A radical technique that chooses the best embryo could boost the chances of thousands of couples having a healthy baby.

An IVF technique which claims to triple the chances of a successful birth is being described by some in the scientific community as the biggest breakthrough in fertility treatment for years.

It uses time-lapse imaging to look at embryos and identify those which have chromosomal abnormalities.

Embryos affected with this condition, known as aneuploidy, will not implant in the womb and can lead to miscarriage, or birth defects such as Down’s syndrome.

Researchers at British IVF clinic operator CARE Fertility used the technique to select “low-risk” embryos not likely to have chromosomal abnormalities.

By doing so, they believe it can raise the chances of a successful birth from the current average of 25% to around 78%.

In most IVF labs, a developing embryo yet to be transferred to a womb will be checked up to six times over a five-day period.

Time-lapse imaging allows more than 5,000 snapshots to be taken over the same period.

Professor Simon Fishel, managing director of CARE Fertility Group, said: “In the 35 years I have been in this field this is probably the most exciting and significant development that can be of value to all patients seeking IVF.”

Stuart Lavery, consultant gynaecologist and director of IVF at Hammersmith Hospital, London, said: “Time-lapse imaging of the early development of human embryos offers the exciting potential of a novel and non-invasive way of selecting the embryo with the greatest chance of implantation outside the womb.”

Each year licensed clinics in Britain carry out 60,000 IVF treatments, with couples paying between £5,000 and £10,000 for each cycle.

Experts agreed a randomised trial was needed to compare time-lapse imaging with conventional techniques.

Sue Avery, director of Birmingham Women’s Fertility Centre, said: “Until the new technique is compared to current practice we cannot know whether different embryos are being chosen.

“The IVF community needs a prospective randomised controlled trial to prove that the new approach delivers better results before it can be recommended to patients.”

SOURCE

Those priceless words that mean that baby is, or should be, ready to be born. You’ve spent almost 10 months getting bigger and more uncomfortable and the chances are you now have an elbow in your bladder and a foot under your lungs making everything worse. Everyone you speak to will have their own advice to give about things that can induce labour, some more successful than others, so we thought we’d try to see if there is any truth behind any of the methods.

Raspberry Leaf Tea

The science bit: (from Wikipedia)

Traditional lore suggests that pregnant women use raspberry leaf tea, especially as an aid in delivery. However, scientific research has found no evidence to support this claim. While there is no evidence that raspberry leaf tea can help bring on labor, its nutrients have been found to strengthen the uterine muscles which could make contractions more efficient. Scientific facts indicate that raspberry leaf tea is indeed a healthy drink but none of these facts can substantiate claims of raspberry tea inducing labor.

Every Woman’s Herbal claims that raspberry leaf tea will enrich the mother’s milk, especially during periods when the baby is going through a growth spurt.

There is considerable discussion around the possible benefits of raspberry leaf tea taken late in pregnancy. The consensus seems to be that while taking raspberry leaf tea should not be expected to bring the onset of labour forward, it might shorten the second stage of labour. Most of the evidence available is anecdotal, and a recent scholarly review stressed concern at the lack of evidence for safety and efficacy and called recommendations of its use “questionable”.

The real-life experience:

Aly from Plus 2.4 says “I used Raspberry leaf with all my pregnancies from 34 weeks, drinking in copious amounts a few days before they were due, moving, and walking a mile home started my first. Sex for my second, both first two babies came on their due date.”

Conclusion? Well, it seems to be a help rather than a full on kick-start to labour. Drinking it can’t hurt, just don’t expect miracles!

Scrubbing floors

The science bit: If we’re honest, we can’t find anything scientific to back this one up, the phrase ‘old wives tale’ is bandied about a lot when it comes to floor-scrubbing, but some people postulate it works because you put pressure on your pelvis because of being on all fours.

The real life experience:

Jenny from Cheetahs in my Shoes says “I couldn’t walk but was floor scrubbing as my DH was renovating his classic car and there was black gunk all over the place. It did me no good. I have cervix of steel too – induction took 6 days.”

Conclusion? Don’t get your scrubbing-brush out just yet…!

Castor oil

The science bit: Trusty ol’ Wikipedia again “The use of castor oil to induce labor is controversial. One study showed that women who receive castor oil have an increased likelihood of initiation of labor within 24 hours compared to women who receive no treatment( Following administration of castor oil, 30 of 52 women (57.7%) began active labor compared to 2 of 48 (4.2%) receiving no treatment). However, another study showed that castor oil had no effect on the time to birth in women whose pregnancy exceeds 40 weeks.

