FAS News: Researchers at Duke University have found that supplemental cholesterol given to zebra fish appears to prevent defects to fetal development caused by alcohol consumption. In addition to providing insight into how alcohol affects the developing baby, and how certain defects might be prevented, the head researcher notes that this study underscores how important it is that pregnant women not lower their cholesterol levels too much. Recent research suggests that pregnant women who take cholesterol-lowering drugs are at greater risk of giving birth to babies with developmental problems.

AMA and C-Sections:� A study out of the National Institutes of Health finds that older mothers with normal, full-term pregnancies are more likely than their younger counterparts to deliver by C-section. The trend is particularly true for older, first-time mothers. Researchers do not know why older mothers with uncomplicated pregnancies are more apt to have C-sections, but theorize that several factors may be at play, including physicians’ fear of malpractice when delivering for first-time, older mothers, or the mothers’ weight (as we age we tend to get heavier). Also missing is information on how many of these C-sections were categorically elective.

Free Britney? According to “a source”, Britney Spears is not cooperating with her rehab program because she feels she does not have a drug or alcohol dependency; rather, she is convinced that she is suffering from postpartum depression.

Babywearing Is Hot:

…so this one will be brief.

A grief-stricken UK man shared photographs of his wife, Susan, and his two sons, Paul, 2, and Joseph, 4. The three are dead. The boys were suffocated and then their mother hanged herself.

[The National Institute for Healthcare and Clinical Excellence] identified three questions that women should automatically be asked when they go for their antenatal check-ups with GPs or midwives: ‘In the last month, have you often been bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless? Have you often been bothered by having little interest or pleasure in doing things?’ and ‘Is this something you feel you need or want help with?’

I would add, “Have you been troubled by intrusive thoughts that are upsetting and causing you anxiety?”

Dave Tomson, a GP who chaired the committee which drew up the guidance, said it was important the answers were recorded and acted on. ‘That’s where there have been failings to date,’ he said.

If you’re a new, or newish, mom and you’ve never been asked these questions before, consider yourself asked. And if the answer to these questions is yes, please, please ask for help. Talk to your doctor, or your baby’s doctor, about your feelings. Or ask for a referral to a good mental health specialist.� DO NOT accept the brush-off. If it helps, talk to your partner or your family members (though as the article notes, families can be too prone to dismiss potential signs of PPD as mere “new mom” adjustments).

For some real BTDT camaraderie, check out the Online PPD Support Group.

Know that it is not your fault.  You are not a bad person.  Getting help is part of being a good mother.  And you are not alone.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Sure in the beginning it was somewhat entertaining to see her meltdown. But am I the only one who thinks enough is enough?

Today, while checking out The Superficial (yes, guilty as charged) I read that she most recently has been running around calling herself the antichrist and apparently tried to commit suicide. I should not know this. She is supposed to be in a private facility - staff and clients there are not supposed to be leaking this stuff.  That sucks.  I am sorry for her. I am sorry for her two young sons.

One of the late night hosts (can’t remember who offhand) recently said that he was not going to mock her anymore. He said it is not good entertainment to make fun of or ridicule the vulnerable - and that is surely what she is at this point in time. Amen to that. I don’t want to post the link, I don’t want to post yet another recent unflattering picture of her as she is suffering this breakdown.

At first I felt sorry for her mom, Lynne. I would hate for this to happen to any of my children. Then I reflected on it… it was her parents who pushed Britney and her sister to become child stars. It was her parents who took her to audition for the Mickey Mouse Show. It was her parents, acting as her managers, who encouraged her down this path. Sorry, Lynne…but I think it is too late. You started the ball rolling… is this the destiny you envisioned for your daughter? Thought not.  Now Britney is an adult, and I hope she can get well and start making good decisions for herself and her children.

Britney, I hope you get well soon. And I promise that if I do post about you again, you will have recovered and I hope I will be able to post some great news!

Posted by Meganlux

If you want the Melanie Stokes Act to get a chance at becoming law, contact your Congressional representatives right away and let them know.

Who was she� Just a woman, like any of us. She had a loving husband. She had a best friend in her mother, with whom she chatted on the phone every day. She had a career, working in pharmaceutical sales. Like many of us, she wanted to be a mother more than anything else. Three and a half months after she gave birth to her first child, a girl named Sommer Skyy, Ms. Stokes jumped from a 12th story window to her death.

Melanie Stokes suffered from postpartum psychosis. Soon after Sommer was born, Melanie’s mother, Carol, noticed that her daughter didn’t seem to be responding to new motherhood well, but she chalked it up to exhaustion. When Sommer was a month old, Melanie stopped eating and began having paranoid thoughts, believing, for example, that her neighbors closed their blinds because they thought she was a bad mother.

