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I’ve suffered from borderline anemia most of my life, and, after suffering through two listless pregnancies, I’m ready to take my my pregnancy-related anemia seriously.
Twenty percent of pregnant women in industrialized countries experience iron deficiency, according to a report from the University of Maryland Medical Center. The reason is pretty simple: Pregnancy causes a 50% increase in blood, diluting the concentration of red blood cells in our bodies. Read More
Does anyone receive more unsolicited advice than a pregnant woman? Now that my pregnancy is obvious to any passer-by, I’m getting it from all sides.
Although it may be well-intentioned, most of the advice I receive from anyone but my doctor sounds like bunk.
Here are five of the more bothersome bits of “wisdom” I have been told—and the truth behind them. View the slideshow.
Previous posts by Erica Kain:
My husband and I have now conceived four girls in a row (including one of our miscarriages). In doing so, we are in a small minority (5.5%, according to one statistical survey) of families who are capable of such a feat. So what gives?
My husband’s theory, after reading an article regarding increased caloric intake and the conception of boys, was that my meager breakfast choices played a role. According to the study, women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87% more likely to have boys than women who ate no more than one bowl per week.
Could my predilection for toast be causing our girl streak?
Last week, in the midst of a business trip to New York City, I got this email from my brother in Atlanta:
“I hope all is going well. I noticed it has been a couple of day since you ran. I hope you get the chance to squeeze one in today.”
I knew it was coming. I had skipped two morning runs due to inclement weather (who wants to run when it’s pouring rain and cold?) and a hangover. But my brother didn’t miss the fact that I missed my runs. How did he know, even though we were in different cities? Read More
If you need heady discussion starters at a party, just invite me. I’m one of those people, the party-goer who can’t help but (painfully) reveal too much personal information. I’m wont to bring up politics, religion, illness, personal foibles, etc., just to engage in conversation.
My old friends have a phrase for this: “That’s just Sean being Sean.” It covers, fortunately, all manner of sins.
I used to worry that I was too open, especially in discussing my son’s allergies or my diabetes. But in this day of the Internet, I thought it was impossible to really hide something as significant as a life-threatening illness or condition. Read More
The response to the news that I’m pregnant with a girl has been joy, as well as laughter: ”Whoa, three girls? Now you have to try for a boy.”
Do I?
After the misdiagnosed miscarriage, the hyperemesis, the bleeding, the leaking, and the general drama associated with this pregnancy, I hadn’t given much thought to another pregnancy. In fact, a tubal ligation began to sound like a viable option to me. Read More
Last Sunday, at 18 weeks pregnant, I showed up to my hospital’s Labor and Delivery Department.
The women in the cubicles around me were hugely pregnant, moaning with contractions as they prepared to deliver and hold their new babies. I, on the other hand, was paralyzed by terror. The doctor had told me that he felt pretty sure my amniotic sac was leaking, and that my fetus and I were suffering from a preterm premature rupture of membranes (pPROM).
A fetus at 18 weeks is nowhere near viable outside the womb, and a broken sac would mean a miscarriage. The nurse was grim faced as she ordered the tests on the leaking fluid. “This doesn’t look good,” she said.
My mom’s on Facebook. In fact, she was on Facebook before I was and now she’s on the social networking site pretty much every day.
Go ahead and laugh—everyone else does. You see, my mom is a white-haired, apple-pie-making lady in her mid-70s whom several dozen people call “Aunt Bea.”
But will all due respect to Opie, she’s no Mayberry matron. She’s tech savvy, and she’s pretty much got a black belt in social networking—she’s utterly relentless at forming and maintaining of social contacts. You think you’re six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon? No, you’re probably six degrees of separation from my mother. She can locate a third cousin or long lost pal in nearly every city in America. Hence, the leap to online socializing, at an age when some of her peers probably couldn’t find the computer’s on button.
But what seems like a quirky personality trait may in fact be good for her health. Research has shown that strong social networks are a key reason some people survive into their 80s and beyond, while others don’t. Read More
Every year I swear I’m not going to make any futile New Year’s resolutions (and every year I make them anyway). Needless to say I haven’t lost that 40 pounds nor made a lot of progress toward World Peace.
Maybe if I focus on a single body part, I’ll have better luck. For 2009 my improvement project is, you guessed it, my boobs. I don’t mean I’m going to give them a surgical lift, or anything like that (although the idea is intriguing), just that I’m going to make sure they’re well taken care of. I resolve to… Read More
I really want a beer. It has been one of my more bizarre pregnancy cravings. So in an effort to slake this particular thirst, I embarked on a mission to prove that a little frothy beer wouldn’t hurt my developing fetus.
I was dismayed to learn that no one, no medical literature or obstetrician, could justify my drinking a beer.
ACOG’s official take is to abstain from alcohol before conception, and throughout pregnancy. Their brochure regarding Tobacco, Alcohol, Drugs and Pregnancy details their stance, explaining that an embryo’s liver can’t handle alcohol the way a mother’s can. If my blood alcohol level is over-the-limit, their brochure explains, so is that of my fetus — and a fetus’s liver isn’t prepared (as mine is) to process that much alcohol.
“The bottom line is that abstinence is best,” Dr. Charles Lockwood, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital said, “But brief binges early in the first trimester are likely to pose no risks.”
Well, that is a relief, since I drowned my sorrows in red wine after my misdiagnosed miscarriage at five weeks. But what about now? Is there any safe amount, or safe time to drink during pregnancy? Read More