Castor oil, when ingested, triggers cramping in the bowel, making it an effective laxative. Thus, it is intended that such cramping extend to the uterus. In an overdue pregnancy in which the mother’s cervix is already effacing and partially dilated, this cramping can lead to labour contractions. The irregular, painful contractions of castor oil-induced labour can be stressful on the mother and foetus. It also leaves the labouring woman quite dehydrated as a result of the vomiting and diarrhoea which result when the recommended dose of castor oil for labour induction is taken—2 oz, or about 4 tbsp. This leaves her without access to the energy she could otherwise derive from food or drink throughout her labour process. Using castor oil for induction is not recommended without consulting a medical practitioner and is not recommended in a complex pregnancy.”

The real-life experience:

Mummy Barrow told me that a lady she knew “drank half a litre and when her son was born the next day he came out like a bar of soap, midwife nearly dropped him. But that could be a coincidence.”

Conclusion? Definitely seems to work but should be used with extreme care.

Sex

Now, the rumours here vary. Some say that straightforward sex is what you need to engage in, others say that it’s oral sex only you must imbibe the semen at the end for it to work. The latter sounds like a nasty rumour started by men, but who knows?!

The science bit: Two doctors have their say ”I tell my patients to do that all the time,” Harper says. Although there’s no proof sex can start labor, there is a good reason why it might. Harper says sex releases prostaglandins, hormone-like substances that are like the medications used to induce labor.  And it won’t hurt to try!

“I think sex is a great idea,” Stein agrees. Make sure your water has not broken and your doctor or midwife has given you the green light. She adds that it’s important for the man to ejaculate inside the vagina. “This ejaculate contains prostaglandins which stimulate the cervix … possibly leading to contractions.”

In terms of fellatio: “As late as 1976, some doctors were advising women in the eighth and ninth months of pregnancy not to swallow semen lest it induce premature labour, even though it is now known to be safe.” however, it does appear to have a lot of other benefits: “

It has been suggested that fellatio may, through “immune modulation”, have a beneficial role in preventing dangerous complications during pregnancy, reducing specifically the risk ofmiscarriage and pre-eclampsia. Specifically, several research groups^[26] have reported that pre-eclampsia, a life threatening complication that sometimes arises in pregnancy, is much less frequent in couples who have practiced oral sex, and even more rare in couples where fellatio regularly ended with a woman’s swallowing of her partner’s semen.

The results were statistically significant and are consistent with the fact that semen contains several agents that have important roles in the prevention of pre-eclampsia, which may arise out of an immunological condition.^[25][27][28] According to that view, preeclampsia is caused by a failure of the mother to accept the fetus and placenta, which both contain “foreign” proteins from the father’s genes.

Regular exposure to the father’s semen helps cause immunological tolerance to their proteins. Other studies also found that, while any exposure to the partner’s sperm during sex appears to decrease the chances of various disorders, women in couples who have practiced “sex acts other than intercourse” are less than half as likely to suffer pre-eclampsia”

Real-life experience:

 Kym from It’s All About Kym said “never worked for me. I was 6 days overdue and still went to 9 over and had to be induced  but my cousins waters broke within a minute of having sex with her boyfriend! She was one day over her due date.

Mum in a Hurry said “ We tried it. Didn’t work though! I think I was at least due or maybe a week away. Both my kids were 10 days late.”

Finally, Jamillah from Bare Beginnings said “ashamed to say i pressured Rob into very nearly non-consensual sex when i was overdue with Seb, i cried and everything…” – well, deperate times call for desperate measures and all that!

Conclusion? Well, there’s science to back it up but the results are so varied, we couldn’t say a definite yes and it seems like a lot of bother when you’re that big and uncomfortable anyway! 

Pineapple

The science bit: According to babycentre “Pineapple contains the enzyme bromelain which is thought to help soften your cervix and bring on labour. Eating large amounts will probably stimulate your tummy, which could also stimulate your uterus.”

I once asked a doctor to explain the pineapple thing to me and he said that this, as well as the thinking behind curries and castor oil, is that it can basically cause diarrhoea, which causes your bowels and lower intestines to spasm, which can trick your uterus into also contracting.

Real-life experience:

 Ruth from DorkyMum said “I ate an entire pineapple and all it gave me was a sore mouth :(“

Conclusion? Based on the lack of concrete science behind it and the subsequent lack of people flooding in and telling us how great pineapple worked for them, we’d give this a big fat thumbs down, especially if you’re suffering with gestational diabetes!

