Babies & Kids Blog

When you’re pregnant, you go to the doctor a lot. You’re poked and prodded and your stomach is measured. You’re weighed at every visit (unfortunately!) and your blood pressure is closely monitored. As the weeks go on, you’ll undergo several tests. Hopefully you have a doctor that will thoroughly explain the reasons for each test and what the results may tell you but if you don’t, here is some information to help you on your pregnancy journey:

Blood Tests

If your health-care provider doesn’t already know the details about your blood, he or she will draw some blood early in the pregnancy. The blood will be taken from a vein on the inside bend of your elbow. This blood will tell a lot about…

• Your blood group: A, B, or O. This information is important in case a blood transfusion is ever necessary.

• Your rhesus (Rh) blood group: Your Rh factor may be negative or positive. The difference means nothing unless you are negative and the baby’s father is positive. In this case, your baby may be incompatible with your rhesus blood group, which can cause problems with future pregnancies. Knowing your blood type in advance lets your doctor prevent any trouble from occurring.

• Hemoglobin levels. Hemoglobin keeps red cells filled with oxygen. Hemoglobin levels often fall during pregnancy, causing anemia; your doctor will want to make sure your levels don’t go too low.

• Your immunity to rubella (German measles): If you have not built up an immunity to this disease, you will be cautioned to avoid exposure, especially during the first trimester.

• STDs: Because sexually transmitted diseases can cause many problems for the developing fetus and newborn, your blood will be tested for hepatitis B, HIV, and syphilis.

Glucose Screening

Most expectant moms are given a glucose-screening test between Weeks 24 and 28 of the pregnancy to check for gestational diabetes.

You are at risk for developing gestational diabetes if you fit into any of these categories:

• You have had gestational diabetes during an earlier pregnancy.

• You have previously delivered a very large baby.

• You are greatly overweight (approximately 20 percent over ideal body weight).

• You are over 35.

• You have high blood pressure.

• You have a parent or sibling who is a diabetic.

The test for gestational diabetes is not painful. It is long, however. To take the glucose screening test you will drink a sugar solution (which tastes like a thick, flat cola—I’m not saying it’s delicious, but it’s not all that awful either). An hour later, a blood sample will be taken and the blood sugar level will be checked. If the reading is abnormal (which occurs about 20 percent of the time) you’ll go home and come back at a later date for a diagnostic exam, called a three-hour glucose tolerance test, to verify the results. If you get a high sugar reading on the first test, don’t get too worried. Approximately 85 percent of those with a positive result on this screening test show normal blood sugar levels in the glucose tolerance test.

If you have gestational diabetes, it’s good to find out early. Your doctor can then help you create a diet and exercise program that will keep the problem in check and safeguard the health of your baby. He may also prescribe insulin if necessary. Finding out that you have diabetes is certainly upsetting, but it’s not cause for great alarm. Most women who develop diabetes during pregnancy go on to have normal, healthy babies. Be aware, however, that although gestational diabetes will probably disappear after the birth of the baby, some women ultimately develop full-fledged diabetes within the next 20 years. This is something you’ll have to watch out for at yearly follow—up tests.

Alpha-Fetoprotein Screening Test

Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is a type of protein produced only by a fetus—you do not produce it on your own. Sometime between Weeks 16 and 18, your doctor will take a blood sample from you to check the level of this protein, which can give an indication of the risk of certain birth defects. A high level of AFP might mean trouble; a low level might mean another kind of trouble.

High levels of AFP indicate the possibility of various things: It could mean twins, or that you have been pregnant longer than you thought. It could also mean that the baby has a neural tube defect, such as spina bifida (a deformity of the spinal column) or anencephaly (the absence of all or part of the brain).

Low levels of AFP mean you might be earlier in your pregnancy than you thought, or it can mean that the baby has a birth defect called Down’s syndrome.

The AFP test is just like any other blood test and it is not risky at all—it will not hurt or harm you or your baby. The real risk associated with this test is the same one you’ll find with all screening tests—the results are not absolute and can cause a lot of needless worry. If your test results are low, for example, there is a very, very slim (some say minute) chance that your baby may have Down’s syndrome. To find out for sure, you will need to have further diagnostic testing done, such as amniocentesis. This test is a bit risky and has been known to cause miscarriages in a percentage of cases. A low or high result on an AFP test can put the fear of birth defects in your heart. The risks involved in taking the diagnostic tests add to the fear of miscarriage, as well. If the results come back either too high or too low, deciding what to do next is the most difficult part of the AFP test. The decision is ultimately what to do with a defective fetus. Do you abort it or do you want to know early on what the challenges are that you’ll be facing at birth? There are other choices, such as adoption for Down’s syndrome infants. Parents need to think, before they take an AFP, what they’ll do with the results. You may be advised to take the screening test again, seek a second opinion, and/or meet with a genetic counselor. Whatever your choice, you must always keep in mind that most women who get abnormal screening test results give birth to normal babies.

source: familyeducation, excerpted from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth © 2004 by Michele Isaac Gliksman, M.D. and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo.

photo: abbottnutrition

Being pregnant is not easy, and being sick and pregnant is downright miserable. Before you were expecting, you probably never gave a second thought to downing some NyQuil when you had a cold or popping a few Tylenol whenever you had a headache. Now, you’re not so sure what medications you can take. Everything that passes through your bloodstream also passes through your baby’s blood stream so some medications are absolutely off limits because they can harm your baby.

Here are trusted pediatrician Dr. Sears do’s and don’ts for taking medication while pregnant:

• Do take the medicine in the exact dosage and for the length of time your doctor recommends. Taking more is not better, and it is often worse.

• Don’t take a lower dose than your doctor prescribes without consulting your doctor. The lower dose may do you no good, yet baby may still get the effects of the drug.

• Don’t read the PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference). The information in the PDR about drugs during pregnancy is there to protect the manufacturer rather than to inform the consumer. The warnings are needlessly scary and are often based upon research in which huge doses of a drug are given to experimental animals; the research may have little application to humans.

• Don’t take medicines, even over-the-counter ones, without consulting with your doctor.

• Don’t take over-the-counter remedies that contain several drugs unless advised by your doctor (e.g., cold remedies may contain mixtures of antihistamines, decongestants, aspirin, etc.).

• Don’t panic if you’ve taken a drug that you later read may be unsafe. Odds are greatly on your baby’s side that no harm was done.

• Do compromise. While some medications pose some risks to baby, a sick mom is not good for baby either. For example, if your nasal passages are so clogged you can’t breathe, a one-time dose of a decongestant spray, such as AfrinR, has been shown not to have any harmful effects on the fetuses that were studied.

• Do think about the effect of the drug on your baby. Because your baby’s liver and kidneys are immature, he cannot eliminate the drug as you can, so the drug may stay in baby’s system longer and at a higher level.

• Don’t use medicines if you are trying to conceive, especially in the first month. The first month of fetal organ development is a high-risk period for the effects of drugs. The “flu” you’re experiencing may turn out to be early-pregnancy nausea.

• If you are already taking physician-approved medications while pregnant, check with your doctor before taking an additional drug. Also, when your doctor gives you a prescription for a new medication, be sure to tell him or her about any other medications you are taking. Certain drugs may be safe if taken individually, but not be safe if taken in combination with others.

Image: parent24

If you’re pregnant, you’ve probably found yourself struggling to find a comfortable sleeping position at night.  Have you discovered that you cannot sleep in the same position you did before you were pregnant?  Why is getting to sleep so difficult now?  There are several reasons such as back pain, heart burn, increased belly size and shortness of breath.

The best sleeping positions for pregnant women are called “SOS” which stands for “sleep on side”.  The left side is the preferred side to sleep on because blood flow and nutrients from the placenta will travel more easily to the baby when you lay on your left side.

If your problem is back pain, try “SOS” on the left side and place a pillow under your tummy.  It should help to relieve the pull on your lower back muscles.  If heartburn is bugging you, prop up your upper body with pillows so the acid in your stomach has to fight gravity to make it up your esophagus.  Talk to your doctor about which antacid is the best for pregnant women.  Propping up your upper body with pillows should also help if you’re short of breath.  A lot of women like to use a specially designed maternity pillow to sleep.  It cradles the belly and you can prop up a leg on it to alleviate hip pain.

