Women who smoke during pregnancy may cause permanent damage to their child’s blood vessels that can be detected in young adulthood and which may increase the child’s risk of cardiovascular disease,…

For a woman trying to conceive, the best prescription could be a knickerbocker glory. It might play havoc with her diet but the old-fashioned confection, made with cream and…

An “extremely high” proportion of pregnant women living in the northern United States, and their newborns, have insufficient vitamin D levels, and taking prenatal vitamins may not increase vitamin D levels…

Even regular use of prenatal multivitamin supplements is not adequate to prevent vitamin D insufficiency, University of Pittsburgh researchers report in the current issue of the Journal of Nutrition, the publication…

If pregnancy occurs too soon after a woman undergoes a common minor surgery to the cervix, there appears to be a heightened chance of preterm birth, researchers report in the journal…

A think-tank has criticised the government’s teenage pregnancy policy after new figures showed a rise in the number of under-16s becoming pregnant.

A total of 7,462 under-16 girls in England…

People who were breastfed as infants climb the social-class ladder more readily as adults than those who were bottle-fed babies, UK researchers report.

Dr. Richard M. Martin and colleagues from the…

Adverse outcomes in the next birth are more common among women who deliver their first child by cesarean section than those who deliver their first child vaginally, according…

African-American women are three times more likely to deliver babies three to 17 weeks prematurely than Caucasian women, according to a review of Missouri birth statistics by researchers at…

A Queen’s-led study shows that giving nitroglycerin to women who enter labour early results in significant improvement to their babies’ health. The improvement is most…

The first researchers to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the brains of a large group of babies soon after birth found a small amount of bleeding in…

There is no evidence that moderate levels of caffeine consumption during pregnancy lead to a greater risk of premature births and underweight babies despite…

Although they were prescribed widely in the 1960s to women looking to avoid dangerously high blood pressure during pregnancy, diuretic drugs should not be recommended as a way to prevent…

France’s fertility rate has risen to the highest level in 30 years, with women having an average of two children each, official data showed on Tuesday.

In a demographic survey,…

A woman in Poland gave birth this week to a baby weighing more than seven kg (15 lb), which doctors said was a record size for a Polish newborn.

Women who take fish oil supplements during pregnancy may enhance the hand-eye coordination of their children, according to a small study conducted in Perth, Australia.

In the study, 83 pregnant…

Expectant mothers in Germany are doing what they can to put off giving birth until Jan. 1 when a generous government aid programme takes effect.

The media has…

Inflammatory bowel disease roughly doubles the chances of pregnancy complications, reveals research published ahead of print in Gut.

Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD for short, is an umbrella term…

In women with diabetes, increasing hemoglobin A1C levels early in pregnancy - an indicator of poor blood sugar control - are associated with increasing risk of poor pregnancy outcomes, according…

After being treated for breast cancer, women of childbearing age need only wait 6 months to conceive, not the 2 years that is often recommended, findings from a new…

In discussions with 300 pregnant adolescents, 42 percent expressed fears of not being able to get pregnant. This is remarkable, say doctors from Rhode Island.

“Many programs aimed at…

Women who are underweight before they become pregnant are at heightened risk for suffering a miscarriage in the first trimester, a UK study shows, but taking vitamin supplements…

Pregnant women who develop an infection of the placenta or nearby membranes in their first pregnancy have twice the risk of getting it in their second pregnancy,…

Does maternal smoking during pregnancy predict the smoking patterns of young adult offspring? Tobacco Control 2006; 15: 452-7

The authors base their findings on over 3,000 mothers and…

Women who develop high blood pressure (hypertension) during pregnancy have elevated rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and kidney disease later in life, reports a paper being presented…