The Parenting Weblog

© storyvillegirl

Here is some good news for pregnant women, or those going to be pregnant, who work odd shifts or whose working hours are not fixed. A recently concluded study reveals that working night shifts may have negligible effect on chances of a pregnant woman delivering an underweight baby, or having a preterm delivery.
"On balance, the evidence currently available about the investigated birth outcomes does not make a compelling case for mandatory restrictions on shift-working in pregnancy," said the report.
The report comes in light of a hypothesis stating that working irregular shifts could affect a women's reproductive cycle by altering the body clock and similarly affecting a pregnant woman. The timings may also affect pregnant patients' normal hormonal activity, it was beleived. However, the latest report rubbishes any of that to be particularly influencial on pregnant womens' chances of abnormal delivery.

© AMagill

Women who smoke during their pregnancy may be exposing their unborn child to severe asthma. A new study has proven that children who have been exposed to tobacco smoking during pregnancy are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from severe asthma.
This exposure during the pregnancy is also associated with three times the number of daily and night time asthma symptoms and nearly four times the number of asthma related emergency room visits later in the child's life. The study has also stated that this effect during the pregnancy was far more severe than the role of tobacco smoke during the first two years of life of the child.
The study was undertaken by a research team which was spread across 16 institutes, tried to find the impact of tobacco smoking on three phases spanning during pregnancy, first two years, and later exposure. 295 children with asthma aged 8 to 16 years from a Mexican, Puerto Rican and African American heritage. According to the researchers the smoking causes a genetic predisposition to lung inflammation and retarded lung development.

© abarefoot

Mothers having high BMI prior to giving birth, deliver fatter babies who have a larger amount of fat in their liver. This was disclosed by researchers of Imperial College London. They concluded that the weight of the babies was directly co-related to the weight of the mothers and higher BMI of mothers to be would have serious consequences on the metabolism of the babies in the long run.
The study was done at Chelsea and Westminster Hospitals on 105 new born babies, who underwent magnetic resonance scanning to measure, the amount of fat they had in cells of their liver and their bodies.
This implied that to prevent obesity in babies necessary steps have to be taken by the mother when she conceives as higher BMI in mothers to be would impact the development of the babies.