Whenever I think about pregnancy weight gain, I think of Renée Zellweger playing Bridget Jones, the role that catapulted her to true stardom—and for which she had to gain some 30 lbs. After losing the weight and then regaining it for the second Bridget Jones film, Zellweger was fed up with the yo-yo-ing. She griped […]

Red raspberry leaf tea is an ancient tonic—pregnant women as early as the 6th century drank the stuff. It is still a popular herbal supplement for pregnancy today, with claimed benefits ranging from it’s ability to strengthen the uterus and help prepare the body for birth to directly stimulating labor (in one survey, more than […]

Call me naive, but I went into my first pregnancy expecting that after having my baby, the extra pounds would more or less fall off on their own. It was a huge wake up call, when a year out, I was still a steady 5 lbs above my pre-baby weight. My son was finally sleeping […]

If you’re pregnant or planning to be pregnant, chances are you’ve heard stories about what might happen to your nether regions during a vaginal birth. Perhaps you’ve heard about tearing during delivery or even heard the term episiotomy. Tearing naturally during labor is super common (over 80% of women will experience tearing to some degree). […]

Let me just start by saying: due dates are total BS. If you already tried out another due date calculator, there’s a good chance it was wrong. The date your doctor gave you? Wrong. So now what? We built a better due date calculator! Ours includes a few more data points so you can more […]

Last month, the measles outbreak in Washington State prompted its governor to declare a state of emergency. Some parents have wised up and finally vaccinated their kids. But others have dug in, even gathering to protest universal vaccine policies. As a researcher who knows how thoroughly the autism-vaccine hypothesis has been debunked*, it’s hard to watch […]

When a close friend was trying for a second child in her late 30s, her husband mentioned that all the mothers he saw at the playground seemed old enough to be grandmas. Naturally, she was stung… but not surprised. Her experience is all too familiar. Our society tends to view older-age parenting–well, really older motherhood–as […]

A few years ago, while in that happy but anxious limbo of expecting my first baby, I dutifully read up on labor–its stages, birth plans, and the best ways to “achieve” a natural childbirth. On this last point—achieving a natural childbirth—a theme quickly emerged: My mental state was key. Without the proper level of mindfulness, […]

Becoming pregnant after 35 comes with some derogatory labels: geriatric pregnancy, advanced maternal age, older mom (wait, what?!) It’s hard to escape the warnings about your pregnancy being at “high risk” for complications, such as birth defects, high blood pressure, and diabetes just because you passed a certain age bracket. But does your age actually […]

Many women shy away from amniocentesis and chorionic villi sampling for fear of miscarriage—but this risk of amniocentesis causing miscarriage has been widely overblown and the evidence is outdated.

Both of my daughters arrived “late” according to the dates in my charts. Both girls seemed to mock the very concept of a “Due Date”. The little one, especially—she showed up a mere 30 minutes before my scheduled induction, 11 days after the day she was clinically expected to arrive. I am not alone. The […]

Roughly 2 out of 3 laboring women in the U.S. will get an epidural. As a highly effective form of pain relief during labor, it’s no wonder that the epidural is enormously popular. But along with the epidural, comes the controversy.  And at the heart of the controversy, the idea that epidurals raise the chances […]