This post was inspired by the lovely Danielle at Blog by Baby who is desperate for her labour to get started so thank you to her and please, everyone send her lots of lovely cervix-softening, oxytocin laced thoughts!

These feelings began to spill over into how I viewed my obstetric team too – my consultant brushed off my constant requests for a c-section, which I wanted for several health and mental reasons, and I was constantly on my guard with my midwives as they would ‘casually’ raise the issue of breastfeeding at every appointment, even though I had told them in no uncertain terms that it was something I wasn’t keen on doing.

My reasons for wanting a c-section, as I’d mentioned, were both internal and external. On the most simple level, as well as high blood pressure, all of the signs of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and a number of other health issues, I was suffering from SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) a disorder which made it very difficult and painful to move from the waist down. This was back in 2008, before we were granted the right to choose a caesarean and my pleas were treated as a joke. I was actually laughed at at one point and told not to be so silly, every woman could handle child birth.

I won’t go over my birth story again, but needless to say it didn’t go well and my daughter ended up in the NICU unit, unable to breathe for herself, regulate her blood sugar or even suck. It’s taken me a long time to even consider the possibility of having another child, over four years, and I think I may finally have got to the point where I would like to try in the future.

However…

After my last experience, I have absolutely zero faith in the people in whose care I have to place myself. I know that for me to even contemplate a second attempt at pregnancy I would need a written-in-stone guarantee that I would be allowed an elective c-section at the end of it and I just don’t know if I believe that they’ll allow that. Yes, I could threaten legal action like the woman in the story reported on the BBC, but I don’t know if I’m emotionally galvanised enough to go into a second pregnancy like a battle-ready warrior.

Something that I’ve said and stood by for a long time is that the reason that so many women fall foul of PND and post-natal PTSD is that they are overwhelmed by feelings of loss of control during the birth experience and quite honestly, I started to feel that about halfway through my pregnancy. It’s been a long road to mental wellness regarding the issues surrounding my daughter’s birth and the thought of someone’s reluctance to respect my wishes is enough to give me serious pause.

As much as I’m a huge advocate of our National Health Service, my experiences within the maternity system have left me jaded and unsure of how I would deal with future situations. Yes, I’m older, more assertive and more aware of what it is that I want and need but I have no faith whatsoever that I’d be listened to.

If you’re in a similar position or have been in the past and have gone on to have more children under the NHS, I’d love to hear from you.

By Philippa RoxbyHealth reporter, BBC News

Preparing for the birth of a child can be very traumatic for some women

Most women feel a little anxious about giving birth, especially for the first time, but for some childbirth can be intensely frightening and traumatic.

Rather than looking forward to the arrival of their baby, they have a morbid fear of pregnancy and the birth process. Labour wards can feel like ‘torture chambers’ and they feel their only option is to have a Caesarean section.

Although the problem is thought to affect up to 10% of women, NHS midwife counsellor Zara Chamberlain told the Royal College of Midwives conference this week that tokophobia or a fear of childbirth is not well-recognised by doctors and midwives.

She said there should be an expert in the field at each hospital to support these women through their pregnancies.

Tokophobia can be caused by various different factors including a fear of pain, past experience of a difficult childbirth, depression and even sexual trauma.

Women whose phobias occur after a traumatic delivery are likely to have experienced severe pain or tearing during the birth or witnessed their baby in serious distress.

As a result, when they become pregnant again, they often cannot face the prospect of a vaginal birth and want to have their baby by Caesarean section instead.

No control

At Liverpool Women’s Hospital, consultant midwife Simon Mehigan helps women overcome these kinds of fears.

“There is a misconception that it’s all women who are too posh to push. But the vast majority are women who have had babies before.

“They think about what happened last time – when they had no control – and it makes them very fearful.”

His approach is to see them regularly during their pregnancies, build up their confidence and unpick the causes of their fear.

“The key is not to say ‘no’ to a request for a Caesarean section,” he says.

Instead, Simon spends time explaining the birth choices available and discussing the ‘what ifs’ so that they (and their partners) are not going into the experience blind. Giving them the right information and support makes them feel in control and that can lead to a change of heart, he explains.

“The majority end up up opting for a vaginal birth rather than C-section. My desk is covered with cards from mums saying ‘I’m so proud of myself for doing it’.”

But that approach does not work for everyone.

Deep fear

Studies show that in extreme cases, a small number of women abort their pregnancies rather than face the pain and trauma of childbirth.

