Elective C-sections gain popularity. It seems as though this is a topic that a women usually have a very passionate stance about - one way or the other. Some wonder why in the world a woman would actually elect to have a C-section over a vaginal birth, others consider it a perfectly acceptable way to give birth and wonder why everyone else, stranger or not, feels free to weigh in (and often criticize) their personal decision to have this elective surgery.

The safest way to give birth is an uncomplicated vaginal delivery. The problem is, that is an impossible thing to predict in advance. More and more women these days are electing to have a C-section, even first time mothers with no previous birthing experience. Doctors are not sure why this is gaining in popularity. As the rate of elective C-sections has increased, so has the rate of maternal mortality. At least it has in 2003 and 2004, data from 2005 and onwards is not yet available. But it has not been proven that the maternal mortality rate is linked to the increase in C-sections.

Doctors and researchers would really like to figure this out and have a factual basis to the question “which one is safer”, however structuring how to research this as an unbiased test proves very difficult - it basically would amount to a large group of women agreeing to being randomly chosen to give birth either vaginally or by C-section.

My bet is that this will remain the topic of heated discussion for years to come - research will not change women’s passion regarding this. In the end, it is the woman’s body and her individual choice as to her birthing plan. So please be supportive of your friends and loved ones no matter what they decide!

A girls self-esteem impacts her chances of obesity. A study shows that girls who consider themselves to be “popular” gain less weight as they grow up then those who consider themselves “unpopular”. What is interesting is that researchers now see that a girl’s perceived social status is not just something she can grow out of as she grows up, it can as well have future health impacts. On a somewhat related note, studies have shown that obese girls also more likely to avoid going to college. Having a tween daughter myself, I am always hopeful that she will not grow up to be one of those uber-popular girls a-la the “Mean Girls” movie. But I do hope to instill in her a healthy dose of self-esteem, and I hope that her teen years aren’t too dramatic. Time will tell…

Is she or isn’t she? She IS! Nicole Kidman’s publicist just announced that the actress and her husband, Keith Urban, are expecting their first child later this year. See, I told ya so! *wink*

Teen births on the rise. For the first time in over a decade, the number of teen births is rising. Over the past 15 years, the number of teen births (ages 15-19) had decreased by 34%. Parents, educators and policymakers are hopeful that this years figures are just a one-time blip. Also interesting to note, CDC reports that cesarean deliveries accounted for 31% of all births, a record high.

One good thing about getting your period… Researchers have determined that menstrual stem cells could be useful in treating diabetes, multiple sclerosis and cirrhosis of the liver. Advantages to this are there is much less ethical controversy in obtaining these cells, and it could be collected over a period of many years. Let’s hope researchers can prove this to be useful.

How desperate are you to conquer your PPD? Some women are going to extreme measures to cure theirs. They are eating their own placenta. This is technically is called placentophagy. The placenta can be ingested in many ways. It can be fried up and eaten, or dried and ground into a powder to be ingested. If you are interested in this yourself, here is a link to some yummy placenta recipes.

Update on Usher. He has announced the name of his new baby son… Usher V (the fifth).

I’m not one of those women who feels cheated by their delivery experience(s). I’m also not an advocate for natural, unmedicated childbirth (though there’s nothing wrong with that route). Both of my deliveries resulted in healthy children…but after reading this article, I realized there are still things I didn’t know that might have affected my decisions and experiences.

A new survey of mothers reveals some disturbing things about hospital maternity care that may make pregnant women want to take a closer look at their options.

What choices do we really have, and what choices are being made without our involvement?

The article explaining the survey results is not easily summarized, so I’ll just highlight five facts that surprised me (please take a few moments to read it for yourself - you may be startled by what you learn!). Did you know these things?

1. Maternal mortality is on the rise in this country - it was up to 13 deaths per 100,000 in the United States in 2004, up from 11 in 2000. Forty-one (that’s 41!) other developed nations have lower maternal death rates.

2. 73% of the women interviewed who had an episiotomy were not asked for their consent. (This was true of my first delivery as well.)

3. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved Pitocin for the use of augmenting labor and it has been suggested now that mismanagement of Pitocin is the leading cause of liability suits and damage awards. Say what??

4. A woman with private insurance is more likely to end up with a Cesarean section than an uninsured woman or one on Medicaid.

5. Eleven states prohibit births with homebirth-trained attendants, such as certified professional midwives (CPMs), or ban homebirths outright. My state is one of them. Seventeen states have no birthing centers.

Well…good thing I was OK with my children being delivered at the local hospital, I guess! It’s appalling to me that so many of our options are dependent on where we live, and that our experiences differ based on what sort of insurance we carry (or don’t have) - and on how forthright our doctors are with us regarding decisions about the birth itself and care afterward.

Keep your eyes and ears open, moms! Every woman has the right to be involved in the decision-making process when it comes to her health and that of her child.

