The baby was ready to be born, but no one else was available to help except for her big sister.
Mom Briana Johnson had to depend on her 6-year-old daughter, Diyana, to fetch towels and other supplies. Johnson, a nurse from the Raleigh, NC, area, had to deliver the infant herself on Wednesday because the baby came faster than the ambulance and relatives.
Diyana saw her mom in pain through the contractions, but managed to be brave and not cry. “I was asleep and my mama woke me up,” Diyana told the Raleigh News & Observer. “She had stomach pains, and then she had the baby. I helped by getting the baby a blanket and opening the door for the rescue squad.”
Madisyn, who weighed 5.5 pounds, was born safe and sound. And her sister, Diyana, knows firsthand where babies come from.
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.
This fall and winter, when health officials anticipate a surge in swine flu (H1N1) cases, there likely won’t be enough vaccines to go around. Wednesday, health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended which Americans should have access to the H1N1 vaccine first, according to the New York Times.
Pregnant women, caregivers for infants under age six months old, children and young adults ages six months up to 24 years old were all among the group of 150 million Americans who should be given top priority, according to the CDC. The federal government expects about 120 million doses of the vaccine available by the end of October.
In the United States, pregnant women have been particularly hard hit by swine flu. Expectant moms make up about six percent of verified swine flu deaths in the country, while pregnant mothers only account for one percent of the U.S. population.
The CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the World Health Organization all recommend that pregnant women get seasonal flu shots, too, in order to protect themselves and their babies-on-the-way.
For more information on flu shots and pregnancy from the CDC, click here.
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.
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.
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.
The kid didn’t have time for her careful, by-the-rules driving dad. Blue-eyed Leighton Schmidt was born on the seat of the car as her father circled the hospital parking lot, looking for the correct emergency room entrance.
Leighton arrived less than two hours after her mother woke up in her Buffalo, N.Y., area home with contractions. The father, Michael, didn’t think that his daughter would arrive that fast, so he didn’t exactly hot-foot it to the hospital, the Buffalo News reported this week.
“He was stopping at red lights, and I was saying, ‘Don’t stop, don’t stop.’ He said it wasn’t worth a ticket,” said mom Julie Schmidt. After the baby was born, the panicked dad didn’t let himself look, but focused on parking the car and running in to get help.
Mother and child were reported to be healthy and have since been released from the hospital.
Expectant moms take heart: Whatever complications your pregnancies involve, they’re highly unlikely to be as wild as what Ashley Swendson, 26, experienced on a hiking trail near Colorado Springs on Thursday morning.
Swendson, who is five months along, encountered a black bear, who followed about 10 feet behind her on the trail. She thought the animal was approaching her with more curiosity than malice, but started running just in case, according to the Associated Press.
After scrambling up an embankment to escape, Swendson was hit by a slow-moving car. She was unhurt, but taken to the hospital for a check-up.
Unfortunately, the bear did not fare so well. After it was captured, and Swendson identified it, the bear was euthanized. The expectant mother feels badly that the bear hard to die; she plans to give her child — whether its a boy or a girl — the middle name “bear” in the critter’s honor. And won’t she have a tale to tell when the tyke asks where that name came from?