Health & Baby News & Features

Quake's team found that, in women at increased risk of preterm delivery, the blood test predicted premature labor with 75 to 80 percent accuracy. According to Quake, that level of accuracy is good enough to be used in routine practice -- but more work is needed to see whether that performance holds up in larger studies.

Each year, about one million women in the United States have miscarriages, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. In the final part of a miscarriage, the body should expel the pregnancy tissue. However, sometimes this does not occur and the patient is given the drug misoprostol.

For the study, the researchers examined the vitamin D levels of 1,200 women with a history of miscarriage before they got pregnant again. Their vitamin D levels were also tested when they were eight weeks' pregnant.

The most significant improvement occurred in the ring closest to the plant -- within 3 miles, the researchers said.

Nearly 16 percent of women smoke tobacco during pregnancy, according to the researchers. Up to 30 percent of them also use marijuana

Although the decline in newborn weight was relatively small, the researchers said the effect is similar to reductions in birth weights "observed in pregnancies [affected by] maternal smoking."

The new findings about attempted vaginal birth after cesarean are from an analysis of data from nearly 200,000 Canadian women who had a prior cesarean delivery and then gave birth between 2003 and 2014.

Diet soda wasn't much better. Drinking it during pregnancy was linked to poorer fine motor, visual, spatial and visual motor abilities in early childhood (around age 3). By mid-childhood (age 7), kids whose moms drank diet sodas while pregnant had poorer verbal abilities, the study findings reported.

A new study suggests some preterm births occur because the fetus rejects the mother, after its immune system is triggered too early and senses maternal cells as foreign invaders.

Overall, "the number of U.S. births to females aged 10 to 14 was a record low in 2016, dropping to 2,253 from 8,519 in 2000," a team from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote.

And one expert noted that caffeine itself may not be the culprit, since many of the women in the study consumed it by drinking sodas and eating candy.

For the study, the researchers examined the metabolic health of more than 15,000 women and the start of puberty in their daughters. A growing number of 6- to 11-year-old girls are entering puberty these days, and researchers have been trying to find out why.

The scans indicated that SSRI exposure in the womb was associated with an increase in the size of gray matter found in two parts of the brain: the amygdala and the insula.

The risk also increases about 17 percent for every 10-point increase in mean arterial pressure, or the average blood pressure a person has during an entire heartbeat cycle.

The finding shows the need for parents to educate anyone who cares for their infants about safe sleep practices and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Nearly 600,000 Dr. Brown’s Lovey pacifier and teether holders have been recalled due to a potential choking hazard.

The study included 715 single mothers and their babies. Infants who looked like their father at birth were healthier when they were 1 year old. The fathers of those babies spent an average of 2.5 more days per month with their babies than other fathers.

Doctors said the case shows "modest but functional lactation can be induced in transgender women," The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. reported.

While the number of babies that die from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has been falling, the number of babies dying from accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed skyrocketed 184% from 1999 to 2015, according to new statistics released Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Lucas' family will receive $50,000 and appear on Gerber's social media channels throughout the year.

In 2016, 628 cases of congenital syphilis were reported -- the highest rate since 1998.

The study of four U.S. communities found that at least 1 percent to 5 percent of first-graders had a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD.

Researchers have found a link between lack of carbs and serious risk of birth defects.

A stillbirth is the death of a fetus after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Worldwide, most stillbirths occur in low- and middle-income countries. But the United States has higher rates of stillbirth than many other high-income countries, the researchers said.

Pregnancy experts fear this trend may threaten the health of mothers and their babies.