Binge drinking during a specific period of pregnancy may place children at increased risk for seizure disorders.

Among more than 80,000 Danish-born children followed for up to 8 years,…

Pregnant women who experience orthopaedic trauma may minimize the risk of preterm birth and other prenatal complications if they receive care at a medical center equipped to treat both high-risk…

Women who are having unprotected sex are more likely to suspect they might be pregnant, and to follow-up on this suspicion if a home pregnancy test is handy, a…

Very few women of childbearing age are sticking to lifestyle and nutrition recommendations before becoming pregnant, new research from the UK shows.

Among 12,445 women 20 to 34 years old, the 238…

Looking at the overall pattern of alcohol consumption during pregnancy is better at predicting problems in the offspring than are individual alcohol-related risk factors, researchers have found.

“Our research…

Women who’ve just become pregnant may want to watch how much vitamin E they take in. It seems that high levels of vitamin E early in pregnancy may…

For women who are obese during pregnancy there is an associated increased risk of certain birth defects, such as spina bifida and neural tube defects, although the…

Parents of children with genetic conditions may avoid the need to choose whether to undergo pre-natal testing or to abort future pregnancies by simply avoiding subsequent pregnancy altogether, a…

Smoking during pregnancy reduces blood flow to the developing fetus and, in turn, retards growth, new research suggests.

“We have known for 50 years that infants born to…

Water aerobics can be a safe form of exercise for pregnant women, study findings confirm.

No scientific data shows any concrete detrimental effect from moderate, water-based physical exercise to the…

Intensive control of high blood pressure (hypertension) leads to improved pregnancy outcomes in women with type 1 diabetes and kidney disease, Danish researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care.

Cigarette smoking during pregnancy is associated with potentially harmful changes in both maternal and fetal thyroid function, according to a new study accepted for publication in…

Women who smoke during pregnancy risk delivering aggressive kids according to a new Canada-Netherlands study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology. While previous studies have shown that smoking during…

Traditional acupuncture and non-penetrating sham acupuncture both appear to help relieve pelvic pain in pregnant women, Swedish researchers report. However, contrary to expectation, neither acupuncture approaches is more effective than…

Smoke from so-called harm-reduction cigarettes is just as dangerous to developing embryos as smoke from standard cigarettes, and may be even more toxic, new experiments with mouse embryo stem…

Regular water aerobics workouts during pregnancy make it easier for women to deliver their babies without pain relief, new research from Brazil suggests.

Less than one third of women who…

The infants of mothers who used folate supplements during their first trimester appear to have a slightly higher incidence of wheeze and lower respiratory tract infections up to 18 months…

A study in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Sleep is the first to show that high levels of prenatal smoking exposure strongly modify…

The presence of early pregnancy nausea and vomiting, and the severity of these symptoms, may exert a significant negative impact on a woman’s health-related quality of life, a study…

Women who gain too much weight during pregnancy may not only have bigger babies, but bigger teenagers as well, a study suggests.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that among…

A study in rats shows that exposure to a high-fat diet during pregnancy produces permanent changes in the offspring’s brain that lead to overeating and obesity early…

Babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were more than twice as likely to have a cleft palate or lip as those whose mothers didn’t, according to research results…

Women who gain more than 40 pounds (18 kg) during pregnancy have nearly twice the risk of delivering a heavy baby as those who gain less, U.S. researchers…

A study by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research of more than 40,000 women and their babies found that women who gained…

Complications during pregnancy and birth, such as birth hypoxia - the shortage of oxygen in the body - are associated with an increased risk for schizophrenia. However, it is not…