The Baby Quote That Got Carrie Underwood in Trouble Makes Perfect Sense

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The Baby Quote That Got Carrie Underwood in Trouble Makes Perfect Sense

Carrie Underwood is all over the tabloids this week now that she's unveiled her baby bump, but the singer has had a rough few days. She got massively trolled for saying this to Redbook:

"I'm 35, so we may have missed our chance to have a big family. We always talk about adoption and about doing it when our child or children are a little older. In the meantime, we're lucky to be a part of organizations that help kids, because our focus right now in our lives is helping as many kids as possible," Underwood said in her recent Redbook interview.

Twitter didn't miss a nanosecond to start railing at her, and comments got nasty. Here's one: 

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New Autism Findings Are Couched in "Don't Blame Parents" Rhetoric, but Critics Say Report Points Fingers

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New Autism Findings Are Couched in "Don't Blame Parents" Rhetoric, but Critics Say Report Points Fingers

By Salma A.

A new report about a potential cause of autism points to clues in a baby's teeth. In children who later develop autism, researchers can see "records of what exposures occurred during fetal development, and when they occurred, in a manner similar to the rings on trees." says a New York Times column headlined; "In Baby Teeth, Links Between Chemical Exposures in Pregnancy and Autism."

Author Peri Klass, M.D., a regular contributor to NYT's Checkup column, takes pains to note that the findings should NOT in any way suggest that mothers, and parents in general, are responsible for kids' early exposure to those factors, but many readers aren't buying the sincerity of the "don't blame parents" approach. 

In the intro to her column, Klass writes that "so many different exposures have been linked to problems in the developing fetal brain that parents can sometimes feel both bewildered and, inevitably, at fault for failing or having failed to take all possible precautions" to prevent autism in their child. Her piece, which has ignited a controversy,

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Moms 40-Plus Are Outpacing Younger Parents in THIS Category, Says NYT

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Moms 40-Plus Are Outpacing Younger Parents in THIS Category, Says NYT

By Salma A.

In case you missed it, this New York Times article about the declining rate of childbirth in the U.S. is fascinating for so many reasons. Here are just a few:

The only demographic in America with a rising childbirth rate nowadays is...women ages 40-44, says the NYT report. Survey participants in every other age group are having fewer babies than they thought they would. Here at Crunch Time Parents, one of the main reasons we exist is to explore—and celebrate—the fact that people have more options than ever before if they want to become parents later in life. But it's still a sobering surprise to see the childbirth rates plunging for every other age group. 

So, why are Americans having fewer babies these days?

So, why are Americans having fewer babies these days?

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Why Do Articles About Brigitte Nielsen's Pregnancy at 54 Sound Oddly Familiar?

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Why Do Articles About Brigitte Nielsen's Pregnancy at 54 Sound Oddly Familiar?

By Salma A.

The 54-year-old Danish-Italian actress Brigitte Nielsen—known in the States mainly for her roles in Beverly Hills Cop II, Cobra, and Rocky IV, and partly for her former marriage to Sylvester Stallone—just announced she's pregnant. This is Nielsen's first pregnancy, and the father is her 39-year-old husband Mattia Dessi.

That's just about all the media knows now, or needs to know. But why just publish a one-page article about a celebrity's pregnancy news, when you can pad it out instead with a Mad-Libs-worthy piece on the likelihood and unlikelihood, the ins and the outs, the cliches and the eye-rollers, about pregnancy at "advanced maternal age"? 

