Archive for the 'PREGNANCY TIPS' Category

South of the chin, it’s pretty obvious where a woman plumps up during pregnancy.

Less noticeably, her gums become swollen, too. Not only are puffy gums painful, but they also pose a risk to the unborn baby.

During pregnancy, blood vessels expand throughout the body, including the gums, says Dr. Dana Keiles, who practices dentistry in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Enlarged vessels make the gums tender and more likely to bleed.

On top of that, about 50 percent of women experience pregnancy gingivitis, a gum disease caused by elevated hormone levels, according to the American Academy of Periodontology.

The hormones react with plaque at the gum line, causing inflammation. Studies show that women with gum disease are more likely to give birth prematurely or bear full-term babies with low birth weights, which puts the infants at risk of developing serious health problems such as cerebral palsy, blindness and deafness.

In addition, a study published in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of Dental Research suggests that women with gum disease are more likely to develop gestational diabetes.

Read more at NYDailyNews

When you are pregnant and your due date gets closer, probably you get anxious with your child birth and feel curious to see your baby.

But, if your delivery gets overdue, you can experience even more anxiousness.

Here are few suggestions for you to deal with overdue pregnancy.

1. Relax and meditate

Meditation is right way to deal with anxiousness, particularly that you face because of overdue pregnancy. Try to meditate for few minutes every day and listen to relaxing music to calm down your mind.

2. Talk to your doctor

If you are really worried about your overdue pregnancy, know more about various options to induce labor and child birth. Your doctors have better knowledge than you regarding pregnancy. Don’t try to insist your doctor to induce labor.

3. Take enough rest

Last days of your pregnancy can be quite stressful for you. It is very essential for you to sleep well and take enough rest. Your overdue pregnancy period is additional time for you to take enough rest. Try to utilize the time to maximum.

4. Enjoy last moments of pregnancy

Instead of worrying about overdue pregnancy, you can really enjoy the last moments of being pregnant. This is the best way to deal with overdue pregnancy. Take out some time to actually enjoy last moments of being pregnant.

Women who get pregnant after weight-loss surgery tend to be healthier and less likely to deliver a baby born with complications compared to obese women, researchers said.

An obese woman who has weight-loss, or bariatric, surgery also may increase her chances of getting pregnant in the first place by normalizing her menstrual cycles and hormone levels, the researchers found.

Obese women are more likely to have difficulty getting pregnant, but after the surgery “there is some suggestion of increased fertility,” Dr. Melinda Maggard, a surgeon and researcher at the Rand Corp think tank in Santa Monica, California, said in a telephone interview.

Bariatric surgery alters the digestive system’s anatomy and reduces the volume of food that can be eaten and digested.

The most common form is gastric bypass, which makes the stomach smaller and permits food to bypass part of the small intestine.

While losing weight naturally is preferable, weight-loss surgery does reduce the risks of pregnancy-related problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure that can harm the mother and her newborn, said the RAND researchers who analyzed data from 75 earlier studies.

Fatigue and tiredness are the most common early symptoms of pregnancy, accompanied by an array of pains, sore muscles and aches.

How you handle these problems often decide your level of pregnancy fatigue.

Generally, pregnancy fatigue is caused by adjusting your body to natural hormonal changes along with the weight of your baby.

You are also likely to experience trouble while sleeping due to the aches and pains or just due to excess stress.

When does it occur?

Fatigue, which is just your body’s way of telling you that it needs more rest, most often begins during the first trimester of pregnancy, during which time your body adjusts to the idea of being pregnant.

Some women also experience fatigue during the second trimester, and energy levels will drop during the third trimester when your body is preparing for labor and delivery.

During the third trimester, you need to carry the increased weight of your baby. This can lead to more discomfort, insomnia and cramping, which makes it hard to rest.

How to cope with fatigue during pregnancy?

Here are some of the more useful methods to overcome pregnancy fatigue:

Nicotine gum doesn’t help pregnant smokers quit smoking, but it may help them smoke fewer cigarettes — reducing their risk of having a premature or low-birth-weight baby, according to a small study.

The study is one of the few to examine the effect of nicotine replacement in pregnancy. Nicotine-replacement products haven’t been approved for pregnant women, although 12% of expectant mothers smoke.

The nearly 200 women in the study smoked an average of 18 cigarettes a day before pregnancy and 10 a day in the week before beginning the study.

Those given nicotine gum cut back by five or six cigarettes each day, while those who were given placebos cut back by three or four cigarettes a day.

Doctors also noticed that babies born to moms who chewed nicotine gum were less likely to need intensive care and had shorter hospital stays, although researchers say it’s possible that this could have been due to chance.