For other women, the dread of childbirth starts in adolescence because of a traumatic birth they have seen or heard about – and this can lead to deep fears of hospitals.

Simon Mehigan says the tokophobic first-time expectant mothers he sees are frightened of having a complete lack of control over what is happening to them. They see a Caesarean as a way of regaining some of that control.

The Birth Trauma Association says it is regularly contacted by tokophobic women who want to have a Caesarean section, but are told they cannot. Maureen Treadwell, co-founder of the support group, says whatever the cause of a woman’s fear, it is vitally important they choose how the baby is delivered.

With maternity units across the UK under pressure to reduce their Caesarean sections rates, this can create issues but Treadwell says there are no grounds for argument.

“Caesareans don’t cost much more than a vaginal birth – only £84. It’s not a bad hit if a woman who is really afraid doesn’t want to give birth vaginally.”

Huge relief

Dr Malcolm Dickson, a consultant obstetrician at Rochdale Infirmary, agrees that Caesarean sections are often the best option for women who are terrified of delivering their baby for months beforehand.

“Birth phobia is a dreadful thing. You can’t quantify it but I see women physically change and relax when I agree to a section.

“Lots of anxiety in the patient can lead to an emergency section during labour anyway.”

Dr Dickson is currently carrying out research on a tool which he says could be used to measure a woman’s anxiety levels about childbirth.

If all the bad experiences women have in labour could be eradicated then it follows that cases of tokophobia would reduce. But is that achievable?

Could there be a test for women going to have a difficult labour?

Prof Susan Wray, a physiologist at the Centre for Better Births at the University of Liverpool, is researching how the womb works in order to understand what is needed to make a good labour.

She examines biopsies of tissue from women who have had a difficult birth and compares them to tissues from a good birth.

“The womb is a muscle in the end. So what does it tell us? Maybe we could develop a test which could predict which women are going to have difficult childbirth.”

‘One-to-one care’

Maureen Treadwell of the BTA says women are regularly scarred by their experience of having a baby and the impact on their mental health should not be ignored.

“Some women are ending up in psychiatric units. Their lives have been changed so much by childbirth.

“We should ensure that women don’t go through these experiences, being left for hours in labour, epidurals not working.

“There are some shocking stories.”

The Royal College of Midwives has been campaigning for an increase in the number of midwives so that they can meet the demand for one-to-one midwifery care in maternity units.

Simon Mehigan acknowledges that this could transform many women’s experiences.

“Every unit is facing the challenge of how to manage women in early labour, when they are in pain but not actually in labour. Having one-to-one care would make all the difference.”

I started blogging about my son’s birth at a time when I felt powerless to do anything else. All the talking, all the crying, all the nightmares, all the stupid damn doctor’s appointments… they all amounted to nothing. There was nothing that anyone could do until I released this hellish beast from inside of me. I needed to get it out and since I couldn’t talk about it without feeling as though my entire world was tumbling down around me, writing was the only option. Writing was- is- my saviour, my place of confidence. I’ve always written it so much better than I can say it.

Not everyone has understood me, or my trauma, or my reasons for feeling so very utterly devastated at what happened when my son was born. For many, it was surely enough that I had a healthy baby boy. For some, it was enough to tell me that they had had an emergency c-section and hadn’t been traumatised by it- so why was I claiming to be? From a few, I found understanding and acceptance.

Despite the black hole that I had been thrust into, I knew that I would survive. I knew  I would one day be able to sort my feelings and emotions into the little boxes they needed to go into and most days, they are all there and tucked in nicely. Some days though, they do explode into my life like rotten, putrid little nasties. Some days they make me feel as though I am right back there in that damn dark place, with memories seeming like reality again. Some days.

I will admit now that getting pregnant again was the last thing on my mind but when it happened, I went into survival mode. Oh, there were days where the dark clouds blurred my vision a little; there were tears, anxiety and feelings of utter panic at what I was going through. That’s normal though, right? I was pregnant. I had come so close to losing two of my precious children already, and now I was going ahead and having another. I had only once choice, and one that I had never had before. I had to take control.

Taking control was key to my survival third time around. Lack of control is one of the most commonly complained of aspects of traumatic births. That feeling of helplessness when an internal examination is performed without your consent or without sufficient warning or explanation. That moment when your cervix is being held open by cold hands and six pair of eyes are staring at you and telling you to man up! Push this baby out or face the consequences. That moment when the monitor falls silent and you know. You know he has gone; that precious baby you hadn’t even met yet… gone. That’s loss of control.

Isobel was born in February this year. The day after Valentine’s day. There was a little heart drawn on the whiteboard in the operating theater, next to my name. As they prepped me, I stared at that heart. It was the only thing I could look at it; the only thing that was real. Because I’d been here before now. But it was different.

When she cried, I cried. I released all of those bad feelings and memories and watched them float up towards the sky, fluttering gently like butterflies. I thought that they would pop! like bubbles, as they started to float back down towards me. I thought they had, for a long time. But you know what? What happened to me almost three years ago, happened. There is no reversing that. Those little bubbles took their time, but they landed right back on top of me eventually.

Isobel’s birth was as perfect as a birth can be, in my world. But it did not change what had happened to me. It did not cure me. It did not change who I am now. It cannot. But it can help to ease some of the pain in my heart. It helps me to see that childbirth does not need to be harrowing and despairing and utterly devastating.

A few hours after she was born and I was left alone to hold her and to breathe in her sweet smell, I cried again. They weren’t tears of relief this time. They were tears for my son. For the fact that two years prior to that moment, I should’ve been sitting there holding him in this way too. I should’ve felt an overwhelming feeling of happiness at having him  in my arms too. I cried because I hadn’t felt that way. I cried for my son and that lost hour, when he was alone and I was unaware of his existence. And that- THAT is the reason why I am who I am today.

I loved being pregnant. Absolutely loved it. It was the first time I can ever remember feeling really good about my body, and I watched my ever-expanding belly and breasts with awe and excitement. It was also the first time I had ever really taken good care of myself, having long, relaxing baths every night, moisturising, swallowing vitamins every morning to help my baby but also enjoying the fact that they gave me shiny hair, clear skin and strong nails.

I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and pregnancy was the thing that finally made me feel like my body was my own again. I had tried so many other things over the years to undo the damage that had been done, and none of them had worked. But finally, as a pregnant woman, I felt like I had won. I had reclaimed my body from him.

I was so proud. I felt like shouting from the rooftops, ‘Look! Look! I can grow a baby. I am a strong woman. I am in control. I am not afraid anymore.’

There was just one problem. Being pregnant meant that I would have to give birth. And that was terrifying,

I was not afraid of the physical pain, but I was afraid that the experience would bring back bad memories, and that I would lose all the confidence and the strength that I had been building up. I did not want people I didn’t know touching me, or looking at me. I did not want to feel that vulnerable again.

With that in mind, I decided to have a home birth. I built it up in my head to be the culmination of all the good feelings I had been filled with during pregnancy. From a practical, physical point of view, it meant that there would be fewer medical professionals around me and less likelihood of the interventions I was so afraid of. From an emotional point of view, I saw it as an event that would heal me completely; an expression of my body’s strength and my autonomy as a woman, no longer controlled by that man who had hurt me so much.

I tried. I tried so damn hard, but the home birth didn’t happen.

In the entire time I was pregnant, no-one ever asked me if I’d been abused. I was asked once if my marriage had ever been violent, but I wasn’t asked anything about my past. If I had been, I would have told them. I wouldn’t ever have brought it up myself, because I didn’t know how to, but if at one of my appointments a midwife had asked, I wouldn’t have tried to stop my story from spilling out.

Because I didn’t have the chance to talk about it and explain my fears in a calm and reasonable way, I broke down and talked about it ten hours into labour instead. We were still at home. I had a vaginal exam to check how dilated I was, and it brought on a panic attack. I writhed up the bed, crying, trying to get the midwife’s hand out of me.

“Stop,” I said. “Stop. Don’t do that.”

I was finally able to say the words I hadn’t been able to say ten years earlier.

“I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t let you touch me.”

I explained why.

The two midwives, who I had never met before that night, told me that they understood, that they would work with me, help me to have my baby. They seemed to pounce on my previous silence about my past as the reason why labour wasn’t progressing as quickly as they’d expected – that my mental barrier was causing a physical barrier for the baby – and they thought that now I’d voiced my concerns I should have no problem pushing that baby out at home.

So we persevered for another few hours, but still nothing was happening, and eventually, exhausted, I requested a transfer to hospital.

Several hours later, my son arrived as the result of a forceps delivery… and honestly? I felt like I had been abused all over again. Even though these were people trying to help me give birth to a healthy baby, it was all the same feelings – fear, shame, disempowerment. They pumped me full of drugs, cut me, and pulled my son out of me. I was not a strong woman anymore. I was not in control. I was lying on my back having something done to me again, and I hated it.

