Strollerderby : womb

You Are What Your Mother Didn't Eat

JeanneSager — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:34:00 GMT

My mother always told me I was made of spinach - because that's what she ate during her pregnancy. Constantly. To the point where my father threatened not to come home for dinner again, lest he be presented with yet another plate of green stuff coated in cream sauce or sauted in olive oil.

It turns out, I'm only partially right. A new study says the genes of a fetus can mutate in the womb, based on what a mother ISN'T eating.

We all knew pregorexia was bad for baby, but this study points out that it's more than a lack of development that's being caused but actual development in the wrong direction.

The study at the University of Utah looked at pregnant rats to find how a lack of certain nutrients in the womb can create risk factors for certain diseases down the line. A mother rat whose fetus did not get proper nutrition was born smaller than his counterparts but also primed for heart disease, diabetes and other diseases. The researchers hope that this study could hold the key to helping develop a regimen for mothers to prevent health problems down the road for their babies.

Some of this is pretty common sense - you have to pack in the nutrition when you're pregnant (and when you're breastfeeding, natch). But knowing which nutrients are most important could be a lifesaver for moms like me - the moms who threw up for seven months. Did you eat differently when you were pregnant?

Image: CafePress

Doctors Call for Autopsies to Understand Stillbirth

JeanneSager — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:19:00 GMT

Thousands of pregnancies end every year in stillbirth - a baby dead in the womb sometime after the twenty-week mark or dead sometime during the birthing process.

It's heartbreaking for parents, but perhaps even harder for parents to take is the mystery. Of more than twenty-five thousand stillbirths each year, a full third are for unexplainable causes.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is calling for doctors to perform more autopsies on stillborn babies to unravel the mystery of stillbirth.

The goal is to reduce future stillbirths - or determine whether they can be prevented. The March of Dimes estimates stillbirth rates have dipped fifty percent in the last twenty years alone thanks to better technologies and healthcare practitioners' vigilance. They now know who has an increased risk of stillbirth - women thirty-five and older, women who suffer malnutrition and/or inadequate prenatal care, pregnant women who smoke and drink. They also have a host of causes for the two-thirds of stillbirths that are explainable - everything from placental defects to bacterial infection.

With the autopsies, they hope to rid the world of the other third. The question is how parents will take the suggestion from their doctor. Stillbirth is a traumatizing experience for parents, and the last thing a lot of parents want to do is turn their baby over to a scientist to cut, poke and prod.

Will parents be able to look past that and see the greater good? To see that they can make a difference for other parents in the long run?

Image: American Pregnancy Association

Two Wombs, Two Babies: Mom Delivers Twins

JeanneSager — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:18:00 GMT

I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

Like finding out you have two uteruses (uteri actually) and getting pregnant with twins - one child per uterus. Oh, and best of all? Giving birth to two healthy little girls.

Michigan mom Sarah Reinfelder has uterus didelphys - a rare condition in which the two tubes in a female fetus don't join to create one larger, hollow organ. They remain two distinct parts of the body - uteri.

The condition isn't dangerous, and many women go on to have children, but twins from uterus didelphys are rare, which makes Reinfelder's daughters extra special. So far, only three cases have been reported in the entire world.

The larger twin developed in Reinfelder's larger uterus, weighing in at four pounds, fifteen ounces. Her sister was a full pound smaller. The girls were delivered via a C-section, approximately seven weeks prematurely. The babies are expected to be released from the hospital in three to four weeks. Reinfelder and husband Shane have an elder child - 10-month-old William at home. They were shocked to find out she was pregnant with the twins - especially because she was on the birth control pill at the time.

"I was like okay, and then they did the ultrasound and said, 'Guess what? You're pregnant twice!' and that's when I almost wet my pants," Sarah told her local TV news station.

Can you really blame her?

Image: Upper Michigan Source

Via Jezebel

North Dakota Passes Law Establishing "Personhood" at Conception

"Pro-Choice Women Shouldn't Cry Over Miscarriages"

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Just in case your day is going a little too smoothly, let me share an article that will make your blood boil—particularly if you are one of the numerous women who has suffered the pain of a miscarriage and also happens to believe in a woman’s right to choose.

A guest blogger named Gina over at Mom Logic has written a gem of offensive inanity called “Pro-Choice? Quit Crying Over Your Miscarriage!” Here’s how Gina characterizes the pro-choice women who “break down in hysterics” over a miscarriage: “It's a baby when they want it to be, it's a bundle of cells when they don't.”

