Bringing a child into the world comes with many challenges, including major health considerations. Learn about fertility methods and how pregnant women should take care of themselves.
Your period comes at the same time every month ... except when it doesn't. Suddenly, without warning, you're early or late, or your flow is heavy, light, or nonexistent (and you know you're not pregnant!). You and millions of women understandably wonder, Is this normal or is something terribly wrong?
Expecting moms can determine whether they're carrying a boy or a girl as early as 10 weeks after conception, according to makers of an over-the-counter gender prediction test.
Diana Adam, 35, and her husband wanted to have a second child this year. The timing just seemed right. She had a job as a software engineer at a big market research company near San Francisco, California, and it had good benefits -- including paid maternity leave. He was looking for a faculty position after finishing his Ph.D. in sociology but had a steady job as a lecturer at a state university. Their first child, a boy, was three.
A couple of months into our relationship, my future wife mentioned that her doctor once predicted a slight possibility that she might not be able to have children.
Twins? Triplets? Octuplets? Sounds like a lot of stress to handle more than one baby at once.
Doctors don't have to tell 18-year-old "Rose" (who doesn't want to reveal her real name) the importance of using a condom every time she has sex.
The average cost of medical care for a premature or low birth-weight baby for its first year of life is about $49,000, according to a new report from the March of Dimes Foundation.
Dr. Jane Miller remembers the first -- and the last -- time she implanted four embryos into a patient getting in-vitro fertilization.
As more details of the mother who gave birth to octuplets come to light, ethicists are debating the moral quandaries involved.
Children who are born more than three months premature have double the expected rate of autism at age two as full-term children, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Pediatrics.
After the birth of octuplets this week, some doctors are questioning the ethics and medical practice that contribute to extreme multiple births.
"Sometimes you can forget about the preciousness of life," hospital spokesman Allen Poston thumbed onto his Blackberry after peering into an operating room where a team of 15 doctors and medical staff separated conjoined twins in six hours in surgery.
When mothers-to-be and their doctors schedule repeat elective Caesarean sections before the 39th week of pregnancy, the baby is up to twice as likely to experience serious respiratory problems and other complications, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
A treasure map to a baby?
In early October, Starla Darling was just days away from giving birth to her second child. The 27-year-old mother from Polk, Ohio, had a well-paying job with good health insurance at the Archway Cookie plant in nearby Ashland.
Some research suggests that the risk of leg and lung blood clots may be higher for women who use the birth-control patch instead of the pill. The Food and Drug Administration said it updated the label on the Ortho Evra birth-control patch in January 2008 to reflect the results of one study that found women using the patch faced twice the risk of clots, compared with women on the pill. But a second study found no difference in risk between the two forms of birth control.
A CDC data analysis from 2000-2004 shows nearly three-quarters of new mothers are breastfeeding their babies. But federal officials say they're quitting too soon, and using infant formula too often. The survey shows that less than a third of new moms are feeding their babies exclusively breast milk at three months after birth. At six months, just 11 percent are feeding only breast milk. Infant formula doesn't do the same job of protecting babies against diseases or childhood obesity.
Research suggests that women who take folic acid supplements for at least one year before they become pregnant can cut their risk of having a premature baby by half. Researchers at the January 2008 meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine unveiled a study that suggests taking folic acid supplements for at least one year reduced early premature delivery rates by 50 percent to 70 percent, regardless of age, race or other factors. Of particular note is the drop in very early premature births. Those babies are at the greatest risk of complications such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease and blindness.
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that infants born as a result of assisted reproductive technology, or ART -- such as in vitro fertilization and the use of donor eggs -- are two to four times more likely to be born with certain types of birth defects than infants conceived naturally. But, the study's lead author says, the overall risk is still relatively low.
Depressed moms-to-be are more likely than nondepressed women to have a preterm birth, and the worse their mood, the greater their risk, says a new study published in Human Reproduction. In fact, women in the study who were severely depressed during early pregnancy more than doubled their risk of giving birth to premature babies.
Rob Sandler comforted his infant son as he lifted him out of the crib, cooing in his ear while he walked to the living room.
Rob Sandler comforted his infant son as he lifted him out of the crib, cooing in his ear while he walked to the living room.
ASK AN EXPERT
Video