To wit: Newsweek's article about Nielsen's pregnancy news, headlined "Risks of Pregnancy for Women Over 50? Brigitte Nielsen Announces Pregnancy at 54," starts off with a couple of brief paragraphs about the announcement, then launches into this:

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Here's the Latest Idea for Renaming the Dreaded "Advanced Maternal Age"

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By Salma Abdelnour Gilman

An article on NBC's 9News.com headlined "Can I have Kids After 35? And Other Mom Questions Answered" doesn't have much to offer in the way of insights. Spoiler alert: The answer to the headline question is, "Research has shown that women are having babies later in life." So... this gives you a sense of the level of hard-nosed, ear-to-the-ground reporting we're dealing with here. But there are two intriguing takeaways from the article:

1) "Women with more children have less teeth." This is weird. But it's apparently a "FACT" (all-caps), according to the aforementioned 9News.com.

2) There's a better alternative to "Advanced Maternal Age," and it's... are you ready? "Waited Until I Could Handle It Moms." Not entirely accurate, since certainly not everyone waits on purpose, but we could get used to this one. WUICHIM is the acronym, and it's already growing on us. Bye forever, AMA?

Photo by Maurice Schalker via Unsplash.

Cheers to Rachel Weisz and Tammy Duckworth's Big Baby News

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Cheers to Rachel Weisz and Tammy Duckworth's Big Baby News

This was a Crunch Time double-header of a week: Rachel Weisz, 48, announced she's pregnant with Daniel Craig's baby, in a New York Times profile by Maureen Dowd. And Senator Tammy Duckworth, 50, brought her newborn daughter, Maile, with her to the Senate floor, a day after legislators voted unanimously to allow babies less than a year old to accompany their Congress-member parents to work.

“I’ll be showing soon,” Weisz tells Dowd. “Daniel and I are so happy. We’re going to have a little human. We can’t wait to meet him or her. It’s all such a mystery.”

And that's about all Weisz says, and all she needs to say.

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The Life-Saving Magic of Doulas

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The Life-Saving Magic of Doulas

If you don't read anything else this week, read this: the New York Times Magazine's "Why America's Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life or Death Crisis." Reporter Linda Villarosa tells the jaw-dropping story of a 23-year-old black mother of two named Simone Landrum, whose third pregnancy ended in a tragedy that could've been prevented if anyone bothered to listen.

Landrum's doctors and nurses kept ignoring the excruciatingly painful symptoms she reported all through her pregnancy—which should be shocking but, sadly, comes as little surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to reports on the horrendous rate of black maternal and infant mortality in America (black women are 12 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women). Institutional and structural racism in the medical system is killing mothers and babies at a sky-high rate—the racial disparity in childbirth-related deaths between is now higher than it was in 1850—and the only good news is that this issue is making headlines now. 

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Trying for a Second Baby in Your 40s?

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Trying for a Second Baby in Your 40s?

Having a kid after 40 can feel like a mind-blowing triumph, but what happens if you want to give your child a sibling? We know lots of women who've had two kids in their 40s, naturally or through IVF, and plenty who are trying but aren't having luck yet. We also know moms who've always wanted only one kid, and those who are gradually resigning themselves to one-and-done. 

A neighborhood listserv in Brooklyn is hosting a discussion by moms in their 40s who are trying for a second child. Sample comments: "My two-year-old daughter wants a sibling and I feel like I'm failing." "I'm a single mom, and at 45 I don't see how I can pull off having another kid." "After too many expensive IVF cycles and a miscarriage, I'm giving up." "We have two frozen embryos, but at 44, my body is too worn out so we're not going to try them."

Women who did have a second kid in their 40s haven't chimed in yet, probably because they're not looking for support on this issue as much as their single-child peers are. Since that Brooklyn listserv is members-only and and charges a fee, we thought we'd open up our free lines to any parents out there who'd like to weigh in about your own experiences.

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Thinking About Having a Baby Solo? Here's How This Musician, Teacher, and Mom Did It

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Thinking About Having a Baby Solo? Here's How This Musician, Teacher, and Mom Did It

Women now have more options than ever before about when and how to have a baby. (Well, Roe v. Wade protections may vanish before our very eyes, but that’s another story.) Deciding to become a solo parent, with the help of assisted reproductive technologies, is one example of a path that wasn’t available in decades past—and it can lead to an incredibly fulfilling life as a parent.

But the path isn't easy, by any stretch of the imagination. Solo pregnancy and childbirth come with their own built-in challenges, layered right on top of the struggles that all parents face.

At Crunch Time Parents, the women we’ve met who have had babies on their own are a super-inspiring, tough, loving (and funny!) bunch, and we’re proud to be able to highlight some of their experiences here as part of our Crunch Time Q&A series.

Meet Jessica Ivry, an acclaimed Bay Area musician, educator, and mom to two-year-old Esti. Here, Jessica opens up about what it took to get where she is now: a happy, fortunate, and hard-working parent of a beautiful and active little girl.

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Egg Freezing: Should You Do It?

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Egg Freezing: Should You Do It?

"I am single and babyless not because my career is standing in the way, but because I haven’t met the person I want to make one with yet," writes 29-year-old Washington Post reporter and filmmaker Nicole Ellis in an article introducing her new serialized mini-documentary, Should I Freeze My Eggs?

Ellis appeared on the terrific Brian Lehrer radio show on New York's NPR affiliate, WNYC, this morning to talk about the documentary, and about her own attempts to figure out how egg-freezing works and whether she should do it herself. As she worked on the series, Ellis wondered why women's fertility is always framed in negative or perilous terms, and her questions led her to the guy who originally coined the notorious term "biological clock" in 1978, another Washington Post columnist named Richard Cohen.

Her response to Cohen, and Cohen's own response to Ellis, are definitely worth a listen, as is Ellis's thoughtful exploration of a question that so many women are confronting now: to freeze or not to freeze?

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Serena Williams for President: After a Harrowing Childbirth, a Heroic Comeback

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Serena Williams for President: After a Harrowing Childbirth, a Heroic Comeback

The beautiful Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. popped out into the world this world having no idea who her mother is—tennis world-champ Serena Willams—nor what her mom was about to go through in the next few hours: a life-threatening pulmonary embolism that would most likely have gone undetected if Williams hadn't lobbied hard to get a CT-scan.

Williams had to plead for a scan and a heparin IV drip because the nurses and doctors ignored her initial requests, despite the fact that she's Serena Williams. They eventually listened, likely because she is in fact Serena Williams, and the treatment saved her life.

Too many black women in the U.S. aren't as lucky when they face complications in childbirth, and evidence keeps mounting about how racial bias in hospitals is leading to a rising rate of maternal mortality among African American women—three to four times as high, according to the Centers for Disease Control, as the already exorbitant and rising overall rate of maternal mortality in the U.S. (See this NPR story about Shalon Irving for a shocking and heartbreaking recent example of a woman who wasn't as lucky as Serena Williams.) If anything good could come of the 36-year-old Serena Williams's terrifying near-miss, it would be

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Senator Tammy Duckworth's Quote of the Week:" A 50-Year-Old Mom Is the New 40"

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Senator Tammy Duckworth's Quote of the Week:" A 50-Year-Old Mom Is the New 40"

The announcement by Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) that she's pregnant at 49, and due to give birth in April right after she turns 50, is impressive enough. But the fact that Duckworth is a double amputee who wears prosthetics on both legs after losing them in the Iraq War in 2004—and the fact that she already has a daughter—should certainly catapult the senator into top running for the Total Badass Award 2018. (The award doesn't officially exist yet as far as we know, but there's no time like the present to kick it off.)

Duckworth will be the first-ever Senator to give birth in office, adding to her already long list of firsts:  The first woman with a disability ever elected to Congress; the first Asian-American woman ever elected to Congress from Illinois; the first Thailand-born member of Congress.This Sunday, Duckworth told ABC's Face the Nation , "I feel great. I'm thrilled and happy." She talked about the challenges of getting pregnant both times, and opened up about what it's like to serve in Congress as a new mother. Here are some highlights from her interview:

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