the go-ahead for the first ever womb transplants in the UK.

Dr Richard Smith will lead the team hoping to perform the UK’s first ever womb transplant following the success of the procedure in Sweden.

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الاثنين، 28 سبتمبر 2015

Study: Pregnant women with cancer can be treated without harming fetus

Chemotherapy and other treatments did not adversely affect the health of their baby when compared with those born to mothers without cancer

Pregnant women who discover they have cancer should not delay treatment until after the birth or induce the baby very early, as they can be successfully treated without harming the fetus, a new study by cancer experts published on Monday has found.

Chemotherapy and other treatments for the mother-to-be did not adversely affect the health of their baby when compared with those born to mothers who did not suffer cancer, the researchers concluded.

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الخميس، 24 سبتمبر 2015

'I had eight miscarriages - pregnancy can be a scary place'

With a BMJ report advising doctors to wait longer before they diagnose a miscarriage, one woman describes the ‘grim routine’ of pregnancy tests

Pregnancy tests make us think pregnancy is like an on-off switch: two lines and you’re having a baby, one line and you’re not. But pregnancy can be a much scarier place, an uncertain grey area between conception and implantation when a tiny bundle of cells must try to settle in the womb and may not succeed.

I had my first child at 29; three years later, when we decided to try again, it all got much more complicated. Over the space of the next three years I had eight early miscarriages, all before nine weeks. The first couple I wrote off as normal – and early miscarriage is completely normal. But soon, becoming pregnant signalled the start of a grim routine.

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الأربعاء، 23 سبتمبر 2015

Doctors advised to wait longer before diagnosing miscarriages

Experts say hospital guidelines need to be updated so women always get second ultrasound scan two weeks after first if gestational sac is small

Doctors are being advised to wait longer before they diagnose a miscarriage in order to avoid the risk of ending a pregnancy that might have been viable.

Experts who have carried out a large study say the guidelines for hospitals on diagnosing a miscarriage need to be updated, so that women always get a second ultrasound scan two weeks after the first if the gestational sac seen in the scan is small. It is not always possible to be sure that a very small embryo with no detectable heartbeat is going to miscarry, they say.

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Gay women get a rough deal when it comes to fertility treatment | Shelley Silas

My wife and I would have loved children but the odds always seemed stacked against us. And now it is too late

In just over a month I’m having surgery to remove a large fibroid (the size of the head of a foetus at four months, I’m told) and I’ll probably have a hysterectomy as well. Ah, the joys of growing older. The only aspect of any of this that worries me is not being able to drive or exercise for several weeks, the latter being much more difficult to resist.

When we mentioned children to the oncologist, we were met with a look of surprise

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السبت، 19 سبتمبر 2015

Staying fit while pregnant: 'we’re allowed to be flawed'

Remaining healthy and physically fit during pregnancy can be challenging, especially for mothers juggling other commitments. Amy Westervelt shares her tips

Both of my pregnancies happened right around the time my latest health kick had really gotten into gear. There’s probably some correlation there, but at both times, I have to admit it was a little bit of a blow to transition from “All right, I fit into those jeans!” to “OK, my body’s gonna be a mess for the next two years.”

I know it sounds superficial, but I’m of the belief that it is completely possible to care about your own health – yes, including how your body looks – and that of your child’s at the same time. Also, I think we all need to stop pretending that pregnancy and childbirth don’t wreak havoc on your body. More on that later.

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الأربعاء، 16 سبتمبر 2015

Forgive me if I overshare on social media. I'm just trying to help | Isabelle Oderberg

When I wrote about my miscarriage on Facebook, I was sure some of my friends classed it as oversharing. But it’s not the same as posting snaps of my meals

I’m an avid Facebooker. I usually post happy snaps, political musings, lolcats and gratuitous food porn. So it probably came as a shock to my friends when I used the platform to announce my miscarriage.

I had really clear motivations for the post: I wanted to be honest and open about my experience, so other friends who had been through the trauma of miscarriage could talk to me about it, both for their benefit and my own. And given one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage I wanted my friends to know they’d have someone to talk to if, in future, they had the same experience.

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الأربعاء، 9 سبتمبر 2015

Stress leads 90% of mothers to resume smoking after pregnancy, study finds

Peer pressure, physiological changes and regaining a sense of identity among other factors driving mass relapse among those who quit while pregnant

Sleepless nights and the stress of caring for a newborn are driving mothers who stopped smoking in pregnancy to light up again, despite the potential damage to their baby.

New research shows that the strains of motherhood are leading up to 90% of women who had quit to resume smoking, especially those from poorer backgrounds.

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الأربعاء، 2 سبتمبر 2015

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer pregnant with twin girls

Internet company’s share price dips after announcement that chief executive to take two weeks’ maternity leave in December to give birth

Yahoo shares have slipped after the company’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, announced she is to take two weeks’ maternity leave to give birth to identical twin girls.

In a post on her Tumblr blog, the 40 year old, who already has one child, said the twins were due in December.

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الثلاثاء، 1 سبتمبر 2015

Premature babies 'more likely to end up in lower-paid jobs'

Study of 15,000 British adults finds people born preterm are more likely to suffer financial as well as health consequences

Premature babies are more likely to be less intelligent, do worse at school and end up in lower-paid jobs than those born at full term, new research shows.

An analysis of the circumstances of more than 15,000 British adults also found that those born prematurely are much more likely to become unemployed, be less wealthy and not own a house.

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Another reason I won't have kids: fetal cells stay in your body long after birth | Lilit Marcus

Every month brings a new study about how pregnancy, labor, breastfeeding or parenting affects a woman’s health, and often for the worse

Growing up, the books I read were littered with dead mothers: Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, any number of fairy tales. Before I was old enough to even figure out how women got pregnant in the first place, I knew that the process of becoming a mother was incredibly dangerous. And before I knew that the term “childfree” existed, I knew that’s what I was – someone with absolutely zero desire to have kids.

Thanks to developments in medicine and hygiene, it’s safer than ever to be pregnant and give birth in the developed world. But that still doesn’t mean bringing new life into the world comes without risks. A new study from Arizona State University reports that when fetal cells are introduced into an expectant mother’s body, the results can be helpful, but they can also cause harm.

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