Over the next seven weeks, Melanie was hospitalized three times and put on numerous courses of antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs. She underwent electorconvulsive therapy. She would start to improve, but then spiral back into psychosis, staring out of windows, walking to Chicago’s lakefront at 3AM, asking a neighbor if he owned a gun.

Then during Melanie’s fourth hospital stay, she seemed to be improving. She was eating and making a recovery plan. She was released. One week later, she killed herself.

The Melanie Stokes Act was first introduced in 2001 by Illinois Representative Bobby Rush. The act calls for the Director of Health and Human Services to “expand and intensify” research and related activities focusing on postpartum mood disorders (including the very rare postpartum psychosis and the much more common postpartum depression). Funding would go toward basic research into the cause of postpartum mood disorders, epidemiological studies, improvements in diagnostic tools, clinical research on treatments, and information and education programs for health care professionals and the general public.

The Melanie Stokes Act failed to become law the first time around, but it’s just been reintroduced by Rep. Rush. The Postpartum Depression Community Message Board is getting the word out, and I’m passing it along here.��You can contact your Congressional representatives and voice your support for the Melanie Stokes Act.

Do it for yourself, or someone you love who has been touched by postpartum mood disorders. Or do it for Sommer, so that some good can come from her mother’s death.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Saved by Breastfeeding and Technology:  A San Francisco mother and her four-year-old and seven-month-old who were stranded in the Oregon mountains since November 25th have been rescued.  Kati Kim shared that she kept her children alive by breastfeeding them.  Her husband James Kim left the family in search for help on Saturday.  He is still missing.  Mrs. Kim and her children were located with the help of technicians from the regional company that provides cell phone service for the area.  They had one of Mrs. Kim’s family members send her a text message, which fortunately was picked up by her cell phone.  They then used the data and knowledge of the mountain roads to help rescuers locate the mother and young children.  They are in good condition.  The search continues for Mr. Kim.

Fibroids and Fertility:  Physicians at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia present a case study in the journal The Female Patientin which a woman with a fibroid tumor the size of a full-term baby requested treatment that would preserve her fertility.  Two procedures were performed a month apart, one to minimize blood flow to the fibroids and the other to remove them, successfully.

Flu Vaccine for Preggos:  A study out of Kaiser Permanente Colorado in Denver finds that getting the flu vaccine while pregnant does not appear to reduce the occurence of respiratory illness in infants, as had been theorized.  However, the researchers note that vaccination is still important to protect the health of the mother.

PPD Risks:  An article in JAMA notes that first-time mothers are at an increased risk for postpartum depression.  First-time dads are also vulnerable to mental disorders.

Working Parent Woes:  A study out of Brandeis University finds that billions of dollars in productivity are lost annually because of reduced productivity of working parents who are worried about their children’s well-being during after-school hours.

The Break Up:Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn have split.  Too bad!  Now, Jen hasn’t asked me for relationship advice of late, but when she does, I’ll suggest that she steer clear of Hollywood types from now on.  What’s wrong with dating a nice novelist, or computer programmer, or astronaut? 

Posted by MommaSteph. 

According to an article in Psychiatric Times, postpartum depression and psychosis are often missed by practitioners.  Around 10-15% of new mothers will be diagnosed with postpartum depression (not to be confused with “baby blues”, which affects around 80%), and around .1% of new mothers reportedly experience postpartum psychosis.

But postpartum depression may be more prevalent than thought, because women are reluctant to reveal the symptoms, Dr. [Phillip J.] Resnick said. Fearing of falling short of society’s ideal of motherhood, women may hold back from telling their husbands. And many fear that if they tell a doctor or social worker about their depression, their baby might be taken away, he said.

Gee… women who are blindsided by postpartum mental disorders aren’t likely to fill anyone in voluntarily?  YA THINK?!  “You know, honey, I can’t seem to stop obsessing about putting the baby in the dishwasher.  Isn’t that odd?  I guess we should get takeout.  Why are you looking at me like that?”

I wonder if other undiagnosed women got hit with PPD as I did - in such a bizarre and scary fashion that it didn’t even occur to me that I’d been hit.  I thought women with PPD hated their babies, or cried all the time, or didn’t feel like leaving the house.  I loved my baby fiercely, didn’t cry much at all, and didn’t at all shy away from leaving the house - many evenings I headed down the road, clutching the baby, making a beeline for my husband’s office, if only to intercept him partway through his walk home and hand off our spawn so that I’d know he was safe.  Safe from the dishwasher. 

