Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml

Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml

Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml

Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml

One more worry in the country’s obesity crisis: a new documentary highlights the perils of extra pounds during pregnancy.

The TLC special, “Obese & Expecting,” follows four obese women through complicated pregnancies and painful deliveries that put mom and baby at risk.

“We know that obesity during pregnancy increases the risk of diabetes and preeclampsia,” said Dr. Marjorie Greenfield, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. “And when the mom is big, the baby can be big, raising the risk of birth injury and C-section.”

A scene from the documentary shows doctors struggling to give one woman an epidural through the fat in her back.

“We spent 45 minutes attempting to put the spinal in,” said Dr. Charles Hux, a New Jersey OB/GYN featured in the documentary. “With so many layers of fat, it’s difficult to be certain that the needle went into the exact space it should go in.”

After several tries, the team gave up, deciding instead to give the woman a general anesthetic and a C-section.

“Going to sleep carries significant risks, even for a slim pregnant woman,” said Greenfield, calling the decision a last resort. “And the risk goes up significantly in a woman who’s overweight.”

Studies suggest nearly half of U.S. women who are of child-bearing age are obese, a problem that weighs heavily on doctors.

“It’s harder to provide excellent care to someone who’s obese because a lot of things we do are not as accurate,” said Greenfield, explaining how ultrasounds and other tests to gauge the baby’s growth can be skewed by the mother’s fat. “It’s also harder to feel the position of the baby.”

That fat, and the fact that obesity can cause irregular periods, also means women might not realize they’re pregnant.

Follow this link:
'Obese & Expecting' Highlights Health Risks

By: Jason Kane

Editor’s Note: As the nation marks National Women’s Health Week, PBS NewsHour will share the stories of three women — and their doctors — who refused to allow a cancer diagnosis interfere with a successful pregnancy. These are their stories of hope, perseverance and, ultimately, success.

No sushi. No caffeine. No alcohol. No Ibuprofen.

Minnie Narth could recite everything she’d heard she wasn’t supposed to have while pregnant.

But as she entered her third trimester, her body was in desperate need of something she would never have predicted: chemotherapy.

Narth had just learned she had cancer. Stage-4 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, to be precise, and her doctors informed her that thousands of women carry their children to term each year while receiving intensive chemotherapy treatment.

As many as one in 1,000 women are being diagnosed with malignant cancer during pregnancy each year, according to Dr. Natali Aziz at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. One in 6,000 develop lymphoma alone.

Those numbers are on the rise as women continue having children later in life. But so too are the treatment options.

When Aziz broke the cancer news to Narth and her husband Paul, she advised them — with a high level of confidence — that continuing the pregnancy would be possible.

“Just 10 to 20 years ago, that would have been much more difficult,” Aziz said. “And though it’s more common these days, the end result is always amazing amidst a very frightening diagnosis. Minnie was able to celebrate one of the most amazing joys of her life — the birth of her son.”

Go here to see the original:
Chemotherapy During Pregnancy: Yes, It's Possible

Read this article:
Teacher fired over pregnancy can sue religious school

Continued here:
Jane Lynch Talks Glee Pregnancy: 'I Would Rather Not Give Birth' On TV

Amid the lunchroom hubbub at South High School in Minneapolis, a group of students wearing matching black sweatshirts strikes up a conversation about teen pregnancy with a group of eight boys.

Eleventh-grader Jasmine Powell asks the teens have thought about how to prevent a pregnancy.

Itd be important to use birth control, right? And to know how to use your birth control? she says, generating some nervous giggles and a few blank stares.

The group, called Sexually Responsible And Mature Teens, is one of many projects across the state, including in Mankato, that are engaging teens in pregnancy prevention efforts.

Experts say those efforts are paying off, as the birth rate among Minnesota teenagers has plunged nearly 40 percent in the past two decades.

Some of the more obvious possible explanations for the trend, which is also happening nationally, dont fully explain whats happening, said Mary Jo Chippendale, who follows birth rate statistics for the Minnesota Department of Health.

In the sex education classes teens take in Minnesota schools, abstinence has been touted as the only 100 percent effective way to avoid pregnancy. But survey statistics dont give abstinence the credit.

We havent really seen a huge change in sexual activity, said Chippendale, the infant, adolescent and womens health supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Health.

The Department of Educations Minnesota Student Survey shows the percentage of teens who have had sex dropped about 10 percentage points from the early 1990s to 2001.

