Two months before her due date, Valerie Post was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with swine flu. Doctors performed an emergency C-section and delivered a healthy baby girl, Nora. But Post, 24, has been in a medically induced coma since the Aug. 7 delivery.
Swine flu usually causes only mild problems in otherwise healthy people. But it can strike harder in pregnant women, and doctors are urging them to get the vaccine once it’s available in October. The hospital in Tampa, where Post is being treated, reports that an average of one pregnant woman a week has been hospitalized for the flu. Usually it’s about two per season, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
Cases as severe as Post’s are rare, but doctors are urging expecting moms are urged to call immediately if they have a fever, cough or sore throat. For the latest updates on swine flu, click on the Centers for Disease Control Web site.
Just what a woman needs while in labor — a doctor who tells her that she deserves to be in pain. Dr. Scott Pierce has been put on one year’s probation by a state regulatory agency for allegedly chastising a Chicago-area woman and denying her pain medication.
Pierce, an ob-gyn, also has been fined $500, the Chicago Tribune reported. It seems a slap on the wrist if all the allegations against him are true. In a lawsuit, Catherine Skol accuses the doc of berating her for not calling first before she arrived in labor at Rush University Medical Center in March 2008. He was allegedly so angry at her that he said she deserved the pain, commenting that “Sometimes pain is the best teacher.” Pierce was a fill-in for Skol’s regular doctor, who was out of town.
Rush hospital has since revoked Pierce’s clinical privileges and his medical staff membership. He resigned on Feb. 18. An attorney for Skol, a former Chicago police officer who has five kids, said she would proceed with her civil lawsuit against Pierce.
“An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away.” That’s the slogan in a British-government-sponsored health pamphlet targeting teens.
The leaflet, being given out to parents, teachers and youth workers to pass on to their kids, says, “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”
Steve Slack, an official at the National Health Service in Sheffield, says that the unorthodox message is not advocating irresponsibility. “Far from promoting teenage sex, it is designed to encourage young people to delay losing their virginity until they are sure they will enjoy the experience,” he told reporters.
Restaurants aren’t doing you a favor by offering a kiddie menu; they’re helping to supersize your child. The standard offerings of mac and cheese, burgers and chicken fingers are loaded with fat and sodium.
So what’s a parent to do?
Diabetes educator and mom Hope Warshaw told the Houston Chronicle that families should order off the regular adult menu. Instead of chicken nuggets, try an order of grilled chicken and veggies and share it with your child. “We need to take food decisions a lot more seriously than we do,” she says. “It’s about realizing sometimes that food can be a battle zone, but the battle is worth fighting.”
The Institute of Medicine has some numbers that should scare parents into action. Kids ages 4 to 8 shouldn’t have more than 1,200 milligrams of salt a day. But a kiddie meal at a typical restaurant blows that cap. The kiddie nuggets at Chili’s restaurant has 1,600 milligrams of sodium. The kid’s cheese pizza at the Olive Garden has 1,170 milligrams. A couple of meals out, and your kids are walking salt-shakers.
Warshaw, a dietician, had the following tips to help make your child’s dining-out experience healthier:
– Eat at ethnic restaurants, which encourage “family-style” sharing of entrees.
– Order low-fat milk or water. Avoid soda and fruit juices.
– Divide desserts.
– Be a role model. Don’t lecture your kids and then pig out on fatty foods.
Back away from that ice cream carton. Sure, pregnant women are eating for two, but that’s no excuse to binge.
The government has issued new guidelines for pregnancy weight gain. Obese women should gain only between 11 and 20 pounds. Previously, the Institute of Medicine had no category guidelines for obsese women.
About half of all women of child-bearing age are overweight, according to the insitute. Being overweight or obese during pregnancy can cause problems for mother and baby. Risks include gestational diabetes, labor and delivery complications and premature birth. Babies who are born overweight are also at higher risk for being overweight kids. Doctors recommend that women start a pregnancy at a healthy weight.
Guidelines for other women haven’t changed. The institute recommends that underweight women gain 28 to 40 pounds during pregnancy; women of normal weight should put on 25 to 35 pounds. Check out the report here.
American teens sented and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day. WTF, that’s a lot of LOLing!
A story in the New York Times suggests that all that time spent tap-tapping away might not be healthy. One pediatrician quoted argues that sending hundreds of messages could be interferring with much needed sleep. Some kids who are overzealous texters see their grades drop, or even their thumbs start to hurt.
Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is the director of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self, has studied teens and texting for three years. She argues that texting may make it tougher for kids to separate from their parents – one of the chief jobs of adolescents – since they can text them 15 times a day, asking banal questions like, “Should I get the red or the blue shoes?”
Yet, even when a teen’s grades drop because of rampant texting, and mom and dad confiscate the phone, they may be sending mixed messages by their own addiction to the Blackberry or iPhone. “Teens feel like they’re being punished for behavior that their parents indulge in,” says Turkle.
Now, excuse me while I go text my daughter to tell her to put away the phone and spend some time outside.
If you smoked while pregnant or in your child’s early years, your kid has been “biological primed” to become a smoker as a teen or young adult, according to researchers at the University of Arizona.
“Somehow smoke is changing the brain chemistry,” said Dr. Roni Grad, an associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the university, according to HealthDay News. “If you are exposed to smoking prenatally or in the early years of life, you are much more likely to be a chronic smoker at the age of 22.”
The researchers found that children exposed to smoking in utero or as a baby were four times more likely to become smokers than other children. Those results stuck even if the mother quit smoking by the time the child was school-age.
For free resources to help you quit smoking, click here.
At 66, Elizabeth Munro is the oldest mom-to-be in Great Britian. She says that her age doesn’t matter. “It’s not my physical age that is important — it’s how I feel inside. Some days, I feel 39,” she told the Sunday Mirror newspaper.
Munro traveled to the Ukraine to get IVF treatment (Britian, the United States and other Western countries have age restrictions on fertility treatments). She is expected to give birth by elective C-section next month. Munroe, who runs her own manufacturing business, is divorced and has no partner. “It doesn’t matter that I’m on my own, either,” she said. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself. I’ve done it for years. It will be just me and my baby. I know some people won’t understand, but I don’t care.”
If someone has enough money, it seems she can give birth at any age. In February, a 60-year-old Canadian woman gave birth to twins. Last year, two 70-year-olds in India had babies.
It’s been long known that folic acid can reduce neural tube birth defects like spina bifida. But now, researchers say that that the vitamin can also help baby’s heart.
Scientists in Canada say that in the 10 years that folic acid has been added to flour and pasta, fewer babies have been born with congenital birth defects, HealthDay News reported. There was a six percent decrease in heart defects each year, according to the study to be published in the British Medical Journal.
Doctors often tell women who are pregnant or who are trying to get pregnant to take folic acid supplements. But healthy eating can provide additional doses, too. The U.S. government requires food companies to add the vitamins into enriched breads, cerals, flours, corn meals, pasta and rice.
Give baby back her binky.
For years, many doctors have told moms that giving a baby a pacifier could discourage breastfeeding. But the idea of “nipple confusion” seems to be a myth, according to a study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
Researchers reviewed 29 studies from 12 countries that looked at the connection between pacifiers and breastfeeding. Although some women whose babies used pacifiers did stop breastfeeding earlier, researchers said that binkies shouldn’t be blamed. Those women may have had difficulties breastfeeding or just wanted to wean their kids sooner.
The researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine recommended that pacifiers be introduced when the baby is three to four weeks old, after breastfeeding is well established. Pacifier-use also is encouraged because studies have shown that babies who use them when they sleep may be less susceptible to sudden infant death syndrome.