Strollerderby : miscarriage

Why Hide Miscarriage?

editors — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:14:00 GMT

Today on Babble:

"Why Hide Miscarriage?"

by Christine Chitnis.

I told everyone about my pregnancy in the first trimester -- and when we lost the baby, I was glad everyone knew.

Read it here.

A Happy Miscarriage Story: Believe it or Not

JeanneSager — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:25:00 GMT

Who knew there could be a happy miscarriage story?

Not Claire Hunter. The British woman was six weeks into her pregnancy when she began feeling cramps in her side and was rushed to the hospital. It turned out her pregnancy was ectopic - the fetus had formed in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus.

At six weeks pregnant, Claire Hunter lost her baby, and doctors told her she may never get pregnant again. Until six weeks later.

Still experiencing pain, despite surgery on her damaged ovary, she was given another pregnancy test. She was pregnant - and had been for at least a full trimester. Somehow, in all the hullabaloo over the loss of her baby, doctors missed a twin baby boy, a fetus that developed properly inside Hunter's womb. She gave birth in the summer to Ryan, a healthy seven pounds and change.

Why this story came out now, I'm not sure. It's not news of a lawsuit - which I guess there would probably be grounds for (how do you miss a second baby during surgery?). But how do you sue when you have a happy ending? A chubby cheeked, smiling happy ending at that?

Nothing takes away from the loss of a child, but to see that little guy sitting there, grinning, it gives you hope!

Image: Telegraph

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White Firefighter Reunited with Black Baby He Saved Forty Years Ago

"Pro-Choice Women Shouldn't Cry Over Miscarriages"

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Just in case your day is going a little too smoothly, let me share an article that will make your blood boil—particularly if you are one of the numerous women who has suffered the pain of a miscarriage and also happens to believe in a woman’s right to choose.

A guest blogger named Gina over at Mom Logic has written a gem of offensive inanity called “Pro-Choice? Quit Crying Over Your Miscarriage!” Here’s how Gina characterizes the pro-choice women who “break down in hysterics” over a miscarriage: “It's a baby when they want it to be, it's a bundle of cells when they don't.”

This is such a shameless confusion of the issue that we need to put Gina’s thinking in perspective with an extreme—but real-life—example: do I believe that a 12-year-old rape victim should be forced to keep her baby? Absolutely not. Would I be heartbroken if I lost the baby I was carrying, whom I had carefully planned my life around for years? Absolutely. These are two entirely different issues. One has to do with my belief in the universal right to reproductive freedom, which is essential to ending the oppression of women; the other has to do with my personal feelings about motherhood.

Many women who would not choose to have an abortion themselves (except perhaps in extreme cases such as rape or incest) respect other women’s right to choose—as do many men, who will never face the decision of whether or not to have an abortion. That’s why it’s called pro-choice, not pro-abortion. By Gina’s line of thinking, no one who wants kids—male or female—should support a woman’s right to choose.

Gina also writes of pro-choice women who have the gall to want kids of their own: “Suddenly the monthly visitor that they were relieved to get when they were 20, now, at 32, plunges them into the depths of depression.” Well, Gina, this is a little something called “family planning”: making life choices that give both you and your future children the best chances for happiness and success—and therefore, bettering the world. How could anyone take issue with women who were responsible enough to avoid pregnancies when they were too young to care for a child? If it weren’t for unplanned pregnancies, there would be no need for abortion in the first place.

Gina claims that she “respects women’s right to choose.” If she truly is pro-choice—which, by her own definition, means believing that all babies are nothing more than “a conglomeration of microscopic cells” until they are out of the womb—then I sincerely hope she never gets pregnant. It’d be pretty difficult to avoid things like smoking and drinking if you have zero emotional attachment to your baby.

Photo: Flickr/Steve Rhodes

Hospital Hangs on to Children's Bodies for Two Years

JeanneSager — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:40:00 GMT

It's almost the exact opposite of the stillborn baby thrown in a New Jersey hospital's trash - and just as horrifying.

When a British mother suffered her second miscarriage, she went to the hospital to see if she could arrange a funeral for little Jonah.

