Why Is the Maternal Death Rate Soaring in the U.S., and Falling in the Rest of the Developed World?

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Why Is the Maternal Death Rate Soaring in the U.S., and Falling in the Rest of the Developed World?

If you haven't heard about Lauren Bloomstein by now, here's her story—a story that should, and hopefully will, change everything about childbirth in America. Lauren was a healthy 33-year-old nurse in the neo-natal intensive care unit at a New Jersey hospital who died shortly after giving birth to a baby girl in 2011. Soon after baby Hailey was born, Lauren's blood pressure skyrocketed, an obvious symptom of the treatable but potentially fatal-if-overlooked condition called preeclampsia. The hospital staff ignored every attempt by Lauren and her husband Larry (an orthopedic surgeon at the same hospital where Lauren worked as a neo-natal nurse) to get the treatment that would've saved her life. At one point Lauren cuddled baby Hailey; those 35 seconds are captured in this heartbreaking video. Then she died, just 20 hours later. Her death wasn't only tragic. It's infuriating, because Lauren's death was preventable, and so are 60 percent of the 700-800 maternal deaths (and 65,000 near-deaths) that happen annually in the U.S. What can we do to prevent those preventable deaths?

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The Two-Hour Workday

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The Two-Hour Workday

My ex-boss scared the hell out of me when I told her I wanted to go freelance. She was the editor-in-chief of a high-profile national magazine, but she’d done a six-month stint as a freelancer. “I never got anything done,” she said. “I’d wake up, read the news, go out and buy a chicken to cook for dinner, and suddenly I’d realize it’s 6pm.”

This was my worst nightmare of how freelance life could go if I let it.

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Put a Hat on That Belly

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Put a Hat on That Belly

For anyone who has never before had to deal with random strangers walking up and telling you what they think about your eating habits, fitness level, or choice of outfit, pregnancy is a wake-up call. The headline for this week's Time Ideas essay by 38-year-old new mom and Time's editorial director for health, Siobhan O'Connor, says it all: "When You're Pregnant, Everyone is Suddenly an 'Expert' on Your Health." If you've ever been pregnant, or stood within earshot of anyone who has been, you don't need convincing about the truth of that statement. Pregnancy seems to give people you've never met (and some you have) license to ask you totally inappropriate personal questions, or make comments about what you should or shouldn't be doing—or just shoot dirty looks at your espresso. 

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"I Can't Believe You're a Doctor."

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"I Can't Believe You're a Doctor."

I just watched the episode of "Louie" where Louis C.K. gets an annual checkup from his old high school friend (played by Ricky Gervais), who's now a doctor. Gervais jokingly insults his physique, tells him he has the worst penis he’s ever seen, says "you don't need a doctor, you need a time machine," and jiggles his man-breasts: "Did no one tell you that tits are meant to be on women, not men?” Louis mutters under his breath: "I can't believe you're a doctor."

That’s pretty much how I felt when I went to see the new genetic counselor that my OBGYN sent me to, after confirming that I was in fact pregnant. The cheerful genetic counselor who'd been there for my first baby had since left and been replaced by another seemingly perky young hipster (let's call her Gen), who turned out to be anything but perky.

 

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The Astonishing (and Good) News About Having Kids After Age 35

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In case you missed it the first time, The Atlantic's "How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?" is worth a read. It makes the refreshing, evidence-based argument that conceiving after age 35 isn't that much harder than conceiving in your 20s or early 30s, despite all the neverending hype to the contrary.

"The widely cited statistic that one in three women ages 35 to 39 will not be pregnant after a year of trying...is based on... French birth records from 1670 to 1830," as The Atlantic's Jean Twenge points out. So yeah, popular notions about when and how women should plan to have a family revolve around questionable research dating back two or three centuries. Thanks, science. These outdated stats persist even in an era when, as Slate recently reported, women having kids in their 30s are now outnumbering new moms in their 20s.

More recent data about conception at advanced maternal age turns out to be far more promising than the 17th-century numbers we've been beaten over the head with. Twenge goes on to note that "Surprisingly few well-designed studies of female age and natural fertility include women born in the 20th century—but those that do tend to paint a more optimistic picture." Indeed: Fully 82 percent of women in their late 30s will conceive within a year of trying, compared to 86 percent of women 20-34. So that difference is just four percentage points, not nearly as much as all those "baby panic" books and articles would have you believe. There's even more encouraging news and perspectives for older moms too, so the entire article is worth a read.

Author of "Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy" Has THIS to Say About Parenting

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Author of "Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy" Has THIS to Say About Parenting

Ophira Eisenberg is funny. If you've seen the Canadian comic and author's stand-up performances, caught her hosting The Moth's StorySlams, or tuned into her on NPR's nerd-fest "Ask Me Another," you know this about her. Eisenberg—who had her son when she was 43—tells the Orlando Sentinel in advance of this week's Florida taping of "Ask Me Another": “Two years ago, I had a child, which was slightly unexpected. So I’ve made great fun of my advanced maternal age and what that is all about.”

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A Star Doula Reveals What It Takes to Have a Great Birth at Any Age

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A Star Doula Reveals What It Takes to Have a Great Birth at Any Age

Since Sarah Moore started working as a doula and childbirth educator more than 12 years ago, the Brown University grad has become one of the growing profession’s most sought-after experts in New York City. Sarah has attended upwards of 175 births so far, and been present at the bedside of a number of celebrity clients including Megan Boone, star of NBC’s Blacklist. And although Sarah had her two kids in her late ‘20s and early ‘30s, half the women who hire her are over 35. Let’s do the math: That’s almost 100 clients of “advanced maternal age,” not including all the parents Sarah sees regularly in her childbirth and perinatal classes. All this means Sarah has gathered lots of insights on what older moms—and dads—go through during pregnancy, childbirth and the aftermath. We can’t think of a better subject for the first installment of Crunch Time Parents’ Q&A series. Sarah sat down with us for an honest, revealing interview over coffee at a Brooklyn café. Read on!

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Late to the Parenting Party, but Glad to Be Here

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Late to the Parenting Party, but Glad to Be Here

The summer we turned 26, a friend and I jotted down a list of all the hot women over 40 we could think of at the time: Sofia Loren, Madonna, Tina Turner, and a half-dozen or so others. At the time, 26 felt scary and old to us; we needed reminders that women could hang onto their mojo well into their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. We should’ve started another list too: of women having kids over 40. Except at the time, that was the furthest thing from my mind. Kids? No thanks.

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Exciting News for IVF Patients: Just When You Thought It Was Time to Give Up, It's Not

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Exciting News for IVF Patients: Just When You Thought It Was Time to Give Up, It's Not

I remember the look on my friend Jillian's face when her umpteenth round of IVF failed. Exhausted and out of money to try yet again, she and her partner decided to give up on having a baby. She was 43 at the time, and meanwhile I was newly pregnant with my second kid, but it was still too early to talk about it. Even if the time had been right, I would've kept my mouth shut. Some of my friends (myself included) had been on the fence about having kids for years before we got pregnant. But Jillian wasn't on the fence. She'd always wanted to be a mom, and she wasn't flying any ambivalence flags. Now, as I read the latest news about how the most determined fertility specialists and doctors are helping IVF patients have healthy babies despite "abnormal" embryos, I wonder if faulty science kept Jillian and millions like her from having the life they envisioned. New York Magazine's article this week is astounding. It's about how scientifically dubious and misleading test results from PGS (preimplantation genetic screening) might be preventing fertility specialists from using embryos that have a very high chance of leading to a healthy birth.

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Getting an "F" in School Supplies

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Getting an "F" in School Supplies

The first time I was forced to care about school supplies, Trapper Keepers were a thing. This was back in the early '80s, the dawn of the cool-binder era in American history, and the Ocean Pacific-wearing kids who bought the first wave of Trapper Keepers are no doubt busy stocking up on Oculus Rifts for their teens right about now. For reasons no longer accessible to memory, I never owned a Trapper Keeper myself, but damn if I didn't covet one.Fast-forward a few decades later, and I'm school-supply-shopping again, this time for my four-year-old, who starts preK this week. The challenge this time is, sadly, not as simple and human as envying a classmate's glistening, unicorn-festooned binder. It's that I have no idea what the hell the stuff on the school supply list even means.

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What Every 40+ Pregnant Woman Needs: More Clarity, Less Hype

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What Every 40+ Pregnant Woman Needs: More Clarity, Less Hype

If you want to get attention in a headline about pregnancy, use the words "severe" and "morbidity." This new report, in the August 2017 edition of OBG Management, rings all the familiar alarm bells: "Are women of advanced maternal age at increased risk for severe maternal morbidity?" the headline asks. The article doesn't keep us in suspense for long. The immediate answer it offers up is: "Yes."

If you scroll down this page, you'll find a brief rant about the genetics counselor who treated me like a pariah for deciding to get pregnant at my "advanced maternal age"—even though that same day my obstetrician, a bad-ass woman doctor, had told me she didn't consider my pregnancy "high-risk." My doctor also told me she doesn't even buy into the idea that every "advanced age" pregnancy automatically falls into the "gasp! danger!" category.The new report is scary, sure. But although it seems based on a rigorous study, the results are framed in a way that seems to create more panic than necessary.

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