This is such a shameless confusion of the issue that we need to put Gina’s thinking in perspective with an extreme—but real-life—example: do I believe that a 12-year-old rape victim should be forced to keep her baby? Absolutely not. Would I be heartbroken if I lost the baby I was carrying, whom I had carefully planned my life around for years? Absolutely. These are two entirely different issues. One has to do with my belief in the universal right to reproductive freedom, which is essential to ending the oppression of women; the other has to do with my personal feelings about motherhood.

Many women who would not choose to have an abortion themselves (except perhaps in extreme cases such as rape or incest) respect other women’s right to choose—as do many men, who will never face the decision of whether or not to have an abortion. That’s why it’s called pro-choice, not pro-abortion. By Gina’s line of thinking, no one who wants kids—male or female—should support a woman’s right to choose.

Gina also writes of pro-choice women who have the gall to want kids of their own: “Suddenly the monthly visitor that they were relieved to get when they were 20, now, at 32, plunges them into the depths of depression.” Well, Gina, this is a little something called “family planning”: making life choices that give both you and your future children the best chances for happiness and success—and therefore, bettering the world. How could anyone take issue with women who were responsible enough to avoid pregnancies when they were too young to care for a child? If it weren’t for unplanned pregnancies, there would be no need for abortion in the first place.

Gina claims that she “respects women’s right to choose.” If she truly is pro-choice—which, by her own definition, means believing that all babies are nothing more than “a conglomeration of microscopic cells” until they are out of the womb—then I sincerely hope she never gets pregnant. It’d be pretty difficult to avoid things like smoking and drinking if you have zero emotional attachment to your baby.

Photo: Flickr/Steve Rhodes

Woman Raises Rabbit in Her Bra

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:15:00 GMT

Breasts and baby bunnies: two cuddly, loveable entities. Put them together, and you get a healthy three-month-old rabbit who answers to the name Miracle and enjoys watching a good game of cricket.

When her dog killed a rabbit, Cherida Cannon planned to make a good soup—until she noticed that the hare was pregnant. She extracted the living baby from the dead rabbit’s womb and turned her over to the care of her sister, Margi Heath.

Heath nursed the baby to health by keeping her inside her bra, which seemed to her like the warmest, most womblike place for the bunny to be. Whenever the bunny got hungry, she popped her head out of the brassiere, and Heath fed her infant formula with a syringe.

Miracle is now almost grown up and quite tame. Heath walks her on a leash and often takes her to local cricket games in a cat carrier.

Photo: Julian Simmonds/The Telegraph

And Now - The Gay Brain

Brett Singer — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:10:00 GMT

First it was the gay gene (and it wasn't Bugle Boy! Apologies to Bill Maher whom I stole that joke from.) Now the powers that be have decided that there is a gay brain. Scientists studied the sizes of the left and right brains of 90 people, and found that, "Gay men and heterosexual women had halves of a similar size, while the right side was bigger in lesbian women and heterosexual men." So gay men have brain halves like straight women, and gay women have brain halves like straight men. Got that? This will be on the test.

This isn't the first attempt to "prove" that gayness is born, not made. There was the gay gene (see above), and then the theory that what happens in the womb could affect male sexuality. According to the BBC, "this is the first time…that scientists have used brain scanners" to attempt to determine the cognitive differences between gay people and us breeders.

In theory, this is a good discovery, since it helps put to rest the idea espoused by certain lunatics that homosexuality can be "cured." But it could help the loonies' cause too, couldn't it? Imagine if someone proposes a test be given to children at birth, or in utero. Then what? I know that sounds extreme but some people are, well, extreme (like this lady – don't click this link unless you want to get angry.) There's a part of me that wonders if sexual orientation is something we need to find a reason for.

image: The Situationist, and then messed with by me. * = Homosexualis Gaygaygayus is a term I just made up, obviously.

Strollerderby : womb

You Are What Your Mother Didn't Eat

When Your Kid's Report Card Says They're Fat

It's NOT Baby Fat

They Say: Pool Water's Toxic for Baby

Doctors Call for Autopsies to Understand Stillbirth

Balloon Helps Pregnant Woman "Practice"

Parents Ignoring Back to Sleep Campaign

Grey's Anatomy Tackles Mother Vs. Baby Issue

Did Catholic Church Push This Woman To Abort?

Two Wombs, Two Babies: Mom Delivers Twins

A Happy Miscarriage Story: Believe it or Not

North Dakota Passes Law Establishing "Personhood" at Conception

"Pro-Choice Women Shouldn't Cry Over Miscarriages"

Woman Raises Rabbit in Her Bra

And Now - The Gay Brain

New York Governor's Decision to Recognize Gay Marriages Brings Unexpected Praise (and Hugs)

Rich guy pretends to be gynecologist to see women naked (he ain't no fruit!)

Political Nanny: Women, Dear Sweet Angry Women!

Clay Aiken ain't no fruit

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