He had already been cremated, the hospital told her. But her first son, miscarried two years ago at twelve weeks, was still in the hospital, they said. Would she like him?

Leanne McCabe had been told baby Ty was cremated shortly after her miscarriage because of a British law that requires babies stillborn before twenty-four weeks be "disposed of" by the hospital, usually via cremation. Why she never returned for his cremains is unclear (although it IS clear she wasn't aware that his body was still lying in a mortuary two years later).

McCabe's discovery has since led to the hospital's admission that hers isn't the only stillborn baby awaiting his parents' final wishes to be carried out. Two more suffered what hospital administration dubbed a "delay."

I know it's coincidence that this story came up just over a week after the missing New Jersey baby tale. It's hardly a pandemic. But what do these stories say about how the world treats stillborn and miscarried babies? Do these hospital officials think they matter less or that the outrage would be diminished because the children never actually breathed in the real world?

Moms who suffer through miscarriage and stillbirth already suffer with the misperception that their grief should somehow be less because, well, "at least you didn't have a child and lose it." No, in many ways they didn't have a child - they had a baby who they never got to enjoy, but that doesn't diminish their feelings of love or the depth of their loss. And their children all deserve the same amount of respect in the end.

Image/Source: BBC

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Putting the Classism Back Into Surrogate Motherhood

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:55:00 GMT

It was with profound gratitude that I happened upon a seething Salon Broadsheet essay about a New York Times article called “Her Body, My Baby.” What a relief to know that another woman found this essay on gestational surrogacy as callously classist as I had!

One need only look at the photograph on the right to get a sense of how Alex Kuczynski’s privilege colors her concept of motherhood. Here she is standing in front of her Southhampton home (one of several) as her baby’s nurse waits obsequiously in the background. By contrast, Cathy Hilling, the substitute teacher who carried Kucynski’s biological baby to term, is shown relaxing on her porch barefoot, one hand on her swollen belly. It is as if the Times wanted to highlight exactly what Salon writer Amy Benfer (and myself) found so offensive about the article.

Benfer is appropriately deferent to “the tragedy of infertility,” and certainly does not argue that there is anything inherently wrong with the fact that some infertile women can afford to pay upwards of $30,000 for gestational surrogacy to fertile women who need the money. Her qualm is not with surrogate motherhood per se; it’s with the way Alex Kucynski treats the woman who carried and gave birth to her child.

Hilling refers to herself as a “foster mother” for Kucynski's baby (quite appropriately, since she and husband were longtime foster parents), while Kucynski refers to Hilling as “a vessel,” a person “renting” out her “organs.” She asserts, with catty sarcasm, “Surrogates would never say they were motivated to carry a child for another couple just for money; they were all motivated by altruism.”

When Kucynski comes across Cathy Hilling’s application in her search for the appropriate surrogate, she is condescendingly relieved to find that it is typed: “she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it.” What a shock! Who would have thought that the middle classes were computer-literate?

As Salon points out, Kucynski is a style writer who has written a book on plastic surgery, being herself intimately familiar with "beauty maintenance." During her grueling rounds of IVF treatments, Kucynski found hope in photos of Nicole Kidman “wearing skinny white jeans” just two weeks after giving birth. Physical vanity is certainly no crime, but it does make a lot of sense given the arrogant vanity with which Kucynski treats the women who have done so much to help her have a child.

Photo: New York Times

They Say: Flaxseed Oil Increases Risk Of Miscarriage

Amy S.F. Lutz — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:32:00 GMT

Lots of us take flaxseed oil, "nature's richest source" of crucial omega-3 fatty acids. But a new study by the Universite de Montreal's Faculty of Pharmacy and the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center should make every pregnant woman shelve the flaxseed oil for the duration of her pregnancy. Researchers found "an enormous risk" of premature birth when the supplement was consumed during the second and third trimesters.

According to researcher Anick Berard, "In the general population, the average rate of premature births is 2 percent to 3 percent. But for women consuming flaxseed oil in their last two trimesters that number jumps up to 12 percent." The study also examined the effects of other popular health products, including chamomile, green tea, and mint. All of these foods were safe for pregnant women.