It was never written in my notes, but the midwives in hospital all knew. They would sidle up and sit on my bed. “How did you carry all that around with you for so long?” they asked. “Why didn’t you tell someone earlier?”

No-one had ever asked. I didn’t know how to bring it up. I might have convinced myself that I was a strong woman carrying my baby, but inside, because of what had happened, I was still a scared little girl. I was scared that I was making a big deal out of nothing, that they would dismiss my concerns and tell me not to be stupid.

It is very easy to waste your time thinking about ‘what ifs’. Perhaps, even if I’d been asked if there was anything in my past that might affect my pregnancy and birth, I wouldn’t have been able to talk about it. Perhaps, even if I’d talked about it, it wouldn’t have made any difference to how my birth went.

But it might have done. It might have made things just a little easier.

I wish someone had asked.

After the birth, my past continued to be an issue. I hated breastfeeding. I hated that this little person needed my body so much. People talked about how breastfeeding helps you bond with your baby. No it doesn’t. Not if you feel like I did. It kills me to say this now, but I don’t feel like I really loved my son until I stopped breastfeeding him at 9 months.

No-one asked about that either. They complimented me on what a good job I was doing, how healthy he looked, how good his weight was… but they never asked how I felt about it.

Some good things happened. My desire to protect my son was more important than my fear of speaking out about the abuse. So I finally opened up to some members of my family, and got the man who abused me out of my life. The situation still isn’t fully resolved, but I have not seen him since becoming a mother, and he has never met my son. That is change enough for me, for now.

A few years on, I now love my son with a fierceness I didn’t know was possible. I am a good parent. I respect his boundaries absolutely. We have a wonderful physical relationship, but he has never been made to kiss a relative if he doesn’t want to. If I am tickling him and he asks me to stop, I do, right away. I trust his instincts entirely, and if he says he doesn’t like a person then I do not dismiss that lightly. It is hugely important to me that he grows up with self-confidence and with respect for his own body and for other people’s. He should know that it is always okay to say no. And that if someone else says no you stop, right away.

I don’t know how to have the stranger danger talk with him, because I don’t know how to explain that it’s not just strangers who can be dangerous. We will have to work on that one.

Here is the thing. If you have been abused, you can never undo that. It will always be a part of you. For every step forward you take in moving on from it, you always have to be prepared for something to send you two steps back. My pregnancy – and all that good feeling that came with it – was a step forward. My birth – and all the bad feeling that came with it – was at least two steps back.

Since then, I’ve come several steps forward, but I am not yet immune to things that can send me back. Right now, Jimmy Savile is in the news, and hundreds of people who have no fucking idea what they’re talking about are spouting off all over the internet about what abuse is (and isn’t), questioning the motives of women who only feel able to speak up now.

I am quite sure that I’m not the only survivor who has had a flood of unwanted memories coming back as a result of all this coverage. I bet I’m not the only grown woman feeling pretty wobbly right now.

Speaking out is important. But you will notice that I still don’t feel able to put my name to this piece. Maybe – hopefully – one day I will. In the meantime I have to do what every survivor does. Looking after myself. Looking after my son. Taking those steps forward, one foot and one day at a time.

]]> http://maternitymatters.net/healing-a-guest-post/feed/ 38 http://maternitymatters.net/babyhuddles-a-babys-first-year/ http://maternitymatters.net/babyhuddles-a-babys-first-year/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:40:50 +0000 Maternity Matters Admin http://maternitymatters.net/?p=918 The lovely folk at Babyhuddle have put together an infographic based on their research into the facts and figures behind the first year of life for the average UK baby and they’ve kindly let us share it with our readers:

“So are there twins in the family?” the sonographer asked. She didn’t need to tell me I was expecting twins because I had already worked it out. There were two large round circles on the screen, two sacks, I knew without being told.

I had already had some suspicions. I was in hospital on a drip after becoming incredibly dehydrated through extreme morning sickness. This is called hyperemesis gravidarum which is characterised by constant sickness and nausea. I was sick about 3-4 times a day with my first pregnancy – with the twins it was more like 9-10. After realising I had lost a stone in a week I started to google the symptoms and one of the things it says was that it could be due to carrying twins – (although this isn’t always the case). So I had the idea in the back of my head already, but I didn’t seriously consider I would be having twins. I toyed with the idea for ten minutes before I went to see the doctor and as we went down in the lift to get an early scan with the midwife, we had a little joke about it, “ha ha it could be twins”. Ten minutes later I was no longer joking.

