The final days of pregnancy can be a challenge, but they are also filled with joy, hope, and awe at how far you and your baby have come on this journey together. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve reached the last few weeks of my own pregnancy, so I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on this ephemeral time. In this week’s blog, we’ll talk about some of the ways to make the most of the final days and weeks before you welcome your baby earthside.
There’s SO MUCH NOISE these days around what to eat, what not to eat, “Good food”, “Bad food” and everything in between. But how can you parse through that information and get to the truth? How can you find sound information and apply it to your normal, everyday life without going crazy and feeling like you can’t eat anything without serious risk?
Nutrition is the cornerstone of well-being, especially for women navigating the landscape of health concerns. Amidst the challenges—juggling careers, managing households, and nurturing relationships—we women often find ourselves grappling with stress, hormonal imbalances, erratic sleep patterns, and unrelenting fatigue. These daily battles can take a toll.
How can you eat to maximize your nutrition during pregnancy, or to prepare for pregnancy? It doesn’t take a PhD to know: foods beat pills every time. Nutrients from foods are better absorbed and recognized by your body, and once they reach your cells, they’re also more potent.
The miracle of childbirth brings forth not just a precious life, but also a wealth of potential for future health. Newborn stem cells, found in umbilical cord blood, are like tiny blank slates, holding the remarkable ability to develop into different cell types. This makes them a powerful tool in the fight against a range of diseases.
Epigenetics refers to the way your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Epigenetics turns genes "on" and "off." Your epigenetics change as you age, both as part of normal development and aging and because of exposure to environmental factors that happen over the course of your life. Epigenetic changes can affect your health in different ways.
When I was pregnant with my first baby, I had vivid memories of my mom cloth diapering my siblings. In those days, a weekly diaper service picked up the dirty diapers and dropped off a clean round of prefold diapers and waterproof covers. While I think diaper services still exist today, they are not as prevalent as they used to be, and most families interested in cloth diapering will be selecting and laundering their own cloth diaper collection.
In an effort to save women from the #2 leading cause of death – cancer—it's time for a whistle-blow. With a 15 year career in Women’s Healthcare - I’ve kept a close eye on Los Angeles’s technology and our health disparities/inequalities. Having worked throughout the USA and abroad, I’ve noticed very few advancements in breast cancer screening in Los Angeles relative to other cities. Every year I imagined this would improve yet it has not. In hopes of saving just one woman’s life, I thought it was time for a whistle blow from inside the industry. As a “natural-minded” but not always in-practice mom, I’m thinking twice about giving PEEPS to our kids after last year’s big headliner.Governor Gavin Newsom signed the nation’s first law banning toxic chemical food additives found in various candies like Peeps. After much thought, I applaud this! Yet, for some reason,this ban doesn’t apply to women who are pregnant. Here in 2024, it’s still being mandated that women in their 2nd trimester consume a decades-old diagnostic product (glucose beverage for diabetes screening) that has the same additives in it that Governor Newsom banned. Why are these beingbanned in the food and beverage industrybut not in the medical world?
Ready for the final PUSH? The finish line is here, but the last intense step will require some LABOR of love. It is OK to feel overwhelmed, anxious, nervous, and excited. So many thoughts for you and your team! I trust that my experiences as an OBGYN, and drawing from the thoughts and concerns shared by my patient’s during their labor experiences, will help alleviate any additional concerns you have.
It can be confusing to understand the many tests offered throughout pregnancy, especially as technology allows us to test for more and to be more accurate with our testing. The good news is that each test you’ll undergo during your pregnancy is intended to help monitor the health of either you or your baby – so they are well worth the effort, even if at times you may feel like a human pin-cushion!
We are days away from the 3rd trimester and the 7 month mark (yay!)…but you know what that means…glucose tolerance test time.
PMAD stands for Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders, which is an umbrella term for groups of symptoms that can be experienced during pregnancy and/or postpartum. PMADs can occur at any time in the perinatal period and can also affect fathers, same-sex partners and adoptive parents as well.
Kegel exercises are gaining popularity among women all over the world, and with good reason: they help reduce urinary incontinence and also assist with other problems with pelvic floor muscles, such as sexual dissatisfaction and weak muscles.
Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) impacts 5% - 8.5% of pregnant women. It can occur in any pregnancy regardless of diet regimen and overall health.
LabCorp, an outpatient clinical laboratory headquartered in North Carolina, is the United States largest laboratory offering testing and continuity of care for preconception, pregnancy and pediatric care.
No matter what your credentials, caring for a family dealing with infant feeding difficulties requires a team-based approach. Determining how to best support and where and when to refer is important to ensuring feeding success for these infants and their families. This article breaks down the alphabet soup of infant feeding credentials and highlights the scope and specialty of each professional who can support the infant feeding journey.
When you’re pregnant you know at some point you’re going to have to do the glucose test, which screens for gestational diabetes sometimes between 24 to 28 weeks gestation. If you’ve gone through a glucose test before, you may be familiar with the sugary beverage you have to drink and then they time your blood draw either at 1 hour and done, or every hour for 2 or 3 hours depending which test you go in for.
Pregnancy symptoms vary from woman to woman, especially throughout the first trimester. However, as pregnancy progresses, many women start to experience similar concerns with heartburn being a major player. Old wives tales suggest heartburn is a sign that baby is growing hair – apparently some luscious locks! Physically speaking, as baby gets larger and the uterus expands, it begins to compress on major organs including the stomach, driving acid up the esophagus resulting in acid reflux and heartburn.
