Surprise! You're pregnant
When do you really need to worry?

In a perfect world, we’d all visit our doctors, take folic acid, and lay off the liquor before trying to get pregnant. Sometimes, however, things just happen. Just when you weren’t expecting to be expecting, a plus sign on that little white stick can send you into serious pregnancy paranoia.

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Weight gain during pregnancy

Women have to strike a fine balance when they’re pregnant: they have to ensure they’re consuming sufficient nutrients and calories to nurture their growing baby, but they don’t want to gain too much weight because of adverse effects on baby.

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Home Birth Safety

Planned home births are associated with a tripling of newborn death rates compared with planned hospital deliveries, according to a study out of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Portland’s Maine Medical Center.

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Tweaking the Gene
Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves the use of in vitro fertilization, through which embryos develop in a laboratory. With PGD, a single cell is removed from each embryo then tested for the presence of a genetic abnormality.

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Caesarean Sections on the Rise
By Gail Johnson, managing editor of blush

Obstetricians around the world are performing more Caesarean sections than in the past. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is studying whether the dissemination of information will help reduce that escalating rate.

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