Nothing can ever prepare you for the thought of seeing two babies on the screen. There were so many emotions but the overiding one was hysteria. It couldn’t really be happening. The strange thing was making all the phone calls. I was in hospital, on a drip, feeling so awful, unbelievably awful, and people were congratulating me. I couldn’t take in the news at all, I just wanted to sleep.

The worst thing is you are on a maternity ward – with people giving birth or often having lost babies right next to you. The reality of childbirth is staring you in the face and it’s terrifying. One woman went into labour in the bed opposite while my brother-in-law was visiting. Within fifteen minutes the baby had been delivered there and then, while we tried to make conversation. It was harder when people were in the ward because they were suffering a miscarriage, they would be so sympathetic to me – yet they were going through such an awful time – how could I tell them I was there because I was expecting not just one but two babies?

The main problem with hyperemisis is that you lose so much fluid you become dehydrated. The treatment is anti-sickness drugs and being put on a drip until you are rehydrated. This only takes about 24 hours, all being well, so it wasn’t long until I was discharged – still slightly woozy to try to process the information that we would be bringing home two babies in a few months. I was prescribed anti-sickness drugs but it wasn’t long before they stopped working. By the next weekend I was back in hospital hooked to a drip. It’s amazing how quickly you can become dehydrated if you are not drinking everything.

In the middle of this my daughter, who was two at the time, got a really nasty sickness bug. For a whole night she was sick every five minutes. The next morning she was lying motionless and floppy on the sofa, barely responding. I was advised to call the ambulance and the paramedic said she was dehydrated but it was probably worth taking her to the hospital. I thought maybe I was overreacting when she insisted on putting on her boots before we left. I spent the afternoon in an assessment unit at the hospital force feeding her juice and trying to get her to pee into a . Not the best week of my life.

What stays with me from this time was the feeling of slipping away. I had never been apart from my daughter for more than a few hours, let alone a night. We were inseparable. But I was so desperate to go to hospital just so I can rest. I just wanted to sleep. I’ve never been so tired. After the second time I was given three sets of anti sickness drugs and this time they worked. I still felt awful but it was alright. Just about.

I still couldn’t really eat. I could stomach plain things, crackers, crisps, potato. My main thought during this time was to wonder if I’d be able to eat Christmas dinner. Christmas came and I was determined to enjoy it. I didn’t feel too bad so enjoyed myself, relishing the food and carrying on as normal – even going for a long walk. I must have overdone it though because I felt so bad on Boxing Day I spent most of it in bed. The strange thing was my lips had swollen to huge proportions. I had a trout pout – which looked like I had got botox overnight. If it hadn’t been Christmas no one would have believed I hadn’t had a procedure. As soon as I was home I went to the doctor, as it can be a sign of preeclampsia, luckily my blood pressure was still low – the doctor put it down to a twin pregnancy symptom. I realised I was going to get all the symptoms in the pregnancy books.

Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
Say what?! Looking back at the London Olympics, beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings tells TODAY.com she sees signs that she’s pregnant (five weeks at the time of her gold medal win): “I look at pictures and I’m like, ‘God you can tell!’ I look thicker.”

By Lisa Flam

When Kerri Walsh Jennings won her third Olympic gold in beach volleyball at the London Olympics, she was playing with a secret: She was five weeks pregnant.

Sitting hand-in-hand with her husband, Casey Jennings, Walsh Jennings shared the news exclusively on TODAY Monday.

“When I was throwing my body around fearlessly, and going for gold for our country, I was pregnant, and today I’m 11 weeks pregnant,” Walsh Jennings told Matt Lauer.

Their baby, due April 9, will join the couple’s sons, Joey, 3, and Sundance, 2.

Walsh Jennings, 34, told TODAY.com she and Casey started trying for a third before the Olympics. But she didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. She said she felt “moody and touchy” in London — more than could just be explained by competition stress — and her period was four days late.

“You’re probably pregnant,” her beach volleyball partner, Misty May-Treanor, said. And sure enough, her teammate was right.

“It’s just so exciting,” Walsh Jennings told TODAY.com.

She told Lauer that her body started to feel different at the Olympics.

“I’m a pretty happy girl and I was unreasonably moody,” Walsh Jennings said, asking her husband if that was accurate, and he smartly demurred.

“I thought it could have been the stress of the games and travel kind of throws your schedule off, but I knew,” Walsh Jennings told Lauer. “At some point, you’re late and then you start feeling something. And I definitely started feeling something in London.”

