Some expectant moms think that wearing a seatbelt is a no-brainer, but there are many others that believe the myth that it can harm their unborn child.

Not so, say researchers.

A new study published in the April issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology reveals that almost 200 fetuses each year — or half of all fetal losses in motor-vehicle crashes — could be saved if pregnant women buckled up properly. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

From the 'Keep Hope Alive' files, today we bring you a mind-boggling story out of the United Kingdom that should inspire older women wanting kids.

The Sunday Mirror reports that 57-year-old Susan Tollefsen is going through a "rollercoaster of emotions" after what was thought to be ovarian cancer turned out to be her first unborn baby!

Susan feared the worst when doctors sent her for a scan to determine the cause of a "hard abdominal mass" they'd found, that was growing. But instead of dire news, Susan got an "Easter Miracle" when she heard the radiologist say the following words: "Congratulations, you're almost 30 weeks' pregnant."

Susan, a teacher, had spent years trying for a baby with her husband Nick Mayer, 46, through IVF. They believed their third attempt last year ended when she miscarried, but Susan had been carrying twins, and one survived. She is now preparing for a C-section this week.

The Essex couple, who met 10 years ago, have named the girl Freya.

"From being told you might have cancer to being told you are pregnant, I think I exhausted every kind of emotion possible. Obviously we're very excited but I'm very, very nervous, I just want our baby to be well," says Susan, a teacher. "I'm keeping very well. We' ve not had much time to prepare. We're just taking everything slowly and getting ready for the big day."

She adds: "It is like a miracle."

Heartiest Congratulations to you and baby Freya, your little "Easter Miracle."

Moms-to-be in California will find it easier to shop for baby, if California lawmakers go through with a plan to grant them special parking privileges.

Republican Assemblyman, Chuck DeVore, has proposed legislation that would grant pregnant women "temporarily disabled" parking placards from the Department of Motor Vehicles during the final three months of pregnancy and the first two months after birth. The legislation would apply to more than a half-million women who give birth every year in California.

"Let's be reasonable here: There are challenges, physical challenges, that arise as a natural part of life," DeVore said of pregnancy. "It certainly makes you realize that for that very short period of time in their pregnancy, they are certainly by any practical definition (impaired)."

A similar bill was proposed four years ago but was shot down in a hail of controversy.

Opponents of the new proposal, Assembly Bill 1940, say pregnant women should be exercising as much as possible and that the legislation could reduce parking for motorists with more serious disabilities.

"We really want pregnant women to be active, to be moving, to be walking," said Shannon Smith-Crowley of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' California chapter, which opposes AB 1940. She added that a woman with complications from pregnancy could qualify for a temporary parking placard under existing law.

Helen Grieco, executive director of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women, said her organization had trouble with the idea of "framing pregnancy as a disability," when, in fact, it was a normal part of life.

Moms and moms-to-be, what are your thoughts?

[SB]

If the health risks to your fetus aren’t enough to dissuade you from smoking during pregnancy, maybe the psychological risks will.

British researchers have found that moms who stop smoking while pregnant tend to have cheerier, more adaptable babies. The scientists found that babies of women who continued to smoke while pregnant were notably grumpy. Babies of non-smokers also are more temperamental than babies born to quitters, suggesting that mothers who snuff out smoking are doing something special. Tobacco can affect the growth of a fetus and has been shown to also affect children if they breathe in their mothers' secondhand smoke.

A team led by Dr. Kate Pickett at Britain's University of York has been following 18,000 British babies born between 2000 and 2002, as well as their mothers. The moms were classified as heavy or light smokers, never-smokers or quitters. The women who quit had noticeably more easygoing babies, Pickett and colleagues reported in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

"It's a significant association. We can be sure it's not due to chance," Pickett said. "Quitting smoking is a really difficult thing to do at any time. And we do know that most women who quit smoking when they are pregnant start smoking again afterwards," she says. "So what they are doing is taking a very specific maternal action to protect their babies.”

Tobacco is one of the most addictive substances known to man. The researchers say moms who are able to quit may pass on their genetic traits to their babies. The study showed that heavy smokers had the most difficult children, scoring low for positive mood.

