The maternie Database:
We collect a lot of women’s health news, every weekday. This is where you’ll find everything we’ve rounded up and reported on pregnancy. Want to get this news in your inbox, as soon as we find it? Sign up above.
The United States’ maternal mortality rate is the worst in the world among wealthy countries. But a new analysis of CDC statistics makes the case that the rate is around 10 deaths per 100,000 births—not the nearly 33 deaths per 100,000 births reported around this time last year.
Smart ring Oura is introducing a new pregnancy feature, which will allow wearers to track gestational age and “offer weekly updates on what physiological changes are expected,” like “unusual sleep patterns and heart rate differences.”
A deep dive on Idaho becoming an “OBGYN desert.” At the end of March, the third labor and delivery unit in the state will close since Roe fell.
There is a “four week window where a person might not be pregnant yet—but according to how we measure weeks of pregnancy they already are.”
After passage of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic-leaning states generally chose to expand Medicaid, while Republican-leaning states did not. That set up a natural study to see how better access to healthcare affected moms with gestational diabetes and their babies.
An essay from Eleanor Barker-White on experiencing “vanishing twin syndrome”, when one fetus is absorbed by the other in the womb.
A JAMA study of 200,000 babies adds more evidence to the fact that pregnant women who get the COVID-19 vaccine protect their babies from complications
Pregnancy doesn’t just make your heart beat more or increase your blood volume – it “dramatically rewires every major organ” in the body.
A study in Obstetrics & Gynecology finds that Black women are “about 10 percent less likely to receive [an epidural] during labor” when compared with white women.
A lovely, thought-provoking essay from writer Laura Barton on unexpectedly becoming a mom at 45, after years of trying through miscarriages and fertility treatments.
Extreme Republicans are holding up a government funding bill and insisting a food program for women and children that has been funded for decades not get a budget increase this year, despite increasing food prices.
More women joined a case in Tennessee challenging the state’s abortion ban, similar to a case brought in Texas.
A digital stethoscope enhanced with AI helped identify twice as many cases of peripartum cardiomyopathy than traditional care.
A deep dive explanation into a case in Ohio where a woman who miscarried a nonviable fetus at 21 weeks could be indicted for “abuse of a corpse.”
Researchers looked at over 9,000 women and found those with urine samples that were positive for cannabis were 27% more likely to have complications.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed legislation to give women 40 hours of paid leave to attend prenatal visits.
A study finds women with higher self-reported stress levels during fertility treatments were more likely to have high blood sugar during pregnancy.
Looking at the rise of congenital syphilis in South Dakota, where a lack of obstetric care has put Indigenous woman most at risk.
A deep dive looking at “cell microchimerism”, where embryos deposit bits of genetic material wherever they implant.
Kelsey Hatcher of Alabama has two uteruses, and she ended up pregnant with baby girls in both.