Walsh Jennings, nearing the end of her first trimester, told TODAY.com she had a miscarriage before having her first son, and she knows the risks of miscarriage are greater early in the pregnancy, but said she just didn’t want to wait to tell people. “I just can’t keep my mouth shut. It’s so exciting. It feels so great to tell people.”

The pregnancy itself feels not-so-great, she said. “This little one is kicking my butt! The first two were pretty easy, but with this one, I’m sick every day, I’ve got some awesome acne, I just feel different.”

Still, she said her pregnancy didn’t throw off her game at all in London. “I gave everything I had,” she said. In fact, the prospect of having baby was a big motivator throughout her training and competition — her husband Casey, also a professional volleyball player, has joked that she gets a baby for every gold medal. “At the end of my tunnel was this next phase, expanding my family,” Walsh Jennings said. “I wanted to earn that third.”

Lauer asked whether the couple considered perhaps waiting to try to expand their family until after the Olympics. With a laugh, Walsh Jennings replied that restraint “only lasts so long.”

“I just felt like it would take me a while this time to get pregnant for some reason,” she said. “So a month before, we’re like, ‘Should we start trying?’ I had never experienced morning sickness. We were in Gstaad, Switzerland, one of my favorite places, our favorite places, in the world …  we decided just to get going on the process.”

“Apprently we’re very fertile,” she said before covering her eyes with embarrassment.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, says competing at the games did not increase Walsh Jennings’ risk of pregnancy complications.

“The risk that she put to herself and fetus was zero to none,” she said.

Five weeks into a pregnancy, fetuses are tiny, well protected and “very, very, very hearty,” Snyderman says.

“The embryo is microscopic. It’s just implanted in the lining of the uterus,” Snyderman says. “It would take an act of God to dislodge it, not a bump on the tummy, not a dive.”

At the London Games, Walsh Jennings’ five-week-old pregnancy was well protected within the muscular uterine wall and the layers of muscles around the abdomen, Snyderman says.

“Imagine taking the head of a pin and sticking it inside softball and then a kickball and then throwing something against it,” Snyderman said. “That’s about what Kerri’s pregnancy was like at the time.”

In London, Walsh Jennings and May-Treanor became the first women’s beach volleyball pair to win three consecutive gold medals. They won their first at the 2004 games in Athens, and with another win four years later in Beijing, they became the first team to win back-to-back golds in the event.

Walsh Jennings learned she was pregnant with her first child soon after the Beijing Olympics. She and her husband welcomed their second son, Sundance, on May 19, 2010, according to her NBC Olympic biography. She returned to the beach volleyball court within months after giving birth, and she again sported that ripped torso for the London Olympics.

If history repeats itself, she will get back into shape – and the bikini - to compete for her dream of another gold in Rio in 2016.

“I have to play in an itty bitty Oakley bikini and it’s very inspiring,” Walsh Jennings says in a Q & Aon the NBC Olympic site. “My job is to be fit and I’m really blessed that I get to go and work out and live a really healthy lifestyle. And I have to in order to accomplish my goals. I want to be the best. I want to win a gold medal in London. And in order to do that, I need to be really fit regardless of my babies. My body has certainly changed. I love some of the changes. I hate others. But ultimately if I’m fit and strong, then I’m a happy girl.”

Walsh Jennings told TODAY.com she feels like she came back stronger after having each of her children, so that’s her plan for Rio in 2016. “I want it,” she said of a fourth gold. “I feel like I have so much more to learn, so much more to accomplish. I’m planning on coming back stronger and smarter.”

I’m sure you have all seen the scaremongering headlines, probably from the Daily Mail, about “3 parent IVF” and if you don’t know what you’re talking about, like the Mail, you might be wary of such a weird and ethically troublesome piece of science. But is it that morally unsure?

Firstly, we have to look at exactly what this process involves.

The technique that has been in the news recently is called “pronuclear transfer”, and starts by fertilising a woman’s egg with a man’s sperm using IVF. The nucleus (center of a cell with all the genetic information) of the fertilised egg can then be transferred into an emptied nucleus in another egg in the same way.

This is exactly what’s wrong with the way science is portrayed to the public. In general, people don’t take too much notice of science (despite it being responsible for literally everything in their lives, but that’s another rant). They see some headlines, hear someone talking about something and that’s it. No one does any digging for themselves, and it irritates me.

It would be absurd to have someone pandering on about complex financial systems, or psychology, or engineering without them being well educated in the subject, yet it happens all the time with the media and science.

(You can follow @__Beav on Twitter, too)