But Pickett adds this cautionary not: "I think it is really important to avoid stigmatizing women who can't manage to quit. And pregnancy is a stressful time."

[Reuters]

Allison Penn, 31, and her husband, Tom, 46, had tried to have a baby for four years before they decided on in-vitro fertilization. What happened next blew everyone away–Allison defied one-in-200 million odds to give birth to identical triplets!

Logan, Eli and Collin Penn were born Wednesday at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island (where Jennifer Lopez delivered her twins) in an event so rare that an obstetrician estimated it might happen just once in 200 million births. Allison was impregnated with just one embryo through IVF, said Dr. Victor Klein, who delivered the boys. He said that one embryo split in half, and then one half of that split again, he said.

"This is the first one we're aware of in the literature in the country in which they only put back one embryo" and a woman gave birth to triplets, said Klein. He added that identical triplets are born at a rate between one in 60,000 and one in 200 million, depending on the research.

Allison and Tom had tried to have children since they got married about four years ago. "When it took us so long to get pregnant, I just assumed we were going to have one, and that would probably be it," she said. "So I thought one would be good."

"Everything we had done was to have one baby," Tom points out. "Anybody who says God doesn't have a sense of humor - everything we did was just for having one baby, and now we have three."

Congratulations, you guys! You hit the trifecta! Best of luck to you and your record-breaking sons!

[ip]

A north Kentucky mom may have set a world record by giving birth to a baby only 10.5 inches smaller than she is.

Stacy Herald is all of 28.5 inches tall from head to heel. The 33-year-old mother of two was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disorder that makes bones brittle and fragile. She defied the odds and the predictions of doctors who told her she would never carry a pregnancy to term.

"My whole life I've been told that I wasn't able to have children," she says. "[They said] I would not live through the pregnancy, that with the size of my torso, the baby would grow up underneath my lungs and smother out my lungs and my heart and we would both die. And something inside me just didn't believe that.

But Stacy became pregnant and doctors encouraged her to have an abortion. She refused. "And my doctor, I love her to death, she's so sweet, she said, 'Okay', she said, you know, 'We'll do it.' We'll provide the best medical care we provide. You provide the faith and we'll see what happens."

"I had the biggest belly you've ever seen in your life. If I laid down, I looked like a snail. That's how big my belly was. I looked like an Idaho potato with arms and legs. And you couldn't see my feet. You know, my legs are there, you know. But my belly came out so long, that all you could see was a belly with toes," Stacy quips.

Stacy gave birth to Katira, now 16 months old. Katira was born with the same genetic disorder as her mom.  Five weeks ago, she delivered her second daughter, Makaia, who does not have the disorder. Makaia is expected to grow to a normal height.

"The only thing that I cannot do for my children is like if they want to get from the swing set to the bed or the bed to the swing. Or like picking them up. Now Makaia, I can, for now. I'm sure she'll be carrying me one day."

Stacy's husband, Wil Herald, who is studying to be a minister, says his wife and kids are a gift from God. "I'm proud to have her as my wife. It's just a blessing that we have two wonderful children. She's a great mom. She's a terrific mom. I mean, I couldn't ask for anyone else to be the mother of my children."

Stacey and Wil are planning to try for a son.

[WKYC.com]

Celebrities spare no expense when it comes to their babies’ safety. That’s why so many of them choose Britax car seats. Brooke Shields  got a Decathlon for daughter, Rowan, Courtney Cox and David Arquette take daughter Coco out in her Marathon in All-Star Blue, Matt Damon secures daughter Isabella with a Marathon and the adorable Violet Afflect travels safely, comfortably and snugly in her Britax! 

Britax is world renowned for safety and comfort. Britax makes the most highly coveted, top-rated car seats, travel systems and strollers on the market! Scores of grateful consumers have credited the many safety features on the Britax car seats with saving the lives of their infants and toddlers.  Britax’s patented True Side Impact Protection is especially important, as side-impact crashes are the leading cause of death for 6 - 14 year-old children.

In addition, Britax car seats feature built-in lock-offs, a 5-point harness with front adjuster, tangle-free webbing and a push button release LATCH system with Versa-Tether®.  It’s not surprising, then, that Britax is consistently rated number one in reviews by consumers and experts alike. But you need to act now to save big on these products, because they go on sale only once each year!

 Here’s your chance to snatch up these top-quality car seats, travel systems and strollers at the lowest prices available. For eight days only, from February 24 to March 2, Babyage will be offering the biggest discounts on Britax products through its online store.It’s your only chance this year to save big on Britax!  

In 2007, three notable studies used three different methods to come to a single conclusion: What Mommies eat can make babies smarter.

The research shows conclusively that a child's social behavior and academic abilities are influenced by a mother's level of marine source omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy. The studies report that the benefits of omega-3s (DHA and EPA) begin much earlier and may be longer lasting than previously thought. Other preliminary studies suggest that benefits from omega-3 consumption during pregnancy continue into adulthood.

"This is critical information, because it is during pregnancy when most women eat less of the omega-3 rich foods, such as fish, over concerns of pollutants and toxins", said Gretchen Vannice, MS, RD, Manager of Scientific Affairs, NourishLife, LLC.

One study showed that greater DHA levels at birth were associated with higher quality motor function in the children at age 7 (Bakker et al, 2007). A groundbreaking study published last year (Hibbeln et al, 2007) in a population of nearly 12,000 pregnant women reported that the children of women who ate more than 3 servings of fish a week (an indicator of omega-3 intake) had better verbal IQ at age 7.

Finally, a study published last month (Dunstan, 2008) reported that children born of mothers who took fish oil supplements during pregnancy had better eye and hand coordination at age 2.5 years.

"It's not often that studies published within months of each other, using different methods, have similar findings," said Vannice.

[EMW]

This news just might make a lot of women happy. 

As in-vitro fertilization technology progresses, the next step will be taking the man out of the equation entirely, with artificial sperm. In one-third of infertile couples, it is the male who is infertile. German researcher, Dr. Wolfgang Engel, says he and his colleagues are "trying to generate sperm, artificial sperm, and we hope that we can help these couples."

ABC news reports that Engel is actually growing sperm in the lab, from very early cells called germ cells, which are taken from a man's testicle. This too, was successful in mice.  "If it works in the mouse, I'm sure it will also work in the human," Engel said.

His next challenge? To grow sperm taken from a female germ cell, which could then be used to fertilize another woman's egg. "Perhaps we are able to get a child from two women," he speculates.

But the research is already raising eyebrows. University of Miami ethicist Ken Goodman asks: "What do you do if the experiments are making babies and they don't come out right the first couple of times?"

[ABC12]

The headline may sound crazy, but it's true…kinda.  

Baby Jacek Kuzminski was born in British Columbia, Canada, last November after 23 years in the freezer. At least, half of him was. Jacek was conceived using his father's frozen sperm, kept on ice for 22 years, two months and two weeks — one of the longest-known storage periods on record for frozen sperm resulting in a live birth.

Mike Kuzminski was treated for Hodgkins disease 23 years ago. Since the radiation and chemotherapy treatment can destroy fertility, Mike was advised by his oncologist to freeze his sperm. He was only 20 years old at the time. 

In 2003, Mike married wife Kristin married after a five-year courtship and the couple was desperate to start a family. Tests confirmed the worst–Mike was sterile. By then, he had forgotten all about his frozen sperm, until his sister reminded him. He immediately tracked down the Calgary clinic and was told by a staffer: "We totally have you here — and you owe us $2,000 for storage." Jacek subsequently made his historic debut.

"He's definitely my miracle boy," Mike beams.

The longest-known storage of sperm resulting in a live birth is 28 years, according to a 2005 report in the American medical journal Fertility & Sterility.

[canada.com]

A nine-month-old baby thrown four stories from a burning building is safe, unhurt and back in his Dad's arms, after being caught by a cop.

The miraculous rescue of Baby Onur yesterday made an instant hero of the police officer in Ludwigshafen in southwestern Germany. Baby Onur was thrown from the window in a desperate bid by his family to save him from the raging inferno.

Officials say the officer was injured and needed hospital treatment after falling to the ground when he caught the child.

Nine people, including five children, were killed in the blaze. The Associated Press quoted a local police chief as saying the incident was "so terrible that some of the forces deployed wanted to give up their jobs".

[nca]

Menopause…growing fetus…surely doctors can tell the difference, right? Maybe not. Just ask Amanda Morgan.

The BBC reports that the 40-year-old UK woman gave birth to 5lb 6oz Caitlin seven hours after being told by a doctor that she was starting menopause.  The legal secretary, who already had two sons aged 13 and 10 from a previous relationship, says the baby was a complete surprise.

"I'd had no morning sickness or tiredness and had absolutely no bump at all. I'm 40 and had decided not to have any more children. I thought my baby-making days were long gone. I had only put on about a pound in weight but just thought I'd been snacking too much in the run-up to Christmas," she says.

Morgan gave birth within minutes of breaking the news to her partner Chris Grinter, 42, of the menopause diagnosis. She returned home after the appointment and complained of feeling "exhausted." After going to the bathroom, Morgan says she felt a "crippling pain".

"There was no time to even shout out to Chris - it was that quick. "A strange calm took over and with one push Caitlin was out. She barely cried, just wriggled. "I grabbed a towel and wrapped her in it. I was in a state of shock but also quite calm."

She said her partner's "face went white" when he saw the baby. Grinter called the paramedics, who arrived to cut the cord as Morgan lay in the bathroom. They were taken to Singleton Hospital, Swansea, and she was told she was six months into her pregnancy when Caitlin was born. The baby was in a ventilator and allowed home after five weeks.

Sue Jacobs of the Royal College of Midwives said: "This is only the third time I've come across one like this in my 25 years as a midwife. But women do occasionally experience what seem like periods in pregnancy. In such cases it's because the bleeding is caused by the placenta and just happens to coincide with period dates," she states. 

An incredibly brave UK mom has tragically died just weeks after refusing vital treatment to have her miracle baby boy 15 weeks prematurely.

Lorraine Allard, 33, of St Olaves, near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, knew she had just months to live. She'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer in her fourth month of pregnancy. Allard was offered a termination at 23 weeks but refused. Determined to keep baby Liam, she even delayed her own critical treatment to give the baby a better chance of living. She told her devastated husband Martyn: "If I am going to die, my baby is going to live."

Liam was born almost four months early. Lorraine hugged and cuddled him when he was just days old, as he lay in a hospital cot with tubes attached to his tiny body. Sadly, however, Liam and his mother had few chances to bond. Lorraine lost her fight for life last Friday, leaving devastated parents, Tom and Muriel Berry, husband Martyn and daughters Leah, 10, Amy, eight, and Courtney aged 20 months, as well as siblings Thomas, Joanne and Steven.

Tom says his daughter always put others first. "She lived for her husband and her children. She was a big personality with a heart of gold," he says.

Husband Martyn, 34, said Lorraine was uncomfortable throughout the pregnancy and doctors suspected she had gallstones, but scans showed she had two secondary tumors on her liver. The primary cancer was never found and it's believed to have been growing undiagnosed in her bowel for years.

Baby Liam is putting on weight and doing well in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital after being born on November 18.

[ESTonline]

Soccer Icon, David Beckham is using his fame to try to make the world a better place. The goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is urging the world to pay attention to the "shocking and tragic" child mortality rates in developing countries.

Speaking on his return from a trip to Sierra Leone in West Africa, Becks said his visit has hammered home the extent of the problem. "We can't turn a blind eye to the tens of thousands of young children who die every day in the developing world mostly from causes that are preventable."

The father of Cruz, 2, Brooklyn, 8, and Romeo, 4, said in Sierra Leone, one in four children die before reaching their fifth birthday. "It's shocking and tragic especially when the solutions are simple," he lamented. These simple solutions include vaccinating against measles and using a mosquito net to reduce the chances of getting malaria.

 "Saving these children's lives is a top priority for UNICEF and as an ambassador I hope I can help to draw attention to this issue across the world," said the LA Galaxy star.

According to UNICEF, more than 26,000 children under the age of five die every day around the world, mostly from preventable causes and in the developing world. In Sierra Leone, 27 percent of children die before reaching their fifth birthday, the highest figure in the world, according to a UNICEF report released Tuesday: The State of the World's Children (SOWC) 2008.

[Yahoo]