Articles

Fetal development takes on new meaning in the second trimester. Your baby will begin to look like a newborn — and may even be able to hear you! As your pregnancy progresses, your baby may begin to seem more real. You may hear the heartbeat at your prenatal appointments, and your enlarging abdomen may force your favorite jeans to the back of the closet. More...

Too much caffeine during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, a new study says, and it suggests that pregnant women may want to reduce their intake or cut it out entirely. Many obstetricians already advise women to limit caffeine, although the subject has long been contentious, with conflicting studies, fuzzy data and various recommendations given over the years.  More...

Combination hormonal pills, skin patches, and vaginal rings have similar possible side effects because they all contain a combination of estrogen and progestin. The pill causes hormone levels to peak and drop each day. Each weekly patch takes 3 days after application to reach a steady hormone level. More...

Pregnancy is a wonderful opportunity for you to take charge of your health. Knowing you're nurturing not only yourself but also your baby-to-be is great motivation to eat right, exercise, get plenty of sleep and stop smoking, if you smoke. More...

Medical experts want to ban children's cold and cough medicines from store shelves in Canada and the U.S. for good. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine slated to come out Friday urges governments to remove kids' cold medicines from the market. More...

Weeks 1-4 Fertilisation occurs and a ball of quickly multiplying cells embeds itself in the lining of the uterus. In the UK pregnancy is calculated from the first day of the woman's last period so for as much as three weeks of this first month she might not be actually pregnant. More...

If you're pregnant, even a small amount of vaginal bleeding can be scary. Sometimes, bleeding does signal trouble — but not always. In fact, many pregnant women experience light vaginal bleeding at some point during pregnancy, particularly during the first trimester. Often, such bleeding is the result of a normal event during pregnancy, such as the embryo's implantation in the uterine lining a little over a week after conception. More...

If you experience unexpected abdominal and pelvic pain during pregnancy, it's easy to worry. But whilst some pain may need medical attention, sometimes instances of pain are relatively harmless. More...

Crying is the most effective way babies have of communicating their needs. Most babies spend as much as seven per cent of the day crying. t can take parents some time to learn to recognise what a baby's cries mean. But by about four to six months most are able to differentiate between a cry of pain More...

Public health agencies already urge pregnant women to take multivitamins that contain folic acid early in pregnancy to reduce their fetus's risk of developing a neural tube defect such as spina bifida. More...

Women evolved curvier spines than men to stop them wobbling under the weight of pregnancy, researchers say. Harvard University experts say without the extra bend, humans' upright-walking ancestors would not have been able to escape predators while pregnant.  More...

The physiological changes of pregnancy call for extra nutrients and energy to meet demands of an expanding blood supply, the growth of maternal tissues, a developing fetus, loss of maternal tissues at birth and preparation for lactation. More...