Only women who ingested flaxseed oil were at risk. Eating whole flaxseeds poses no harm to the baby.

The Plus Side to McCain's Scorn for Women's "Health"

Kelly Mills — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:26:00 GMT

Flowers grow out of, uh, manure, don't they? Over at Jezebel, they point out that since McCain used his finger quotes about women's health (you know, our concern for our "lives" and "future reproductive health" which are apparently, quite silly) there have been a slew of women sharing stories about subjects you don't hear much about. Things like late-term abortions and miscarriages. You know, a couple aspects of our health stuff. The stories are often wrenching to read.

Brett already told you about A Little Pregnant's feelings on the subject. If you missed this very personal story of late-term abortion from the Boston Globe, I highly recommend you read it, with kleenex handy. And Dooce also pointed to Flotsam's story on pregnancy loss at 22 weeks. Oh yes, lots of "health" concerns. We women are just full of those.

I suppose if nothing else, it is a strange blessing women are sharing all their most profound and gut-wrenching experiences. If politicians feel comfortable dismissing very real matters of life and death and health, while at the same time legislating them in ways that do not protect our most basic rights, then it's only right they should have to look in the faces of the women who have suffered immeasurably and maybe someday answer to them. Though I won't hold my breath.

They Say: No One with a Uterus Should Vote McCain

Bipartisan Group Says McCain Would Be Bad For Kids' Health

They Say: Miscarriage Means More Risk

Amy Kuras — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:08:00 GMT

For women who’ve experienced the crushing blow of a miscarriage, one of the small comforts is the conventional wisdom that a single pregnancy loss doesn’t bode ill for future pregnancies.
A University of Aberdeen (Scotland) study of more than 32,000 expectant mothers showed an increased risk of many pregnancy complications among women who has suffered even one miscarriage.

They were 3.3 times more likely to have preeclampsia, twice as likely to have an induced labor, and almost six times more likely to need intervention like the use of forceps at birth.

Continuing the litany of suckage, they were 1.7 times more likely to show symptoms of a miscarriage but not actually lose the pregnancy, 1.3 more times likely to have bleeding after 24 weeks in the next pregnancy, and also had increased risk of a premature baby and of having a child with a low birth weight.

It should be noted that the risk of all of these things overall is pretty low, so an increased risk at that level is a concern but doesn’t mean your pregnancy is doomed to difficulty if you’re among the 20 percent of women who have suffered a miscarriage.

What’s interesting about this is that most research has focused on recurrent preganancy loss, defined as three or more miscarriages in a row. Most doctors won’t even begin to look at underlying causes for miscarriage until that’s happened. That’s an awful lot of heartbreak to go through before getting some answers, so hopefully this study will lead to women getting additional support in their pregnancies sooner rather than later.

Couple Sues After Failed Vasectomy

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:04:00 GMT

What would your first assumption be if your wife got pregnant after you’d had a vasectomy? Would you suspect her of being unfaithful—or your sperm of outsmarting your sterilization surgery?

Well, unless your marriage is on the rocks or you’re swingers (and, hey, I don’t judge!), the latter is the more likely. At least 1 percent of vasectomies fail to prevent pregnancy—just as condoms break and women on the pill get pregnant.

Mindy and Brady Hill of Arkansas found out what it was like to be that one percent (as, presumably, have thousands of other couples), and they didn’t like it one bit. They claim that doctors suggested that Mindy had been unfaithful, which put stress on their marriage. After Mindy miscarried, a paternity test showed that there was a 99.999 percent chance that the baby was Brady’s. No doubt this whole ordeal was highly stressful and unpleasant. Still, one would hope that Brady trusted Mindy enough that a paternity test wasn’t necessary to make him believe that the baby was his. But, of course, a paternity test will come in handy in court.

Mindy and Brady are suing for negligence and defamation. Should they win?

Photo: Shaadi Times

Should 21-Year-Olds Get Vasectomies?

After Miscarriage, Woman Paid $1,000 For a Baby

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:30:00 GMT

This is perhaps the most bizarre tale of child endangerment that you’ll ever read—and, thank God, the baby involved is unharmed, though in need of loving parents.

