Keeping baby weight under control

By Li Zhixin

Pregnant woman may be eating for two, but one new study reports that women who gain too much weight during their pregnancies may deliver early or give birth to overweight infants.

Balanced meals that provide good nutrition for two are the best way to ensure both pregnant mothers and their babies stay healthy.

Overeaters may have obese babies

Women who gain too much weight during pregnancy put their children at risk of obesity later in life, according to an Associated Press report about US researchers who tracked women during their second pregnancies in Michigan and New Jersey from 1989 and 2003.

Among the 513,000 women and 1.1 million infants studied, scientists found that women who gained more than 24 kilograms during their pregnancy produced babies who were 150 grams heavier at birth than the infants of women who gained 10 kilograms.

The study was published online at the beginning of the month in the medical journal Lancet.

“Heavier babies have a significantly higher risk of staying heavy throughout their lives,” said David Ludwig, one of the doctors who wrote the report. “Big babies also have higher chances of developing problems later in life including asthma, allergies and even cancer.”

Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital in Boston, and his co-author said most women put on similar weight at pregnancy, though some become heavier during subsequent births.

Previous studies found that pregnant women who gained too much weight developed diabetes and high blood pressure, but little research explored what those extra pounds meant for the babies.

Typically, large babies are more likely to become stuck in the birth canal or to require a cesarean section.

Ludwig said that when pregnant women overeat, some of those extra calories over-stimulate fetal growth.

“The fetus ends up developing in an abnormal metabolic environment where there is excess blood sugar. That could alter the development of tissues, organs and perhaps even the wiring of the brain that regulates appetite and metabolism,” Ludwig said.

The doctors said that obesity prevention in the womb was not about encouraging pregnant women to trim down — women who gain too little weight are at increased risk of having a small baby or of developing diabetes, high blood pressure and varicose veins.

Pregnancy: Fact v fiction

Does having more sex mean you’re more likely to get pregnant? And does the missionary position really increase your chances of conceiving?

When it comes to sex and pregnancy, there are so many urban myths and wives tales that it can be difficult to know whether you’re doing the right thing, the wrong thing or simply wasting your time.

Heidi Murkoff has just released the latest in her popular What to Expect series, titled What to Expect Before You’re Expecting. The book is aimed at women who are trying to conceive.

But I don’t Want a C-section!

Perhaps because I’m about to have my first child in a couple weeks, I’m a bit, well, sensitive. I’m sure most every would-be father feels the same way. (And the mothers even worse, I’ve found! ^_^) Everyone keeps talking about Ceasarian sections here in China. My wife told me a couple nights ago she met another Chinese woman in a local market who had just had a little girl. While the woman was in labor at the local maternity hospital the three or four nurses in attendance kept insisting the woman have a C-section. The woman refused. However painful the experience, the doctor had assured her before she had gone into labor that she would not require surgery. So why were the nurses so intent on the mother having an incision in her belly that would forever sever the muscles in her abdomen? “The nurses each get a paid a commission by the doctor who performs the surgery,” the woman in the market told my wife in a whisper. “Whatever you do,” the new mother advised my wife, “however painful it might be, don’t let them do a C-section on you if your doctor already told you you’ll deliver the baby alright without one.”

I told the story to two of my magazine editors in Shanghai, whereupon one of the Americans told me he had read somewhere (China Daily, he thought), that China has an obscene number of C-sections per capita compared to the rest of the world; about one-in-three, he seemed to recall.

So, while eating dinner and watching the local Chinese news just hours later, what report should air but one involving pregnant women who are having C-sections in Suzhou. “Preganancy is so painful,” one of the women exclaimed on-camera. Other women in the report nodded agreement and cackled something in the local dialect. A Chinese doctor thankfully came on and assured the viewing audience that however painful, natural birth was actually a better option for infants, if possible. Of course, the doctor was a guy, and hadn’t to my knowledge been through a pregnancy himself.

Still, this C-section fad reminds me very much of the “sinification” of ultrasound technology: a mis-application of technology in an attempt to trump Mother Nature herself.

http://thisischinablog.com/

Women less likely to die in childbirth in Albania than in UK

(Guardian)-Just as many women are dying in pregnancy and childbirth in the UK as they were 20 years ago, leaving Britain trailing behind countries like Albania, Poland and Slovakia as well as the wealthier nations of Europe.

The stagnation of the UK, only 23rd in the global league table, contrasts strikingly with the developing world where, according to a major new and comprehensive study, real inroads are being made on death rates among women in childbirth.

Globally, the number of deaths dropped from more than 500,000 a year in 1980 to 343,000 a year in 2008. In the last 20 years, deaths have been declining at a rate of about 1.4% a year.

“These findings are very encouraging and quite surprising,” said Dr Christopher Murray, director of the influential Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the USA and one of the authors of the report published online by the Lancet medical journal. “There are still too many mothers dying worldwide, but now we have a greater reason for optimism than has generally been perceived.”

But while death rates appear to be coming down in a way nobody expected in the developing world, in the UK they have flat-lined. The reasons include a rise in the numbers of women having their babies later in life and an increase in those who are obese, increasing the risk of complications in pregnancy.

While Cathy Warwick, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, welcomed the global death rate drop, she said: “I am concerned that the UK rate – although it is very low – is not falling. It is possible that this is due to increasing levels of ill-health amongst pregnant women and possibly to greater numbers of older women giving birth.”

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Ease depression during pregnancy

By Li Zhixin

Pregnancy is usually associated with feelings of happiness and excitement, but for some moms-to-be it can become one of the most difficult times.

Depression during pregnancy is a serious condition that affects women’s health. An estimated 10 to 30 percent of women may experience depression during pregnancy. Symptoms include sadness, hopeless feelings that persist, severe anxiety or a feeling of disconnection from the baby.

New research suggests a couple months of acupuncture might help reduce the severity of these symptoms during pregnancy.

Tags: Beijing Today, ease depression, Health, pregnancy

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