Obstetrician / Gynecology » Pregnancy Articles & Stories

When women get more sun during the last months of their pregnancies, their babies are likely to have stronger, healthier bones, a benefit that may last their whole lives, a recent study found. The study, conducted in Britain and reported in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, examined bone scans on almost 7,000 10-year-olds.
( Read more about Getting Sun During Pregnancy May Strengthen Baby's Bones)

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The researchers from Imperial College London hope to raise families' awareness of the importance of reducing levels of stress and anxiety in expectant mothers. They say that reducing stress during pregnancy could help prevent thousands of children from developing emotional and behavioral problems. ( Read more about A Mother's Stress Can Affect Child Development)

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An ingredient in human breast milk protects and repairs the delicate intestines of newborn babies, according to research conducted by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London. The ingredient called pancreatic secretory trypsin inhibitor, or PSTI, is found at its highest levels in colostrum - the milk produced in the first few days after birth. ( Read more about Ingredient in Breast Milk Helps Protect Babies' Intestines)

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Stress is not just an uncomfortable feeling of nervousness and tension. It’s a treacherous force that actually remolds the brain at the same time as it warps behavior, according to a bevy of neuroscientists at a recent conference in Washington, D.C.
   
“Stress causes [brain] neurons to shrink or grow [abnormally],” said Bruce McEwen, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University, in New York. “The wear and tear on the body from lots of stress changes the nervous system.”
   
Stress is “particularly worrying in the developing brain, which appears to be programmed by early stressful experience,” he said.

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Females who give birth before age 23 are considerably more likely to experience clinical depression during pregnancy than older mothers, a recent study shows.

In addition, the British researchers report, younger mothers' children more commonly suffer from emotional problems and have a below-average IQ.

These psychological deficits were found to be more likely in cases in which mothers were depressed or smoked during their pregnancies, and in which they failed to breast-feed following childbirth. ( Read more about Young Mothers Suffer More Depression)

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Women who underwent dramatic weight loss after bariatric surgery had fewer pregnancy and delivery problems and fewer newborn complications than obese pregnant mothers, according to a recent study. The investigation, which analyzed the data from 75 clinical studies, discovered that pregnant women who had undergone weight-loss surgery (laparoscopic adjustable band surgery) experienced fewer complications than obese women. In particular, 0 percent of weight-loss women suffered from gestational diabetes, versus 22.1 percent of obese women, and 0 percent of weight-loss women had pre-eclampsia (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure), versus 3.1 percent of obese women. Also, women with bariatric surgery had less weight gain than the others.

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When a woman is pregnant or breastfeeding, her hormonal balance shifts dramatically. This causes her body to retain more fluid. And when this happens, her eyes' lenses swell, too, making a correct diagnosis to fix her vision problems with LASIK surgery all but impossible. When the lens swells, it changes how a woman sees, making her more nearsighted, farsighted or astigmatic. But when her pregnancy is over, and when she stops lactating, her hormones - and her eyes' lenses - return to normal. If a LASIK diagnosis is performed on a woman during the period when her lenses are distorted, the readings will be invalid for her normal bodily state.

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Here is one area in which weight may not have a negative effect on a health activity - sex!. In a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology research showed that overweight women are having more sex than their thinner sisters.

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Despite the long-standing recommendation for pregnant women to receive a flu shot, three-quarters of women responding to a national survey were unaware or unsure of these recommendations. Additionally, only 20 percent of women who are currently pregnant plan to get a flu shot this flu season. The survey, conducted on behalf of the National Women's Health Resource Center, also revealed that some women even question whether the flu shot itself can pose a health risk to the baby.

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Clinical results from Down Under suggest that recent advances in in-vitro fertilization (IVF) can double the chances of having a baby for women in their early 40s. And the success rate for this group is increasing faster than any other's. The successes resulted from improved media for culturing embryos and a better technique for selecting those with the best chances for developing in a healthy manner, said Peter Illingworth, president of the Fertility Society of Australia. The new procedure involved transferring embryos into recipient women at the blastocyst stage (five or six days after fertilization), rather than at the cleavage stage (two to three days after). This allowed doctors to better assess which embryos had the best survival chances.

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