But the numbers have remained steady or even increased slightly in the last 10 years while the birth rate continued to drop. In 2010, about 20 percent of ninth-graders and half of 12th-graders said they had sexual intercourse.

Follow this link:
Pregnancy prevention efforts appear to be paying off

Worldwide, maternal mortality has been cut in half in the past 20 years, says a new UN-World Bank report. India and Nigeria accounted for about one-third of the 287,000 deaths in 2010 attributed to problems during pregnancy or childbirth.

Maternal mortality across the globe has been cut nearly in half over the past two decades thats the good news.

But before anyone cries victory, heres the sobering reality: Every two minutes somewhere on Earth, a woman still dies due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth.

That glass-half-full-or-half-empty picture emerges from a new report issued Wednesday by the United Nations and the World Bank. The report finds that 287,000 women died in pregnancy in 2010 a staggering number that still comes off as progress when compared with the 543,000 women who died in pregnancy in 1990.

The analysis of maternal health over the past two decades found the most progress in East Asia, with India and sub-Saharan Africa pulling up the rear.

The United States failed to rank in the top third of countries with the lowest rates of maternal mortality and actually slid farther behind other developed countries, ranking closer to Russia and countries of Central America, South America, and North Africa. The US counted 880 maternal deaths in 2010, which on a per capita basis was higher than in 1990.

In unveiling the report, Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990-2010, UN officials in New York said the frustrating aspect of the lower-but-still-too-high mortality figures is that the road to considerably fewer deaths is not a mystery.

We know exactly what to do to prevent maternal deaths: improve access to voluntary family planning, invest in health workers with midwifery skills, and ensure access to emergency obstetric care when complications arise, said Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UN Population Fund.

Stating that 215 million women lack access to modern contraceptives, Dr. Osotimehin said meeting that need could reduce the number of maternal deaths by one-third. This is a highly cost-effective public-health strategy, he said.

Experts in womens health and maternal care have long said that improved access to family planning information and methods is a key factor in lowering maternal mortality. But the ideological and religious overtones of family planning have repeatedly turned the issue of how to address maternal mortality into a political issue. Some members of the US Congress who suspect family planning funding of ending up in clinics providing abortion services regularly press for cutting US funding of family planning programs.

View post:
Half as many women die during pregnancy, childbirth as in 1990

Efforts to engage Minnesota teenagers in pregnancy prevention may be paying off.

At Minneapolis South High School, Jasmine Powell led a group of students wearing matching black sweatshirts who struck up a conversation about teen pregnancy with a group of eight boys amid the hubbub of the lunchroom. They’re from a project called Sexually Responsible And Mature Teens, or SMART. The 11th-grader confidently asked whether the teens had thought about how to prevent a pregnancy.

“It’d be important to use birth control, right? And to know how to use your birth control?” she said, generating some nervous giggles, as well as a few blank stares.

SMART is one of several projects across the state engaging teens to bring pregnancy rates down. Experts say those efforts are working, as the birth rate among Minnesota teenagers has plunged nearly 40 percent in the past two decades.

Mary Jo Chippendale, who follows birth rates for the state Health Department, told Minnesota Public Radio that some of the more obvious potential explanations don’t fully explain what’s happening.

While sex education classes in Minnesota tout abstinence as the only 100 percent effective way to avoid pregnancy, Chippendale said, there hasn’t been a big change in sexual activity over the past 10 years. Survey data show the percentage of teens who had had sex dropped about 10 percentage points from the early 1990s to 2001, but held steady or increased slightly over the last 10 years while the birth

And the abortion rate among Minnesota teens ages 15 to 19 has declined at a similar pace as the birth rate. So Chippendale said something else must be happening.

“It’s probably more likely that they’ve increased contraception use,” she said.

Brian Russ, executive director of the Annex Teen Clinic in Robbinsdale, said better information about contraception, and smarter use of it, are probably factors. But he said engaging teens in conversations about pregnancy that include their attitudes and feelings about the future also can have a big impact.

“Absolutely, young people need access to preventive health care services, contraceptives and education, but they also need a reason to delay pregnancy. They need a sense that, ‘You know what? I’m not ready,’ ” Russ said.

See original here:
Minnesota sees strides in preventing teen pregnancy

Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml

Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml

Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml

Kirk Jones, director of the romantic comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting (in theatres Friday), admits it “seems odd, making a pregnancy manual into a movie. But what I realized is that all the things we look for in movies are encountered in pregnancy,” the British-born director of Nanny McPhee says.

“My three pregnancies with my wife were some of the funniest, scariest, most dramatic moments in my whole life. So I started taking it seriously.”

On the other hand, the press conference with the best-selling-book-turned-movie’s female stars — including Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks and Anna Kendrick — was a rather less serious affair, with outrageously explicit pregnancy tales and laughter.

The plot has Lopez (the only one who has given birth in real life) trying to adopt with her husband (Rodrigo Santoro), a TV fitness expert (Diaz) trying to soldier through pregnancy with her dancer-mate (Glee’s Matthew Morrison), and a baby expert (Banks) discovering, with the support of her husband (Ben Falcone), that she doesn’t know much. Kendrick, meanwhile, plays a young woman dealing with an unplanned pregnancy after a one-night-stand (with Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford).

Also present, What to Expect author Heidi Murkoff.

Let’s start with an awkward moment, when Banks was asked if her real-life pregnancy was as difficult as in the movie.

Turns out, The Hunger Games actress and husband Max Handelman had their now 14-month-old son Felix via a surrogate.

BANKS: “I didn’t carry my own baby, thank you for bringing that up. My son came out of me nine months early, and I made a baby cake and then I baked it in an angel’s oven.”

LOPEZ (on adoption): “It’s funny, before the movie, I never thought of adoption. I always just wanted my own baby. But during the making of the film, when I held those two little Ethiopian twins, I just fell in love instantly and it really occurred to me how someone can do this. It’s really a beautiful, selfless act of love.”

BANKS (on witnessing the birth of her baby): “I think there’s a reason your eyes point this way (straight ahead) and you cannot see what’s happening down there. I am horrified by what I saw.”

Continued here:
'Expecting' shows pregnancy drama

LOUISVILLE, Ky., May 13, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ollis Chiropractic in Louisville, KY announced that the practice provides chiropractic care for the entire family, including pregnancy care and pediatric care. Louisville chiropractor Dr. Jason Ollis uses gentle adjustments to restore alignment to the spine. According to Dr. Ollis, these adjustments correct blockages in nerve flow between the brain and the body. This may help with a range of childhood ailments, including bedwetting, acute earaches, and ADHD. Dr. Ollis also provides gentle adjustments to help pregnant women manage pregnancy back pain and prepare for a natural birth.

Louisville chiropractor Dr. Jason Ollis is encouraging parents to consider alternative treatments for addressing common childhood health concerns, including ADHD and bedwetting. Dr. Ollis recommends pediatric chiropractic care, which uses gentle spinal adjustments to help restore proper alignment to the spine.

“Many people recognize the benefits that chiropractic care offers, including natural pain management, back pain relief and injury rehabilitation,” said Dr. Ollis. “What many people don’t realize, however, is that chiropractic care can help children manage many common pediatric problems such as bedwetting or ear infections.”

“A spinal readjustment helps to remove any blockages in the nerves,” said Dr. Ollis. “In the case of bed wetting, for example, a blockage may be preventing the bladder from properly signaling the brain that it is full. A readjustment ‘resets’ the nerves that control the bladder, which ensures that children receive the “full bladder” signal before an accident occurs.”

Dr. Ollis also provides chiropractic adjustments to help pediatric patients who have been diagnosed with ADHD. “Adjustments are a safe alternative to prescription drugs. I have had great success adjusting ADHD patients, and strongly support these natural treatments. Pediatric care can make a significant difference for children with ADHD,” said Dr. Ollis.

Ollis Chiropractic also provides pregnancy care for expectant mothers. His treatments are a drug-free alternative to traditional pregnancy back pain management.

“As a baby grows and develops, the nervous system is one of the first parts to take shape,” said Dr. Ollis. “Our goal is always to provide gentle, natural care for both mother and baby. We use precise adjustment techniques to help prepare the spine and pelvis for childbirth. This helps expectant mothers have a more enjoyable, healthier pregnancy.”

In addition to pediatric and pregnancy care, Ollis Chiropractic provides comprehensive wellness services to complement adjustments. These services include physiotherapy and nutritional counseling.

Ollis Chiropractic has two locations: Mellwood Arts Center on Mellwood Avenue and East End on Brownsboro Road serving downtown Louisville. These locations serve the Glen Oaks and Norton Commons neighborhoods, as well as the cities of Crestwood and Prospect.

Read more:
Chiropractor Provides Pediatric Care and Pregnancy Pain Management

View post:
Ugandan Students Win Award For Pregnancy Scan Machine

View original post here:
Ugandan Students Invent Pregnancy Scan Machine

Source:
http://www.ivillage.com/rss/0,,643958,00.xml