A Pennsylvania woman named Andrea Curry-Demus called paramedics last week and said she had just given birth prematurely. She was rushed to the hospital with an infant whose umbilical cord was still attached. Doctors were immediately suspicious of the woman’s story since the baby appeared to be full-term. After examining Curry-Demus, they determined that she had not given birth and called the police. Blood and hormone tests later revealed that Curry-Demus is not the baby’s mother.

The 38-year-old woman told police that she had a miscarriage in June, but she didn’t want to disappoint her mother by telling her the truth. So she befriended a pregnant woman named Tina, and arranged to give Tina $1,000 for her baby. According to Curry-Demus, Tina showed up at her apartment carrying the newborn, with the umbilical cord still attached. That's when Curry-Demus called an ambulance.

The healthy baby remains at the hospital while police try to identify who the birth mother is. Curry-Demus, who faces charges of endangering the welfare of a child, claims she's done nothing wrong.

Photo: totalbabyguide.com

Update:

Body Found in Curry-Demus' Apartment

Boys Don't Swim: Fertility in Men Over 40

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:01:00 GMT

Every sperm may be sacred, but some just aren't as viable after a certain age. Maternal age is a proven factor in fertility issues, but the link between paternal age and miscarriage rates has not been established as strongly until now.

According to findings presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference, paternal age of 40 or greater has a great effect on miscarriage as well as pregnancy rates.

Whether this new information will stop May-Decembrists from trysting remains to be seen.

Baby Delivered in Australia Toilet

Jen Chaney — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:35:00 GMT

What's with me and stories about women delivering kids in bathrooms all of a sudden? First came the incredible, true story earlier this week of a teen 's shower delivery. And now, a more harrowing tale about an Australian mom who delivered her child in a hospital toilet. (This is to say nothing of Brett's post not too long ago about the couple in Chile forced to deliver their babe in a bathroom.)

According to father Nick Patsidis, his wife said she had to use the bathroom not long after midwives at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney broke her water. But once she got in the loo, she realized the baby was coming out. According to the family, the midwives had disappeared. Dad walked in to see his daughter's head emerging, the umbilical cord wrapped around the infant's neck and the child turning blue. Nurses stepped in and were able to save the baby girl, who is doing just fine.

Naturally, the Patsidis family is blaming the hospital for its lack of adequate staffing. Royal North Shore apparently got into similar trouble a year ago when a woman miscarried in a toilet after waiting for two hours in the ER. Hospital officials, on the other hand, maintain they did nothing wrong. All of which sounds like the makings of a messy lawsuit.

Image: Treehugger.com

Lawyer Fired for Having a Miscarriage

Madeline Holler — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:31:00 GMT

What's worse than having a miscarriage? Getting fired for it!

Which is exactly what happened to this attorney at the San Francisco law firm Paul Hastings. Here are the opening lines of her depature email (which she won't get sued for writing since she passed up three months severance pay in order to not have to agree to stay quiet).

The circumstances surrounding my departure from Paul Hastings have been deeply disappointing. It is one thing to ignore an email sent as a colleague is waiting to have her uterus scraped after a miscarriage, but it is wholly another level of heartlessness to lay her off six days after that. [Partner X] is the only one who expressed any sympathy after my miscarriage, and I am grateful to him for that.

Now, it wasn't the miscarriage that got her fired, she argues. Rather the fact that she might try to get pregnant again. Over at Jezebel, they're saying this happens all the time at law firms and other corporations.

So, if this attorney was fired because she might have kids some day -- that's a total rip-off, of course. Which only goes to show you, women still need to be quiet about pregnancy and motherhood at work. Oh, and women should never, ever, ever cry about their personal life at the office, or send emails about miscarriages, as cold and callous as that sounds.

What do you think? Has this happened to you?

Photo: targetwoman.com

We Don't Even Know What We Don't Know

Adrienne Martini — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

While doctors know more about recurrent miscarriages than they ever have, the amount that they don't know about the process is vast. It's not for lack of trying, mind you. Human beings are just very, very complicated. Still, steps have been taken.

The New York Times' Jane Brody recently rounded up all of that is known about recurrent miscarriages, sifting through the evidence to tease fact from fiction. Some tidbits: Blood thinners seem to work -- unless they don't. A chromosomal abnormality is to blame -- unless it isn't.

What is unequivocally pinned down is that it is a minor miracle that any woman ever gets and stays pregnant in the first place. Yet anecdotal evidence would prove that's not true either.

Perhaps the take-away is that life is capricious and random -- but that might be too existential for the paper of record to print, yes?

Illo credit: Andy Martin for the NYT

Wha? Smoking NOT Bad During Pregnancy?

Kelly Mills — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:02:00 GMT

I've often complained about how pregnant women are given all kinds of conflicting information and told not to do all kinds of things, even when the evidence against such things is dubious. There seems to be an all-or-nothing approach to pregnancy dangers, which makes it hard for pregnant women to engage in any activity without feeling guilty or anxious (I suppose it's practice for new motherhood.) However, even I was pretty floored by a new study by the London School of Economics that says smoking during the first four months of pregnancy does almost no harm to the baby unless it is combined with other factors, and even after the first trimester the impact on birthweight is negligible. Um, excuse me?

The study looked at birthweight, and the researchers basically said the greatest risks are to women of low socio-economic status, who combine smoking with poor diet and alcohol. They add that for middle-class women who smoke during the first four months of pregnancy, there is little risk to the fetus, and even after there is a very small effect on birthweight. Low birthweight is linked with developmental problems and mortality. One immediate criticism of the study is that smoking is also tied to other problems like miscarriage, SIDS, and respiratory problems, and the study didn't address this.

Of all the things in the world, few are tied so clearly to serious health problems as smoking, so I'm totally skeptical of this one. And before anyone launches into an account of how their mother smoked like a chimney during pregnancy and they are just fine, I should add that almost no study offers a guarantee of destructive health effects, but that doesn't mean risks don't exist for a large percentage of the population.

Pregcellent: Women React Strongly To the Caffeine-Miscarriage Study

Kelly Mills — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:29:00 GMT

A friend of mine had an appointment for artificial insemination, and the clinic told her she should go on bedrest for three days following the procedure to avoid any risk of miscarriage. Well, my friend looked up a bunch of studies, and according to her research, bedrest not only doesn't reduce miscarriage risk after insemination, it has just slightly higher odds of miscarriage. But I can see why the clinic advised this: They want to avoid the idea that any maternal action resulted in a pregnancy loss, and in a way it's exactly how we treat pregnancy nowadays. Don't drink at all. Be careful exercising. Avoid sushi and brie and meat that isn't cooked all the way through. And now, quit coffee or tea, or at the very least, cut way back, or you'll have to live with the fact that if only you had been willing to give it up, you might have had a viable pregnancy. All this, despite the fact that the vast majority of miscarriages are likely the result of genetic or chromosonal issues that mean the fetus would never make it to term, even if you lived in a plastic bubble and only consumed special nutrients and filtered water.

And this is just one of the things that has raised the ire of lots of women towards the latest study connecting higher caffeine consumption to an increased risk of miscarriage. The research has been called out for the small sample size and the methodology of interviewing women post-miscarriage about caffeine consumption. And it is also raising the hackles of women fed up with being told they should do this and that or they are selfish moms. The fact that environmental toxins and pollutants have not received the same coverage was pointed out, as was the fact that some of the taboo behaviors are the norm in countries with comparable miscarriage rates. And lots of other stuff too, because I think many ladies are at a breaking point with being advised against things that they like having in their lives, pregnant or not.

Look, there are certainly things that have strong connections to issues in pregnancy, and most of those (like smoking) are pretty obvious because they have bad repercussions for non-pregnant people too. And of course, even those known hazards are not a guarantee of problems for the individual, believe it or not. But the more tenuous connections to things like coffee are getting to be a bit much. And I think what's sad about it is that almost every woman I know who had a pregnancy loss blamed herself on some level, or at least questioned her own behavior, and I include myself in that number. And it's sad because the recrimination comes in situations where most likely no one could have done anything to prevent the miscarriage, not unless they had the ability to change the chromosonal makeup of a fetus that was never going to survive.

