Giving pregnant mothers magnesium sulphate when they are at risk of very preterm birth can help protect their babies from cerebral palsy, according to an international review of research involving the University of Adelaide, Australia.

To better understand preeclampsia, a sudden rise in maternal blood pressure and onset of kidney disease during pregnancy, researchers from Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical College are studying mice that have the same affliction.

Making the contraceptive pill available without prescription will not reduce unwanted pregnancies, says an expert in an article published on bmj.com today.

Who's Anna Hansen? Well, until Lance Armstrong came into her life, a relatively private person. But now she and the seven-time Tour de France winner are expecting a baby.

The research was carried out by a team of researchers led by Sharon Herring, MD, MPH, an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Temple University.

Body image is a tricky thing for many women. Like looking into a funhouse mirror, the way they perceive their bodies can make them think they're thinner or more obese than they actually are. Researchers led by Temple University's Sharon Herring, MD, MPH, have found that this misperception is associated with excess weight gain during pregnancy – which can cause complications for both mother and baby.

Promoting healthy pregnancy and safe childbirth is a goal of all European health care systems. Despite progress in recent decades, mothers and their babies are still very much at risk during the perinatal period, which covers pregnancy, delivery, and the postpartum.

Pregnancy and surgery patients with a serious blood disorder that causes excessive clotting have responded well to treatment with a man-made anti-clotting protein. Results from a study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine and other institutions were presented December 6 at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in San Francisco.

Every time you see such an incident on TV (granted, it's TV), the police officer escorts the couple in active labor to the hospital. In this case, he gave them a ticket.

A UCSF study has found that a surprisingly high number of maternal cells enters the fetus during pregnancy, prompting the generation of special immune cells in the fetus that suppress a response against the mother.

Women who took the antidepressant fluoxetine during the first three months of pregnancy gave birth to four times as many babies with heart problems as women who did not and the levels were three times higher in women taking paroxetine.

Women who have had two or more induced abortions have a reduced risk of pre-eclampsia by 60 %. It is not currently understood to what degree physical activity during pregnancy protects against pre-eclampsia, compared to previous studies. This is shown in two new studies from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) that use data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa).