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Pregnancy
Deliveries that are performed with a vacuum extractor or forceps are referred to as “operative deliveries.” They account for approximately 10-15 percent of all vaginal births. Although they used to be somewhat routine, operative deliveries today...
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Pregnancy
Unfortunately, complications do arise over the course of some pregnancies. Issues like gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, or bleeding may make a previously carefree pregnancy filled with anxiety, worry, and sadness. A delivery that comes too early...
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Pregnancy
Having a baby can be an expensive proposition, but not all childbirths cost the same. In general, you can expect to pay more for a C-section—but not always. When comparing a vaginal delivery versus a scheduled C-section, there are a few factors...
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Pregnancy
When his wife gave birth to their son George in 2013, England’s Prince William ventured to a place most royal dads hadn’t gone before: the delivery room. For many decades, a dad’s place during delivery was in the waiting room. Today, however, it’s...
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Blog
If you think that all you are hearing about nowadays are the announcements of babies being born by what seems like the bucketful, rest assured you are not hallucinating. It turns out that in the United States, most births occur in the late summer...
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Pregnancy
An epidural is a type of anesthetic that can provide pain relief during labor and delivery. Specifically, it is a regional anesthetic that blocks nerve impulses of the lower spine. It decreases sensations of pain in the lower half of the body. The...
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Pregnancy
You see it in dentists’ offices nationwide, but until about five years ago, there was one place you didn’t see nitrous oxide (laughing gas): in the delivery room. But this isn’t true everywhere. Nitrous oxide is an anesthesia option for laboring...
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Pregnancy
Most pregnant women put together a bag to bring to the hospital well before they go into labor so that when the time comes, they can just grab and go. However, some lists include so many items that, were you to include them all, you’d need multiple...
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Pregnancy
Welcome to Week 35! With still five weeks to go until full term, this is the week that many babies finally stop getting longer (or at least slow down a lot). This doesn’t mean your baby won’t get any bigger—he or she will still be packing on the...
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Pregnancy
Everyone knows that babies can arrive in one of two ways: vaginally or by C-section. But does that mean it’s a good idea to schedule a C-section so you can meet your baby once you are full-term? Or is it better to let nature take its course? In...
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Pregnancy
It’s no secret that giving birth can be a painful endeavor. But a growing number of women are opting against using pain meds and epidurals during labor and instead trying to find more natural methods of combating contractions. One such method is...
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Pregnancy
An episiotomy is a type of surgical cut that is made at the vaginal opening during childbirth. Episiotomies are usually done to help make delivery easier, instead of letting the vaginal tissue tear naturally during delivery. If your doctor is using...
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Blog
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had patients or friends who are pregnant and who’ve told me how they are so over being pregnant and they just want to deliver already—sometimes weeks before their due date has even arrived! While I’ll...
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Pregnancy
In a perfect world, labor always goes smoothly and every mom is able to have a quick, painless vaginal delivery. The reality, however, is that sometimes issues arise during labor that make a C-section necessary. Furthermore, if a problem occurs...
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Pregnancy
If you are pregnant and planning for your delivery, you may or may not have heard of birth plans. A birth plan is simply a document to help expectant parents communicate their wishes during labor and delivery to their healthcare providers. In a...
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Pregnancy
If you are pregnant and know you are going to be delivering by a cesarean section, it can be helpful to plan ahead for what your baby’s birthday is going to look like. Having the advantage of knowing you are going to be having surgery can get you a...
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Pregnancy
Most times, the placenta — which is the organ that your body specifically grows to help nourish your developing baby — attaches to the wall of the uterus for the duration of your pregnancy and detaches within minutes of giving birth. Sometimes,...
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Pregnancy
With about 30 percent of women in the United States delivering by C-section, it is important to be able to separate fact from fiction when it comes to this method of delivery. Whether you know ahead of time that you are having a planned C-section...
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Pregnancy
It is important to fully understand why a scheduled C-section is recommended as opposed to a trial of labor. While it is true that in some instances a C-section may be recommended, certain criteria should be used in making this decision to avoid...
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Pregnancy
If you’ve had a C-section before and are pregnant again, chances are you have been thinking about what your delivery will look like this time around. The good news is that your options are still open—but you should be aware of what your choices are...
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Pregnancy
Historically, midwives in the United States emerged in the 1920s, though they have been practicing around the world for thousands of years. These types of midwives were usually women in rural communities who had been taught to assist with birthing,...
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Pregnancy
While a vaginal delivery is often the goal for most mothers-to-be, there are a few scenarios where that just isn’t possible. Sometimes this only becomes obvious in labor, when a baby is not fitting through the birth canal or his heart rate shows...
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Pregnancy
When the subject of pain control in labor comes up, most women automatically think of an epidural. While an epidural might provide the most relief, it is not your only choice. There are multiple ways your obstetrics provider can make labor less...
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Pregnancy
The Lamaze method is a popular childbirth approach that teaches expecting parents strategies for handling pain during labor, potentially reducing unnecessary medical intervention. The Lamaze method is America’s oldest, most popular childbirth...
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
Chances are if you are pregnant, someone has talked to you about back labor (whether you asked them to or not). They may have also mentioned that their baby was “facing the wrong way” or “sunny side up” in labor. What they are referring to is when...
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Blog
Giving birth is wonderful, but it also means big changes when you get home with that baby and you’re wearing enormous pads, you’re bleeding, your baby is crying, you’re crying, and everybody is running around. In this Facebook Live event, supported...
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Blog
I had a colleague ask me a while back if I had delivered my son naturally. I responded, “What do you mean by ‘naturally’?” You see, I’ve heard this term thrown around to mean lots of different things to different people. To some it means a vaginal...
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Pregnancy
Giving birth vaginally can result in vaginal tearing or lacerations for many women. This is part of the normal process of a baby passing through the birth canal and out the vagina. It tends to be more common in women giving birth for the first time...
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Pregnancy
Welcome to the end of your pregnancy! Hopefully you’re feeling calm and ready and prepared. But even if you are worried that so many things feel undone—Is the nursery decorated? Do we have enough frozen meals? Do I have all my breastfeeding...
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Pregnancy
From the moment you get the big news you are pregnant, you spend time preparing yourself mentally and physically for “labor day.” While this big event will come in good time, be aware there may be a few false starts before the actual day arrives....
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Blog
Starting when you were a little girl, you dreamt of the day you became a mother.Even the thought of how many children probably crossed your mind. If the thought of becoming a mother is wonderful, but the actual delivery part is terrifying,...
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Pregnancy
When gearing up to deliver a baby, most moms have spent time considering how they might cope with labor pain. While many options exist, some women prefer to avoid the use of narcotic drugs. Here are some ways to prepare for an unmedicated delivery....
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Pregnancy
Unfortunately there is no one thing that always happens to all pregnant women when they go into labor. In fact, what a woman experiences as her body prepares to give birth can vary greatly between different women and even different pregnancies. But...
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
A submersion birth is exactly what it sounds like: giving birth while partially submerged, usually in a bathtub or a special submersion birth tub found in some hospitals and birthing centers. Already popular overseas, submersion births have been...
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Pregnancy
Welcome to Week 33! You’re now less than two months away from your due date. It won’t be long until you’re on weekly visits to your healthcare provider, and it will seem like everything is about to happen all at once. Until then, remember to...
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Pregnancy
Pitocin is a drug that is used daily in every Labor and Delivery unit in this country. This medication is actually the brand name of the man-made form of oxytocin, which is a hormone made in the pituitary gland located in the brain. Pitocin can be...
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Pregnancy
A shoulder dystocia is a complication encountered at the time of vaginal delivery. This occurs when a baby’s head has delivered, but the shoulders are stuck in the birth canal and do not deliver using standard delivery technique. Complicating...
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Pregnancy
Despite planning otherwise, sometimes babies arrive a little too quickly! While the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists doesn’t endorse home births, you may find yourself going into labor before you even reach the hospital. Here’s...
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Pregnancy
If you know ahead of time that you are going to birth by having a C-section, you can use this time to prepare emotionally, physically, and logistically. When you come home from the hospital you will not only be mastering the art of new parenting,...
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Pregnancy
A recent study done from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) shed some interesting light on how epidurals may impact the amount of time you’ll spend pushing your baby out. Even though we already knew that epidurals do prolong the...
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Pregnancy
If you’re about to give birth, surely your friends and family have told you exactly what their deliveries were like — and how yours should go, too. After reading the books and searching Dr. Google, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. Here...
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Blog
When one hospital in California was found to be performing a higher-than-average number of C-sections, an insurance company stepped in and led to some big changes. They said that unless this hospital could lower their number of surgical births,...
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Pregnancy
Experiencing a preterm birth for the first time can be a scary, stressful experience. Whether you delivered at 24 weeks or 34 weeks of pregnancy, bringing a baby into the world sooner than you were mentally prepared for can really make thinking...
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Pregnancy
Unless you’ve done it before, it can be hard to know how to prepare for a C-section. Fortunately, a little advance planning (if you’re having a scheduled C-section) can help make things go more smoothly. If you are having a planned C-section, you...
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Pregnancy
The placenta is a pancake-shaped organ designed to act as an exchange between the mother’s and baby’s blood supply. Not only does it produce the “pregnancy hormones” of chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), estrogen, and progesterone, it is also...
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Pregnancy
Welcome to Week 39! You probably noticed you still haven’t gotten much bigger since last week. You hit near your peak weight a week or two ago, so now it’s just about keeping comfortable and waiting for labor to begin. It could be anytime this...
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Pregnancy
As you’re nearing the final weeks, labor and delivery are no doubt looming larger in your mind. Anxiety over labor is common—even if you’ve taken every birth class you could sign up for, prepared an extensive birth plan, and already packed your...
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Pregnancy
A review of babies born via caesarean section has some possibly sobering news: they might be at slightly higher risk for developing autism spectrum disorders. The review, published in the October edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and...
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
When you are pregnant and deciding where you want to deliver your baby, most expectant parents think about many of the same things: How close is the hospital to my house? Does the doctor or midwife I like deliver there? Have my friends had babies...
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Pregnancy
Toward the end of your pregnancy, you may feel like your baby is gaining a pound a day and will never come out! For some women, this concern of having a large baby is a very real one. But what exactly is considered “big” when it comes to babies,...
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Pregnancy
Congratulations! You’re in the final month of your pregnancy! After weeks of rapid weight gain, you can expect things to slow down a little bit from here on out. Both you and baby have gained the majority of the weight you’re going to gain, so you...
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Pregnancy
The good news is that, by 37 weeks, only 3–4 percent of babies remain in the breech (bottom-down) position. This means that the majority of the time, babies are head-down in preparation for delivery. But what happens if they remain breech? Here are...
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Pregnancy
While home births account for only about 0.6 percent of all births in the United States, they have gained increasing visibility in recent years, especially in the media. Women opt for home births for various reasons: they want the comfort of being...
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Blog
August 29, 2015 marks the 10-year anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. I was a third year medical student in New Orleans when this storm struck, and even though I had not yet done my OB/GYN rotation I had a feeling that was where I was...
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Pregnancy
Among the decisions facing expectant parents is one that involves cord blood banking, a procedure that takes only minutes to perform and could potentially serve as a lifesaving option later in life for their children. However, just as the cord...
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
Giving birth does not end once you deliver your brand new baby boy or girl, though it may feel that way to you! The final stage of labor is actually when your placenta delivers. Usually this happens in a matter of minutes and goes smoothly, but in...
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Pregnancy
We’ve already discussed some old wives’ tales that have not yet been proven to help get you into labor, but fear not—there are some things that actually do work! If you are interested in trying either of these methods, be sure to discuss it with...
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Pregnancy
At some point after your baby is born, your doctor or midwife will place two clamps on the umbilical cord. He or she (or your partner, if they want to) will then use scissors to cut between the clamps and separate your baby from the placenta. If...
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Pregnancy
When Mad Men actress January Jones announced that she ate her own placenta after giving birth, she gave celebrity credence to what is becoming a more common request in the United States. Eating the placenta—called placentophagia—is believed by many...
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Pregnancy
Many women are told that when they are admitted to the hospital in labor they will have restrictions on what they can eat and drink. Some are told they can only have ice chips, while others are allowed to drink liquids but are not given any solid...
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Blog
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is a program that was developed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in the late 1990s to encourage breastfeeding globally, beginning with labor and delivery. BFHI, as it is called, consists of 10 steps...
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Baby
An Apgar score is a general measure of a baby’s health at birth. It measures things like: Heart rate Breathing Color Reflexes Muscle tone Each category is assigned a score ranging from zero to two. The scores are then added together to give a range...
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Pregnancy
Epidurals are a popular method of pain control for laboring women, but what are the risks? Is the pain relief worth it? Here are some of the specific questions women often have about epidurals. Will an epidural make my labor longer? Having an...
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Pregnancy
Having a baby changes so many things, including your body. Celebrities make it look easy…but that is definitely not the real story! If you had a vaginal birth, your perineum had to stretch so you will probably be swollen or sore after delivery. If...
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Pregnancy
If you just found out you are pregnant and plan to see an obstetrician for your pregnancy and delivery (as opposed to other providers), you may be wondering how best to select the doctor who will be involved in this very important time in your...
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Pregnancy
You’ve just given birth to a beautiful baby. And you may be anxious to get your baby home and begin your life together. But the time you stay in the hospital after delivery is an important time for you to heal. The length of time you will be in the...
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
The most common procedure done on labor and delivery in the United States is electronic fetal monitoring, or EFM. This is when a monitor is applied on your abdomen in the form of a belt so that your baby’s heart rate can be heard and recorded. An...
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Pregnancy
Every expectant mom has her list of what to bring to the hospital when she has her baby. And while that list is certainly important (don’t forget the car seat!), sometimes what not to bring is just as important. 1. Anything valuable. Here’s the...
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Pregnancy
It’s normal to be a little scared of the unknown, and giving birth is no exception. In this day and age, when everyone shares every detail of giving birth, it is not uncommon to hear horror stories and wonder if you can handle the labor and...
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Parenting
After the initial shock of being told you are pregnant with twins wears off, many moms wonder how this will affect their pregnancy and delivery. While each twin pregnancy can vary, there are some general similarities worth reviewing. From the...
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Pregnancy
Defined as the loss of more than 500 mL of blood after a vaginal delivery or 1 liter of blood after a C-section, postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is the deadliest complication of childbirth worldwide, with 1 woman dying because of it every 4 minutes....
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Pregnancy
When it comes to how your baby is positioned in the birth canal, being head down is the best way to be. Other positions (known as “presentations” in the medical community) are known as malpresentations. Some malpresentations may make a vaginal...
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Pregnancy
When preparing to give birth, many expectant moms have heard about episiotomies and wonder if they will have one performed when they deliver their baby vaginally. A common question that they may ask their OB/GYN or midwife is if it is better to do...
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
As your due date nears, you might be wondering how your body decides one day that it is time to give birth. What exactly kicks things off, and why do some women give birth on their due date while others seem to stay pregnant forever until they are...
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy
A preterm birth happens when a woman gives birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy. With this issue complicating about 12 percent of all pregnancies in the United States, many parents wonder how it could affect their future pregnancies. For the woman...
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Pregnancy
A doula is a type of specialist who has been trained to support a laboring woman before, during, and after her birth. The word doula derives from the Greek term “a woman who serves” and they do just that: they provide emotional and physical support...
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Pregnancy
Every pregnant woman wonders, “How long will my labor last?” Friends and families are often quick to share their labor stories, ranging from, “My labor was so quick and easy!” to “It took forever.” It can leave many expectant moms...
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Pregnancy
Chorioamnionitis is when an infection develops in the uterus during labor. This condition complicates 1-4 percent of all deliveries. Also known as intra-amniotic infection, the diagnosis is made when a mom develops a fever during labor and no other...
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Pregnancy
Mothers have many choices when it comes to creating a birth plan, and some of them are quite controversial among the medical community. Water births — also called immersion births — have long been viewed as problematic for a variety of reasons, but...
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Pregnancy
A cervical exam tells your doctor or midwife a few things about your cervix. However, the number most pregnant women focus on is how open, or dilated, the cervix is. Sometimes it can be confusing to know exactly what this number really does (or...
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Pregnancy
One of the most common questions many pregnant women hear is, “When are you due?” While a due date is a carefully calculated and important part of your pregnancy, it is at best an educated guess. Considering that only 5 percent of babies arrive on...
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Pregnancy
Meconium aspiration syndrome, or MAS, occurs when a fetus inhales fecal material—called meconium—into the lungs from the surrounding amniotic fluid. Meconium is the term for the dark green, thick stool that a newborn usually passes in utero or soon...
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Pregnancy
While it is true that we don’t completely understand why labor really begins, there are some things that can make your chance of giving birth preterm — or before 37 weeks gestation — much more likely. Here’s a list of issues that can lead to...