Make That a Single Cappuccino: Study Links Caffeine and Miscarriage

Kelly Mills — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:32:00 GMT

Get ready for some flack from your barrista, pregnant ladies. A new study reported in the New York Times connects drinking 200 milligrams or more of caffeine a day (200 milligrams is about 10 ounces of coffee or 25 ounces of tea) to a greater risk of miscarriage. The lead author of the study, Dr. De-Kun Li, says pregnant women should consider going decaf or at least cutting back to a cup for the first few months of being knocked up. The study consisted of interviews with 1,063 pregnant women about caffeine use, but by the time of the study, 102 had already miscarried. Later, 70 more miscarried, for a rate of 16 percent of the group, pretty typical for the population. The researchers found that "the miscarriage rate was 24.5 percent in the 164 women who consumed 200 milligrams or more per day. The increased risk was associated with caffeine itself and not with other known risk factors like the mother’s age or smoking habits."

Is there any hope for the latte-loving mamas of the world? Maybe. Dr. Carolyn Westhoff at Columbia University Medical Center says, "'Just interviewing women, over half of whom had already had their miscarriage, does not strike me as the best way to get at the real scientific question here. But it is an excellent way to scare women.'" She says other risk factors like smoking have much clearer links to miscarriage, that most miscarriages are caused by chromosonal abnormalities, and that moderation in everything is key. I'll always be waiting for the day when they find that a joyless life, one devoid of the pleasures you love, like coffee, sushi, saunas, and the occasional drink, leads to increased risks in pregnancy.

Nine is the Charm: Becoming a Mother After 8 Miscarriages

Karen Murphy — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 14:17:00 GMT

There are few things more heartbreaking than losing a baby, and the threat of repeated miscarriages stops many would-be parents from trying again. My daughter's teacher left school for the rest of the school year abruptly two weeks ago because she discovered she's pregnant, and after having lost two babies to miscarriage before, she's on strict bedrest so as to have a hope of keeping this one.

But losing eight babies over a course of fifteen years? And then having the strength to try again? That's incredible, and my hat's off to Sarah Whitman for having done it, because now she's got beautiful daughter Maya, though tragedy almost struck again even after having got past the crucial early point where she had lost eight babies before.

Sarah lost three babies before being diagnosed with antiphospholipid syndrome, where the body's immune system thinks that the fetus is a foreign body and tries to expel it, causing blood clots to build up in the placenta and cause a miscarriage. But even medication to thin the blood in her placenta didn't stop her from miscarrying baby after baby. Sarah and husband Martin weighed adoption options but eventually decided to have one more try, and Sarah fell pregnant with Maya.

But at 22 weeks, early labor threatened to end yet another pregnancy in heartbreak so Sarah went off the blood-thinning medication as it was having an effect on the baby, starving her of nutrients. Finally Maya was born at 38 weeks, and she's now 11 months old and healthy, a testament to the power of determination and sheer luck, and maybe providing hope to other couples having similar experiences.

Photo: dailymail.co.uk

Miscarriage Myths Persist: Like That You Had Something To Do With It

Kelly Mills — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:01:00 GMT

A recent survey of women found that myths about the causes of miscarriage are still firmly with us. See, the majority of miscarriages are the result of genetic or chromosonal abnormalities with the fetus, hormonal issues, or problems with the uterus or placenta. Of course alcohol and drugs are factors in some cases, but for the most part, we're talking about straight-up medical issues, beyond anyone's control. However, a good third-plus of the women surveyed thought that a pregnant woman's bad mood could negatively affect her baby. I'm living proof here that foul moods do not prevent mothers from carrying babies to term.

Couple of other myths for you: "One in four of these women thought a pregnant woman's exposure to upsetting situations could hurt her unborn child, and one in five believed excessive exercise could cause a woman to miscarry." The tendency to believe in folkloric miscarriage stories was linked more to the respondent's education level than anything else, and luckily those who had experienced pregnancy loss were more likely to disbelieve the myths, indicating that they probably got some education on the issue through their experiences. While survey folks did not specifically assign blame to the moms in cases of miscarriage (Only "ten percent suggested pregnant women are responsible for their miscarriages, and 3 percent said mothers should be blamed for their babies' birth defects") there is something to the fact that people were willing to peg stress, upsetting situations, and bad moods as causes of pregnancy loss. Here, I'll say it loud, one more time: The miscarriage was not your fault.

Pregcellent: Who Do You Tell About Your Pregnancy?

Kelly Mills — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:27:00 GMT

I'll give you a hint: as Christina Aguilera discovered, you don't tell Paris Hilton, or any other complete idiot hoochie with access to a microphone. But there's a good lesson in all this, since lots of us have struggled with who and when to tell about a bun in the oven. Conventional wisdom says you wait on sharing the big news until you are out of the first trimester, just in case there's a miscarriage. But of course, there are no hard-and-fast rules, so here's my advice on the subject.

Do not tell:

-Anyone you don't want to tell if something goes awry (sad to say it, but it's true.)

-You might think I'm gonna say "loudmouths who can't keep a secret" but I'm not. Because it isn't the loose lips that make a problem, it's who they tell. So avoid letting your gossipy coworker know if you are keeping it from your boss, but tell your neighbor if she doesn't know another soul who could care less.

-People who will give you irritating or outdated advice. This probably includes some of your relatives, and anyone you met on the internet. Fine, I'm sort of kidding.

-Here's a sticky one: you might want to wait to tell people who are struggling to get pregnant themselves. Your call, but the news may not fill them with only joy. That's speaking as someone who went through that.

And please do tell:

-Your coach or trainer, your hair guru, your other doctors, or anyone who might need to modify or change behavior in order to help protect the pregnancy. Sounds like a "duh" but it bears saying.

Woman Thrown in Jail While Miscarrying Loses Baby - and Sues

Karen Murphy — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:39:00 GMT

I had to read this article three times. Partly because the facts are confusing and I wanted to get them straight, and partly because I had to keep picking up my jaw from where it fell on the floor.

Picture Sofia Salva, on her way to a Kansas City, Mo., hospital because she is three months pregnant and bleeding. She stops (this part isn't very clear) on the way to get some groceries and to put a fake temporary tag on the rear window of her car. A pair of random police officers happen to spot Sofia in the act and proceed to detain her, taping the entire event as per usual. Sofia requests medical attention, telling the officers that she is having a miscarriage and that she is bleeding. She even offers to be examined. After the ninth such request, the female officer of the pair, who clearly has excelled in her sensitivity training, replies, “How is that my problem?”

Sofia's car and possessions are searched, and after she is found to possess some "outstanding warrants for mistreatment of children, trespassing and several traffic violations", she is handcuffed and brought to justice. Damn straight. You never know what you're dealing with, right, K.C. Police Department? No tapes are available of Sofia's time in jail, but she contends that she continued to receive similar treatment, that is, her requests for care and attention of her emergency medical issue, namely the life of her unborn child, were ignored.

She was released the next morning and delivered a premature baby boy who died immediately after the birth. Sofia is suing the officers involved and the department for wrongful death, personal injuries, and failure to provide medical assistance. She is seeking actual damages exceeding $25,000 and punitive damages as well.

I hope the justice system treats her better than the law enforcement system did.

Can Morning Sickness Predict Miscarriage?

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:36:00 GMT

There are plenty of old wives tales about pregnancy. Want to know whether you're having a boy or a girl? If you're carrying low, you're having a boy. Want to increase the likelihood that you're having a girl? Load up your Palm with the Chinese birth chart calendar from HeyBaby, which will pinpoint the sex of your baby based on when you conceived.

But what about a healthy fetus? While you are heaving your guts out with morning sickness and a nice little old lady tells you not to worry because this is really a blessing in disguise, you might want to punch her out, but she's actually onto something.

Some recent studies have found that women suffering from morning sickness within the first four months of pregnancy are 30% less likely to miscarry. Nevertheless, the evidence remains mixed on the subject. Unfortunately, plenty of women have morning sickness and then miscarry, and many with none at all, carry to term. In this day and age of attempted control of the body and pregnancy and fertility, miscarriage remains a tragedy that is sometimes impossible to predict.