Childbirth at Home on the Rise, Says Report

Creatas Images/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- More women are opting to deliver their babies at home, according to new research published Friday in the journal Birth.

Using birth certificate data, researchers from the National Center for Health Statistics report they saw a 20 percent rise in home births between 2004 and 2008.

"I think there's a variety of reasons for the increase," said Marian MacDorman, a statistician and lead author of the report.  "The desire for a low-intervention birth in a familiar environment surrounded by family and friends, lack of transportation in rural areas, and cost factors could all factor in."

The total cost for a home birth, MacDorman said, is roughly one-third the cost of a hospital birth.  So for women who don't have insurance, delivering at home is cheaper.  On the other hand, not all insurers cover home births.

Another factor contributing to the rise in home births could be the simultaneous rise in C-sections -- the focus of the 2008 documentary, The Business of Being Born.  The film, produced by actress and talk show host Ricky Lake, suggests childbirth was transformed into a highly medicalized procedure in the twentieth century, citing reports that 95 percent of U.S. births took place at home in 1900.

Despite the hefty boost in recent years, home births still account for less than one percent of all deliveries.  And while acknowledging that the risks associated with home births are low, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology does not support the practice.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Most Women Experience Complicated Deliveries, AHRQ Says

Comstock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- More than nine out of every 10 women giving birth in the U.S. had complications in 2008, according to data released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Premature labor, urinary infection anemia, diabetes, vomiting, bleeding and hypertension were among complications experienced by 94 percent of women hospitalized for pregnancy and delivery, the federal agency reports in its latest News and Numbers.

AHRQ also found that complications during delivery also made up nearly five percent of total U.S. hospital costs at $17.4 billion.  Hospital stays for complicated pregnancies cost almost 50 percent more than those without complications, the agency says.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Study: Post-Partum Depression May Be Linked to Oxytocin Levels

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(BASEL, Switzerland) -- Oxytocin has been known to serve several functions in women, including roles in pregnancy, labor, and breastfeeding.  Now, a new study released Wednesday finds that the hormone may also be associated with emotional processing.

Researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland found that women with lower levels of oxytocin in their blood during the last three months of pregnancy were more likely to experience symptoms of post-partum depression two weeks after giving birth than women with higher blood levels of the hormone.

Despite their finding, the researchers point out that their study, which was published in Neuropsychopharmacology, can’t determine whether lower oxytocin levels actually directly contribute to post-partum depression.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Researchers Identify '15' as Magic Number for In Vitro Fertilization

Stockbyte/Thinkstock(LONDON) -- Women having difficulty conceiving often turn to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, to get pregnant.  But many times, it takes them several tries before they can get an implanted, fertilized egg to stick.

Researchers at King’s College London, however, have calculated that the ideal number of eggs that should be obtained at the start of the process in order to yield a live birth is 15.

The finding, published Tuesday in the journal Human Reproduction, was determined after the study's authors analyzed over 400,000 IVF cycles performed in the U.K. from 1991 to 2008.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Pregnant Woman With Food Allergies Ate Big Macs for Nine Months

Creatas Images/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- By the time Suzanne Franklin gave birth to a whopping 10 pound, two ounce baby this past Christmas she was already familiar with the concept of super sizing.  Due to her severe food allergies, the British mom-to-be decided early on in her pregnancy that she would only eat McDonald's Big Macs.

It was Bic Macs, three meals a day for nine months.  And hold the pickles, lettuce and cheese because she is allergic to them, along with vegetables, milk, peanuts and dozens of other foods.

Franklin's two-all-beef-patties diet may seem a bit extreme, but doctors warned her that her allergies would likely exacerbate during pregnancy if she didn't avoid her triggers.

It's common for pregnant women to experience worsening allergy symptoms or even spontaneously develop them despite having no issues beforehand.  A quarter of pregnant women suffer from true allergies and up to 30 percent experience an allergy-like condition known as pregnancy rhinitis characterized by a perpetually stuffy, runny nose and itchy, red eyes.

Laura Corio, M.D., an Ob/Gyn who practices in Manhattan, says symptoms can vary with each pregnancy.  A woman who is plagued by dust mites and cat dander while carrying her first child might have no issues the next time around.

"The trouble usually starts in the second trimester and gets progressively worse as the pregnancy progresses," she explains.

The reason for all the sneezing, coughing and itching isn't entirely understood.  Corio believes the pregnancy hormone progesterone may be partly to blame because it increases breathing frequency.

A burgeoning belly complicates matters by pushing up on the diaphragm making it even more difficult for the expectant mother to expand her lungs.  To compensate, many women begin breathing through their mouth.  Without the benefit of the nose's filtration system, more allergens are able to sneak into the body.

Raging hormone levels also weaken the immune system.  While this helps reduce the odds of a miscarriage, it also increases susceptibility to allergies.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Texas Woman Paralyzed in Car Crash Gives Birth

KTRK/ABC News(HOUSTON) -- At first it seemed as if Krystal Pierre was the sole survivor of a car crash that killed her sister and grandmother last August, until doctors realized that Pierre's unborn child -- she was two months pregnant at the time -- had made it through the wreck as well.

The accident left the 29-year-old Houston woman paralyzed from the breastbone down -- she underwent four surgeries during the course of her pregnancy -- but she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, T.J.

Named after his father, Tony Joseph Pierre was born with his left leg shorter than his right, and is missing a bone in that leg, which doctors believe is unrelated to the accident.

Dr. Sean Blackwell, Pierre's ob-gyn, says Pierre was very lucky to have such an uneventful pregnancy.

"She was early in pregnancy at the time of the crash, so her uterus and the baby were still very tiny and protected by the belly," Blackwell told ABC News. "It's still pretty amazing that she was able to have these surgeries and the necessary medication and still deliver full term, vaginally," he says.

"Things were just on her side," says Blackwell, who is a maternal-fetal specialist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Pierre was no doubt lucky, but Dr. Alan Peaceman, chief of the division of maternal fetal medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, says that paralysis during pregnancy is not as much of an obstacle as one might think.

"The main concern is a complication during labor known as autonomic hyperreflexia," he says.

Basically, when the internal organs are stimulated, people who are paralyzed will experience a hormone surge that raises their blood pressure. During labor, a paralyzed woman might get a hormone surge at each contraction, which can be life-threatening if not controlled medically.

In Pierre's case, two epidurals were administered to help combat her pain so that her body would not react in that way. Even though paralyzed, Pierre says she "definitely felt the contractions" and could, in fact, feel her son moving and kicking throughout the pregnancy.

Though T.J. will most likely undergo surgery at age two for the missing bone in his leg, Blackwell says for now the family is home getting used to life with a baby:

"We're all just adjusting to having him. He's the king, he rules everything," Pierre says, laughing.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Prenatal Pesticide Exposure Linked to Low IQ Later in Life

Hemera Technologies/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Expectant mothers exposed to agricultural chemicals could be putting their babies' cognitive development at risk, according to new research published Thursday as three independent studies in Environmental Health Perspectives.

The latest research links prenatal pesticide exposure (measured in the urine of mothers-to-be) to a lower IQ in children by age nine.  The research teams, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the school of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, all conclude that pesticide exposure during pregnancy could negatively affect brain development.

But a lack of controlled trials, for obvious reasons, makes it impossible to determine whether there is cause and effect.

"The biggest problem with these studies is they attempt to demonstrate an association when there has not yet been a mechanism identified that would explain how pesticides cause any of the abnormalities," said Dr. Donna Seger, associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and director of the Tennessee Poison Center.  "Because pesticide exposure and abnormal developmental occur in a specific patient population does not mean that one caused the other."

So-called "association studies" infuriate Ali Bergstrom -- a 34-year-old New York City-based blogger whose son was born with a rare birth defect called Goldenhar syndrome -- who said it's devastating to have a child who is disabled because of something that happened in the womb.

"When these studies come out and they say it's association and not cause and effect, it's very frustrating as a mother because I know something caused this.  It infuriates me."

But the three studies, which used different subjects and methods but arrived at similar conclusions, should raise a red flag that widely-used chemicals may have serious health consequences for unborn babies, according to Dr. Rodney Dietert, professor of immunotoxicology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

"Taken together, these studies are an alarm that signals we have underestimated the risk from low level prenatal exposures to certain environmental chemicals," Dietert said.  "It seems clear that our current methods and applications for identifying environmental risks posed to critical physiological systems of children are inadequate."

Dietert is pushing for better safety testing to avoid surprises, such as the findings reported Thursday, years down the road.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Teacher Forgives Students Whose Fight Resulted in Her Miscarriage

Comstock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The lesson New York Spanish teacher Lissedia Batista wants to leave her students with goes far beyond verb conjugations.

Although Batista miscarried after she was accidentally pushed while trying to break up a fight between two of her students, she returns to the classroom this week with only forgiveness and understanding for the pair.

"They're so young, and for something like that to follow them for the rest of their lives? I think they were already stressed enough with the fact that they felt they caused the death of someone's child," Batista, who teaches at Exploration Academy in the Bronx, told the New York Post.

The accident that ended with the loss of Batista's unborn child began when two 15-year-old students, one in ninth grade and the other in tenth, argued over a classroom chair, Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, told ABC News at the time of the accident.