(more…)

A research team at the University of Chicago has found that infant rhesus monkeys who experience maternal rejection and mild abuse in their first month of life often have lower levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin.  Serotonin is a chemical that helps nerve cells in the brain communicate with each other.  Low levels of this neurotransmitter have been associated with anxiety, depression, and aggressive and impulsive behavior.

The researchers found that those monkeys who were rejected or abused by their mothers and became abusive mothers themselves had lower levels of serotonin (by 10-20%) than those monkeys that were abused but who did not become abusive and those monkeys who were raised by nurturing mothers.

But for those monkeys with compromised serotonin levels, couldn’t hereditary be the key factor?  Earlier research suggests that the answer is no.  In a prior study, researchers switched monkeys at birth between abusive and non-abusive mothers and found that offspring of non-abusive monkey mothers were likely to become abusers if they were raised by rejecting or abusive foster mothers.  (This article does not mention the offspring of abusive mothers raised by appropriate foster mothers, however…)

Early infant experience is key here, say the researchers.  And while not all of the abused monkeys have compromised levels of serotonin, for those that do, the condition persists into adulthood.  And the cycle of abuse and neglect continues.

This reminds me of the importance of early and persistent screening for postpartum depression, called for by the MOTHERS bill proposed in the Senate and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (whatever the hell that is).   (Text of the legislation here.) 

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Over at Salon, Heather Havrilesky, who is due to give birth in four weeks, has an introspective essay about all that is to befall her when her baby arrives - the insane-making lack of sleep, zero time for basic grooming, the feelings of complete inadequacy, of being an impostor, of never being able to do enough, or do it right, but not feeling able to trust even one’s beloved husband to take over so that one can run a quick errand, of worrying about turning into Andrea Yates, of struggling with scheduling outings with the little blood-sucking lamprey…

Shoot, wait, this is a humorous piece! 

Ms. Havrilesky may well be anxious about giving birth, but I guess she’s also having some fun lampooning her friends who have regaled her with horror stories of first-time motherhood.  What’s startling to me is how clearly those tales of doom resonate.  Going loopy from lack of sleep?  Check.  Crying at nothing?  Certainly.  Feeling like the very life is being drained out of you by the baby, whether or not you’re nursing?  I remember it well.  Knowing deep down that you’re an impostor, a failure, a crappy mom?  Oh yes.  Being afraid of turning into one of those news-making moms who go crazy and do the unthinkable?    Sadly, yes.

(more…)

Tom Cruise apologizes:  Brooke Shields reports that she has received a “heartfelt apology,” from Tom Cruise.  I’ll leave it at that, as giving Tom Cruise additional press is not my gig.

IVF not for the obese:  The British Fertility Society recommended that women who suffer from obesity or who are over forty be denied access to government subsidized fertility treatments in the UK.  The BFS also recommended equal treatment of all patients and clear-cut guidelines to who will and will not qualify for treatments, without consideration of marital status or sexual orientation.

How does your toddler’s mind work?:  A study to be published in Psychological Science supports the common perception that toddlers think for now and the future based on their wants and need at the time the decision is made.

Low Vitamin E linked to asthma in children:  Expanded results on a pre-existing study have linked little to no intake of Vitamin E during pregnancy to the development of asthma in young children.  The initial interpretation of the study linked low Vitamin E levels during pregnancy to wheezing in children at age two, and now confirms the importance of Vitamin E during pregnancy.

Posted by texans.

From Tragedy to Pregnancy:  The sole survivor of the Sago Mine incident that gripped the country has announced that his wife is expecting their third child.  Surely great news after being trapped in one of the worst mining accidents in the US since 2001.  The couple did not announce the expected due date.

Caesarean Risks Unveiled:  A French study looking at a small sampling of maternal death records determined that women giving birth by C-section were three times as likely to experience complications that lead to death. The overall incidence of death among mothers in civilized countries is nonetheless relatively low.

Child abducted reappears on mother’s door step:  Twenty four years after Noreen Gosch’s son disappeared, he reappeared in pictures on her door step this week.  The pictures depict her son being bound and gagged in the clothes he was last seen wearing the day he disappeared, and bring little hope to the case.

Unprepared for baby:  A survey of new mommies shows that many, even most, have felt overwhelmed by baby, friends, money and expectations after becoming  mothers.  To me, this is hardly news given how blown away I was by birth, but I did find that some of the statistics made me feel a bit better about my state of mind post-labor.

Photoshop gone wild:  As reported yesterday, CBS chose to doctor photos of Katie Couric to make her appear thinner.  In a more bizarre Photoshop twist, Nicole Kidman’s rep has reported that gossip magazines are doctoring her photographs to make her appear thicker through the middle, insinuating that she may be pregnant.

Posted by texans.