(Via Radical Catholic Mom.)

Posted by Sunshine.

Music and Language Development: A new study out of Northwestern University concludes that early music training may be more effective than learning phonics at building verbal skills. The multi-sensory processing the brain uses during music training appears to involve the same circuitry used in speaking and reading. The researchers believe music training could be effective at combating literacy disorders. (Via Autism Vox.)

Beef Recall: Topps Meat Company of Elizabeth, N.J. is recalling 21.7 million pounds of ground beef products because of 25 cases of illness that appear to be due to E. coli bacteria. The recall… covers a wide range of frozen hamburger patties and other products manufactured over the last year and bearing a “sell by” date or “best used by” date between last Tuesday and Sept. 25, 2008, along with the United States Department of Agriculture designation EST 9748.

Wow! A Siberian woman got a surprise when she welcomed her 12th child - all 17.1 pounds of her. “We were all simply in shock,” said Nadia’s mother, Tatyana Barabanova, 43. “What did the father say? He couldn’t say a thing — he just stood there blinking.” The newcomer was born via C-section.

A Fat Set-Up: A new study looks at societal pressures that may be significant contributors to the increasing childhood obesity epidemic. Three areas of concern: Soft drink company contracts with schools that give kids easy access to sugary drinks; the lack of supermarkets, and overage of fast food restaurants and convenience stores, in poorer neighborhoods; and advertising that steers young people to junk food. “Research is showing us that we have in our schools and communities a perfect storm that will continue to feed the childhood obesity epidemic until we adopt policies that improve the health of our communities and our kids,” said Frank Chaloupka, head of the University of Illinois at Chicago research team.

C-Sections and Birth Days: Two new studies find that more and more babies are being born during the week, and fewer on weekends, as the number of elective, planned C-sections rises. Hospitals tend to schedule C-sections for when their units are fully staffed, and when personnel are working their “normal” hours so as to avoid overtime costs.

This is weird: People magazine has an item on model and dad-to-be Gabriel Aubry - boyfriend of pregnant actress Halle Berry - that includes this speculation: “So, will the world’s sexiest baby since Shiloh Jolie-Pitt be a boy or a girl?” Um…since when are babies “sexy”?

Via Radical Catholic Mom, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, maternal death rates in the US rose from 12 per 100,000 in 2003 to 13 per 100,000 in 2004. And while revised death certificate questions in California, Montana, and Idaho may account for some of the up-tick in terms of cause of death reporting (that is, deaths that would not have been attributed to childbirth formerly now are), experts believe the actual number is rising, perhaps because of the continued increase in C-section deliveries.

“There’s an inherent risk to C-sections,” said Dr. Elliott Main, who co-chairs a panel reviewing obstetrics care in California. “As you do thousands and thousands of them, there’s going to be a price.”

Excessive bleeding is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death, and women with several previous C-sections are at especially high risk, according to a review of maternal deaths in New York. Blood vessel blockages and infections are among the other leading causes.

Maternal obesity may also be a factor, as overweight women are more prone to complications such as diabetes, and are more likely to have excess tissues and large babies that make vaginal deliveries problematic. Older mothers are also more likely to have pregnancy complications, and more women are having babies in their late 30s and 40s.

Sadly, 40% of maternal deaths could have been prevented through proper monitoring. Black women in particular are more prone to high blood pressure during pregnancy, and are also more likely to have inadequate prenatal care. The rate of maternal death for black women is three times higher than that of white women.

And while these deaths matter in and of themselves, they also point to a larger public health issue. The CDC’s 2001 manual on reducing pregnancy-related deaths opens with the following reflection:

Pregnancy-related deaths are the tip-of-the-iceberg with regard to complications of pregnancy. For every woman who dies of a pregnancy-related cause, several thousand suffer morbidity related to pregnancy—before, during, or after delivery. Each year six million women become pregnant, almost four million give birth, and over one million experience pregnancy-related complications. This means that pregnancy-related complications are a significant burden on women, their families, and society in economic, social, and personal term.

The CDC proposes a three-tiered plan to reduce maternal mortality:

• Primary prevention strategies: Improving sex education and family planning services to prevent unintended and high-risk pregnancies; improving nutrition programs, preconception care, and diagnosis and treatment of STDs.
• Secondary prevention strategies: Improving pregnancy outcomes through early detection and treatment of complications.
• Tertiary prevention strategies: Treating complications in an optimal fashion to reduce fatality rates.

Tangent: I’ve been thinking about how much of the above is in our own hands. What can we women do for ourselves to improve our pregnancy - and general health - outcomes? How can we better serve ourselves in terms of family planning, preconception care, and health and lifestyle choices? How can we be better role models for our children in terms of staying informed about and protecting our own health?