Bean Products Maternity Pillow: $49

Some of these sleep positions might sound comfortable, but keep in mind that you can move around and switch positions until you find what works for you.

Avoid sleeping on your back.  Sleeping on your back can bring on shortness of breath, heartburn, low blood pressure and even hemorrhoids.  It also decreases blood flow to the baby because the abdomen puts pressure on your major blood vessels.  You also don’t want to try and sleep on your stomach because your stomach won’t permit it!  The farther along you are, the more your stomach gets in the way.  It can also put a ton of pressure on your back.

If you’re finding that you just cannot get to sleep at night, look at your diet.  Are you getting more caffeine than you should be?  Avoid acidic foods or greasy foods that cause your body to work harder to digest.   Nap during the day.  It’s important that you get some good sleep, whether it’s at night or during the day.

Some say that the sleep struggles you have during pregnancy are to prepare you for when your newborn arrives and is up all night.  As the mother for a child that woke up every 45 minutes for the first three months, I strongly urge you to try to get as much sleep as you can before baby arrives!

Image: pregnancy-usa

Elizabeth (Munro) Adeney is a 66-year-old business woman from England.  Instead of preparing for retirement, she’s due to give birth to her first child in June.  Her friends say she is feisty and just as healthy as many younger women.  Elizabeth wants a child to leave her estate to when she dies.  Elizabeth underwent IVF (in vitro fertilization) in Ukraine, where standards for IVF are very lax.

Shockingly, Elizabeth is not the only senior citizen choosing to give birth late in life.  In Spain, Carmela Bousada became a mother at age 67 and Omkari Panwar from India delivered twins at 70.  The oldest mother with a baby in the United States is Aleta St. James, at age 57.

Omkari Panwar

Pregnancy past age 40 brings about many complications and the older the mother the more serious and risky it becomes.   When Omkari was due to deliver her twins via C-section, doctors were not even sure if she would survive the surgery.  Diabetes, high blood pressure, and preterm labor are common among older pregnant women.

But is it “wrong”?  On one hand, why shouldn’t a woman have a child, regardless of her age?  If she has the means and is physically able to care for a child she has every right to do it.  Motherhood should be judged on ability, not on how old you are.  Some would say that it is better for a child to have a mother with the financial means and the emotional and intellectual maturity to raise a child instead of a younger and possibly disadvantaged woman.

On the other hand, IVF treatments were designed for women of childbearing age whom due to biological complications (infertility) can not physically conceive.  Is it fair to allow older women that chose not to have children in their younger years to undergo IVF?

My personal feelings about the issue lean more towards wondering why these older women choose not to adopt.  Do you know how many babies in England alone are waiting to be adopted by somebody like Elizabeth?  Feeling the yearn to become a mother is normal, but isn’t a little selfish to insist on going to dramatic lengths to birth your own biological child?  Why?  So they’ll look just like you?  Does it really matter?

At 30 years old and the mother of one, I’m already exhausted.  I’m going to use my golden years to relax!  Retirement is a reward for all we go through with our careers, families and children. Who wants to chase a toddler when you could be playing bingo and knitting?

photo sources: ABC news, Times Online UK

                                                                  Photo Source: USNews.com

Apparently, this has been one of life’s mysteries.  Scientists say the reason pregnant women don’t topple over from all that baby weight centered in one location is because of the structure of their vertebrae.  According to ABC News, Harvard researchers have found: 

“There’s are slight differences between women and men in one lower back vertebrae and a joint in the hip, which allow women to adjust their center of gravity. This elegant evolutionary engineering is seen only in female humans and our immediate ancestors who walked on two feet, but not in chimps and apes, according to a study published in Thursday’s journal Nature.” 

Pregnancy is uncomfortable, but if this small shape difference in one lower lumbar vertebrae in a woman’s back wasn’t there the pain & discomfort would be a lot worse.  Pretty interesting.  What is also interesting is that female chimps & apes do not have this shape difference and are actually able to handle pregnancy a lot better than use humans. 

 Click here to read more on this study.