Avoiding tobacco is one of the most important things a woman can do to protect her baby, experts say. Smoking doubles the risk of low birth weight and prematurity, and causes up to 10% of infant deaths, according to the study.

The answer to why an early pregnancy seems to protect against breast cancer could rest with a decrease in stem cells found after animals have given birth, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine.

Women who have children young, at least before the age of 30, reduce their risk of developing breast cancer, said Dr. Yi Li, a professor in the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at BCM.

The most dramatic reduction in risk occurs in women who have their first children before the age of 24. However, the mechanism by which these early pregnancies provided protection has proved elusive.

“If we can figure out the mechanism behind this, we could develop a pill that we could offer young women in high school and college that could significantly reduce their risk of breast cancer,” he said.

However, he said, there are many steps to be taken before he and his colleagues can determine how best to do that. Understanding why stem cells decrease in women who have their children young could prove an important advance.

Every year approximately 150,000 babies born in the United States are with one or more birth defects.

While the cause of more than 60% birth defects is still not known, there are various things which you can do as a mother about the wellbeing of your growing baby.

Proper education and awareness are the main keys to prevent the birth defects in your baby. After that, taking proper action can reduce some of the birth defects.

You can follow various tips to enhance the probability of having a healthy pregnancy and also a healthy growing baby.

Some things are more challenging for you because they need breakage of your habits.

Here are some effective tips which you can follow to prevent the birth defects:

1. The first and the most important tip is to maintain good preconception health by eating well balanced and nutritional meals.

2. If you are sexually active and have great chances for pregnancy, then ensure that you take a daily dosage of multivitamin that consists of recommended dosage of 400 mcg of folic acid and other essential B vitamins. Consuming enough folic acid prevents your baby from birth defects of spine and brain.

During pregnancy, muscle pain and back ache are very problematic and they can be more than just a nuisance.

The pregnancy weight gain of 25-35 pounds along with the increased stress on your body caused by your baby can sometimes lead to severe discomfort.

Studies showed that almost half of the pregnant women will experience low back pain at some point during their pregnancy.

As your baby grows in size, your weight is even increased and the curvature of your lower back is increased thus placing additional stress on your spinal discs at that area.

Due to this, the spine in your upper back area must compensate so that the normal curvature of your upper spine increases.

In order to come out of these problems, pregnancy hormones are released, which help to loose the ligaments attached to your pelvic bones. Also, there are some complementary therapies, which greatly help to combat from back pain. Among those, chiropractic is one good therapy.

Benefits of chiropractic care during pregnancy:

This complementary therapy is a good alternative to over-the-counter drugs and also prescription drugs for severe back pain.

Yes, it is safe to travel during pregnancy only if there are no complications associated with your pregnancy.

Now, people are traveling more than ever before, both for business and pleasure.

Before traveling, you should know where and how you can travel if you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant.

In most of the cases, you can travel safely even to exotic destinations.

The most important things you must be aware are insurance details, medications and vaccinations.

The ideal time to travel during pregnancy is second trimester. During the first trimester pregnancy, you will experience the symptoms like morning sickness and nausea.

So, you feel little uncomfortable while traveling. During the third trimester, you will become easily fatigued and generally this is not the safe period to travel.

Tips to make your travel safe during pregnancy:

Most of you worry that travel during pregnancy make you uncomfortable and exhausted. But, these tips will greatly help you to make the journey comfortable and enjoyable as possible.

Reduce your stress level: You cannot avoid the stress by staying at home throughout the pregnancy period. Following some simple strategies will greatly help you to reduce your stress and anxiety.

Women who use a lot of household cleaning products when they are pregnant, or shortly after giving birth, are increasing their child’s risk of developing asthma.

The findings indicated that early life exposure to the chemicals contained in household cleaning products was linked to a 41% increase in a child’s chances of developing asthma by the age of 7 years.

During the study, a large number of other factors known to affect the onset of asthma, such as family history, were accounted for.

The results thus present a possible mechanism for the ‘hygiene hypothesis’, which suggests that children brought up with low exposure to bacteria and dust in the home in their early years are less likely to build an immunity to asthma later in life.

Dr. Alexandra Farrow explains: “Previous research has shown that a child’s risk of developing asthma is lower if he or she is exposed to bacteria or bacterial products (endotoxins) in early life (‘hygiene hypothesis’), probably because it assists in the development of a child’s immune system.

However, our research suggests that one possible mechanism for this hypothesis may involve the chemicals found in domestic cleaning products.