I hope I don’t sound preachy. Let’s face it - in large part, general health is a roll of the dice, a combination of genetics and luck. But some common poor health outcomes are the result of lifestyle choices. And I write this as a woman who for years smoked a pack a day and was never ten feet from a Doritos bag. I cleaned up my act pretty well in my 30s and have been blessed with two healthy children after two uncomplicated pregnancies. My family has good health coverage. I think I’m pretty well informed about general health issues. But with all these advantages, I’m still far from where I want to be in terms of being my own health monitor.

Posted by MommaSteph.

New Program to Lower C-Section Risk? Researchers out of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine conducted a study that found that women whose pregnancies were monitored through an alternative program called the Active Management of Risk in Pregnancy at Term (AMOR-IPAT) were less likely to deliver via C-section than women under traditional care (5.3% vs. 11.8%). Under AMOR-IPAT, pregnancy dating and risk assessment are used to determine an optimal delivery date; if the woman goes past that date, induction is offered. The researchers believe their method results in fewer C-sections because babies are delivered before the baby is too large for the mother’s pelvis, and before the placenta is too old to support the baby through labor.

Accutane and Pregnancy: Roughly the same number of women are becoming pregnant while on Accutane (isotretinoin) since the iPledge program became mandatory. Accutane can cause serious brain and heart damage in a developing fetus; for this reason, men and women who want a prescription for the acne medication have to enroll in a program that keeps a database of users, and women need to prove that they are on birth control and need to take a pregnancy test before each refill. (Accutane can also damage a fetus within 30 days after a woman stops taking the drug.) Most of the pregnancies were reportedly the result of a failure to stick with a birth control plan. Today the FDA is to gather its advisers to review the safety restrictions on Accutane and its generic versions.

DYK… it’s World Breastfeeding Week?

SIDS Breakthrough? A new study out of Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle finds that 31 infants who died of SIDS had the same distinctive anomaly on their newborn hearing tests of the right inner ear, which was not shared by healthy infants in the control group. The SIDS infants scored four point lower in their standard newborn hearing tests, across three different sound frequencies in the right ear. (Infants in general tend to test stronger in their right ears than in their left, so this was a reversal of what is usually found in healthy infants.) “This discovery opens a whole new line of inquiry into SIDS research,” said [Dr. Daniel D.] Rubens. “For the first time, it’s now possible that with a simple, standard hearing test babies could be identified as at risk for SIDS, allowing preventative measures to be implemented in advance of a tragic event.”

Baby for former “Bachelorette”: Reality show darling Trista Sutter and hubby Ryan welcomed a baby boy, Maxwell Alston. Weighing in at 5 lbs, 4 oz, little Maxwell was induced four weeks early due to pregnancy complications. Ms. Sutter experienced pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes with the pregnancy. Labor stalled, and the baby arrived via C-section. Mom and baby are reportedly doing well.

Nicotine Patch and Pregnancy: A UK study is currently recruiting 1000+ expecting women to test the safety of nicotine patch use during pregnancy. Newly pregnant women who smoke will be invited to participate, and half will receive the patch, half a placebo. They will receive support for dealing with cravings and avoiding smoking. The women will be followed throughout their pregnancies, and their children’s cognitive development and respiratory health will be studied until they are two.

Slimmed-Down Mom, Big Baby? Researchers have known for some time that overweight women are likely to have large babies, but a new study finds that even when large women lose weight before subsequent pregnancies, they tend to have big babies. It may be that extra weight can have long-term effects on future pregnancies, the research team speculates. Large babies are more likely to suffer birth trauma or to require C-sections for delivery.

It’s a (Backstreet) Boy: Former Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson and his wife Kristen welcomed a baby boy this past Tuesday. Little Mason weighed in at 8 pounds, 2 ounces, and 20 and 1/2 inches long. Here’s a little trivia: The proud parents met back in 1993 at Disney World, where she danced in the Beauty and the Beast show and he was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Turn baby, turn: Pregnant women with breech babies across the globe have been taking part in a study to see if external cephalic version, a manual procedure used to attempt to turn babies around so that they’re head down, is more successful depending on when in the pregnancy it is performed. Women are randomly assigned to two groups; some women receive ECV between 37 and 38 weeks gestation and some between 34 and 36 weeks. Earlier research suggested that when the ECV is done sooner, it is more likely to succeed. So far, almost 1,000 women have participated in the study; 500 more are needed.

Rheumatoid Arthritis and Pregnancy: Researchers in Barcelona, Spain, are taking a closer look at the relationship between rheumatoid arthritis and pregnancy. Previous research has suggested that many women experience an improvement in their symptoms, and this happy side effect often continues postpartum. This study found that 40% of participants reported a decrease in their RA symptoms, and 64% remained stable or improved in the postpartum period. Pregnancy hormones may be key here, and may provide clues for new prevention and treatment therapies.