When Batista tried to break up the fight, she was accidentally pushed and fell to the ground.  She was rushed to the hospital where doctors determined that she had miscarried.

Batista said she would not press charges against the two teenagers because she didn't want them to end up in the criminal justice system, someone close to Batista told ABC News affiliate WABC-TV in New York.

Despite her loss, Batista seems more worried about the welfare of the two students than she is about her own.

"You don't know how some people might take it.  Some people just really go into deep depressions, and teenagers nowadays have a lot to go through and they are the ones that commit the most suicides out of all the age groups.  I didn't want something like that to happen at all.  I don't hold any sour feelings toward them at all," she told the New York Post.

While Batista's actions might seem extraordinarily self-sacrificing, psychologists say that forgiveness is the key to healing.

"People need to know that letting go and forgiveness is something that benefits themselves.  The instinct when hurting is often times thinking about what's going to make the other person feel the pain, eye for an eye.  But what will really helps you heal is to forgive.  Regardless of the other person, forgiveness is the best thing for you," said Ryan Howes, a Pasadena, California, psychologist.

Research seems to support this concept. Studies have found that forgiveness is healthy, both psychologically and physically.  Those who are better forgivers tend to have lower blood pressure, lower stress levels, fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, and better relationships.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Placenta Accreta: Multiple C-Sections Can Kill Mother

David De Lossy/Digital Vision(NEW YORK) -- Barbara George nearly hemorrhaged to death while doctors delivered her fifth child at Hackensack Medical Center in New Jersey. The stay-at-home mother from South Orange was diagnosed with placenta accreta, a life-threatening condition where the placenta grows into the uterine wall and sometimes beyond.

George, 38, had the most invasive form -- percreta -- and the placenta dangerously penetrated the entire uterine wall and had attached itself to her bladder.

Once a rare event that affected 1 in 30,000 pregnant women in the 1950s and 1960s, placenta accrete now affects 1 in 2,500 pregnancies, according to a 2007 report in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In some hospitals, the number is as high as 1 in 522.

And doctors say the main reason is the dramatic rise in the number of Caesarian sections -- about 38 percent of all pregnancies in New Jersey, the highest in the nation.

"The rule of thumb is if you have one C-section and the placenta sits right on top of the scar, the risk of placenta accreta is 25 percent," said Dr. Abdulla Al-Khan, director of the Division of Fetal Medicine and Surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center.

"If you've had two previous C-sections the risk is close to 50 percent and three, it's 75 percent and four, it's invariably closer to 100 percent."

George was given magnesium and steroids to encourage the baby's lung development. In the middle of New Jersey blizzards on Dec. 27, Hannah was delivered by a long Caesarian cut from the sternum to public bone.

There was never any danger to the baby, who was born in 45 minutes, but doctors were worried about George, cauterizing every blood vessel using hypothermic techniques so they could slowly peel away the placenta from the bladder. 

The risk of the mother dying in childbirth has been cut by 99 percent since the turn of the 20th century, from 850 deaths per 100,000 births in 1900 to 7.5 in 1982, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Natalie Portman Drops Vegan Diet During Pregnancy

Kevin Winter/Getty Images(ATLANTA) -- Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman, who is pregnant with her first child, has dropped her vegan diet. Portman, who launched a vegan shoe line in 2008, said the strict diet that prohibits animal-derived products, from meat to honey, took its toll when she started craving sweets.

Dr. Marjorie Greenfield, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, said it's common for women to make the switch during pregnancy.

"A lot of people do, I think, listen to their bodies and switch from being vegan to vegetarian when they're pregnant," Greenfield said. "Some people can just feel they're not getting enough and have the smarts to say, 'My body is telling me something and my baby is more important."

And while a healthy vegan pregnancy is possible, it's tricky.

"I know there are people who do stay vegan," Portman told Atlanta radio station Q100, "but I think you have to just be careful, watch your iron levels and your B12 levels and supplement those if there are things you might be low in your diet."

Vegans often need to take supplements like iron and vitamin B12.

The biggest challenge for vegan moms-to-be is getting the right kind of protein and enough of it.

"In order to make whole proteins there are certain essential amino acids your body can't make. You have to combine your vegetable protein to make them," Greenfield said.

For babies to grow, mom has to gain weight too.

"If you're not gaining weight, that would certainly be a red flag," Greenfield said. "If you have a poor diet, the baby cannot grow well."

During pregnancy, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions recommends six to 11 servings of grain products, three to five servings of vegetables, two to four servings of fruits, four to six servings of milk and milk products, and three to four servings of meat and protein foods every day.

"If you're not eating a standard diet, the take-home message is educate yourself about where the gaps might be and how you can fill them in a healthy way," Greenfield said.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio