Pregnancy @ MindSay

(NaturalNews) Women who take strategic serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants during pregnancy are twice as likely to give birth prematurely as women who do not take the drugs, according to a study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine and funded by the Danish Medical Research Council.

Many of the most popular depressants are SSRIs, such as Prozac.

Researchers compared rates of premature birth between different women receiving prenatal care at the same hospital in Aarhus, Denmark. They compared women who were depressed and taking SSRIs with those who were depressed and not on any drugs, as well as those who did not suffer from depression.

Women who took SSRIs while pregnant were two times as likely to give premature birth as those who did not take the drugs. On average, they gave birth four to five days earlier (relative to their due dates) than women who did not take the drugs.

The researchers also found that the risk of an infant needing intensive care immediately after birth was significantly increased by SSRI use during pregnancy. While only 7 percent of babies born to non-depressed mothers needed intensive care, along with only 9 percent of those born to depressed mothers who were not taking drugs, 16 percent of babies born to women who had used SSRIs while pregnant required treatment in an intensive care unit.

Babies born to SSRI-using mothers also appeared less healthy than other babies, the researchers said, based on measures including skin color, activity level after birth, pulse, breathing and response to external stimuli.

Previous studies have confirmed that SSRIs can cross the placental barrier into the fetal bloodstream, and that infants born to women who used the drugs during pregnancy can suffer from withdrawal symptoms.

Health professionals recommend that women who are taking SSRIs and are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant speak with a doctor about their options, rather than stopping treatment abruptly. Side effects of antidepressant withdrawal can be severe.

Sources for this story include: www.guardian.co.uk.

(NaturalNews) According to the American Diabetes Association, approximately 4% of all pregnant women (about 135,000 expectant moms) in the U.S. develop gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) each year. These are women who have never had diabetes before but suddenly have high blood sugar (glucose) levels during the later part of pregnancies. And if not well controlled, the condition can hurt their babies -- causing newborns to be so extremely large and heavy their shoulders can be damaged during birth. The babies born to women with GDM often have very low blood glucose levels at birth and may likely have breathing problems, too. What's more, babies born with excess insulin due to their mother's GDM often become obese in childhood and they frequently grow into adults who are at risk for type 2 diabetes.

So what causes gestational diabetes? That has remained unclear -- but now scientists have discovered what appears to be one cause. A new study, published in the December issue of the journal Diabetes Care, has found for the first time that drinking more than 5 servings of sugar-sweetened cola drinks weekly prior to becoming pregnant significantly raises the risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy.

"Compared with women who consumed less than 1 serving per month, those who consumed more than 5 servings per week of sugar-sweetened cola had a 22% greater GDM risk," Dr. Liwei Chen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center in the New Orleans School of Public Health and lead author of the study, said in a statement to the press.

Although scientists have not yet unraveled the precise underlying mechanism resulting in gestational diabetes, they have some strong clues. Previous studies strongly suggested that the main defect in the development of GDM is diminished secretion of insulin combined with pregnancy-induced insulin resistance.

So how do sugar-laden soft drinks fit into this? The research team behind the new study has suggested several explanations for their findings. For one thing, the high sugar intake associated with the drinks may lead to impaired pancreatic cell function. Drinking a large amount of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to a high glycemic load (GL). The large amounts of rapidly absorbable sugars cause levels of glucose in the body to spike -- and this can result in insulin resistance and impaired function of pancreatic beta cells, which make insulin.

In their paper, the scientists noted that the only significant association they found between sweet drinks and gestational diabetes involved sugar-sweetened colas. They did not find that other sweet beverages, including fruit drinks, raised the risk of GDM. Dr. Chen suggests that the explanation may simply be that sugar-sweetened colas are tremendously popular in the U.S. and, unfortunately, widely consumed in excess by women of child-bearing years.

For more information:
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-ba...

• I'm actually excited about Thanksgiving this year because it will just be me, the kiddo and the husband.  My sister has to work on Thursday, but she and her husband will have Thanksgiving dinner with us on Friday.  Then, we might go to the movies to see 2012.  I usually hate Thanksgivings because in the past we had most of my paternal side of the family coming to visit. Let's just say that my Big Mama had 12 children and 10 of them had children and some of those children have children.  Add the spouses of those children and grandchildren and we are talking about at least 40 to 50 people.  As a child it was my job (all by myself) to wash dishes as my mother was cooking AND after the meal was served.  At least my aunts would help me when they got there.  I could never really tolerate crowds and noise after a few hours so you can imagine what it was like for me as a kid during Thanksgiving. Most of the time my relatives wouldn't go home until Saturday!

• Today on the View, Elizabeth Hasselback had a breakthrough when she said she was upset with some people because they were giving her and her daughter strange looks because her white daughter was carrying around the new Tiana doll from Disney's "The Princess and the Frog".  She said that her daughter loves that doll and she didn't think twice about buying it for her.  She also said that she now understands that twinge of "weirdness" or "discomfort" some of her black friends talk about when they are feeling they possibly being judged based on race. I thought it was kind of neat that she was able to empathize with her friends in that situation. I think it's silly that people gave her dirty looks because her daughter was playing with that doll.  It's a pretty doll! My daughter had a couple of Ariel dolls from The Little Mermaid and nobody said a mumbling thing about it.

• Speaking of children, do any of you who have children -- especially those of you who have children who are over the age of three, have those days where you swear you don't like children? LOL! Don't get me wrong, I love and brag on the Kiddo on a daily basis, but let's face it 8 year olds can be ANNOYING! One of the things that drives me crazy is when she wants to tell me about an episode of a show that she likes. She'll forget to mention the name of the show and just launch into what the characters were saying and doing.  She also doesn't describe the characters to me so I have no idea why what they did or said was so funny or out of character.  Not to mention she has the tendency to give too much detail! I tell her for crying out loud, summarize this story!

• I don't care how musically pretentious you are, that damn "Party in the USA" song by Miley Cyrus is catchy.  I admit it. I LOVE it! It's one of the songs the Kiddo and I blast in the car.

• I swear to the Almighty, if my husband wants any more children we're going to have to either adopt or get a surrogate! Have I said how much I hate being pregnant??? Ugh!

• Oh yeah, I am  so sick of reality t.v. shows with slutty, bimbos on them.  Why is it that in order to be popular on television, young women have to dumb as dirt and as fake as a three dollar bill.  Oxygen, which is supposed to be a network for women has a reality show out called "Bad Girls" where six or seven of the most shallow, ridiculous women are featured doing God knows what.  Thanks for setting the women's movement back a hundred years Oxygen! Shame on you!
  

ME:  *burps* Oops! sorry Honey, I ate all the green grapes.

HUSBAND: What? I just bought them yesterday!

ME:  I guess the baby likes them.

HUSBAND:  But, I made sure I bought a lot of grapes.

ME:  I'm sorry.  They tasted really good.  The baby kicks every time I eat them.

HUSBAND:  But... I..., I only had one serving. I don't think the kiddo got any.

ME:  Um...the baby really likes them?

HUSBAND: *sigh* Okayyyy... Does this mean I need to go back to the store?

ME: The baby really likes them. 

HUSBAND: Fine.

During this whole ordeal with morning sickness and dyspesia the only thing that doesn't make me feel like tossing my cookies is spicy foods.  I craved spicy foods when I was pregnant with my daughter and now, I find that spicy foods actually calm my stomach.  For breakfast this morning I ate stuffed jalapeno peppers from Jack in the Box.  As a matter of fact I have been putting hot sauce and chili sauce on everything I eat. 

What is it about spicy foods that actually make my stomach feel better?