For the Week Ending September 19, 2021.
COVID-19 Vaccines International Pregnancy Exposure Registry (C-VIPER)
More than 8,000 pregnant vaccinated women are already participating in our survey.
Help us understand the impact of COVID-19 vaccines on pregnancy and babies. Be a part of it!
Click here to Register.
Preventable deaths in Mississippi
72 newborns have died from COVID in Mississippi since the pandemic began–all from unvaccinated mothers–and eight pregnant women, again unvaccinated, have died in the last four weeks. This is tragic under any circumstances, but all the more so since the tool that would have prevented these deaths- a simple injection- is readily available in this country. Read more here.
This is important for you because if you haven’t already, please get a COVID vaccine to keep you and your coming baby healthy and safe.
Traditional diets for healthy births
Indigenous women face elevated levels of maternal mortality in this country, second only to Black women. And many Native pregnant women have poor diets. Although traditional foods can feed their bodies and souls, it is often difficult for them to find such foods–or even to find elders who know about traditional foodways. Read more here.
This is important for you because “For some Native people, pregnancy is a driving force for reconnecting with traditional foods and jump-starting their sometimes confusing and frustrating journey through… food systems built without them in mind.”
Williams Obstetrics
The 15th edition of Williams Obstetrics, from 1976, has this special Easter egg entry in the index: “Chauvinism, male, variable amounts, 1-923.” The book is 923 pages long. The 16th edition, from 1980, is 1102 pages long, and the entry was updated accordingly. The editor’s wife apparently snuck in the entries to reflect the overriding attitude of obstetric medicine at the time. Read more here.
This is important for you because now that many OBs are women and mothers themselves, hopefully the field is less chauvinistic.
Celmatix’s Fertilome
“The Fertilome test, developed by Celmatix Clinical Laboratories in New York, scans for 49 variants across 32 genes that indicate the risk for endometriosis, recurrent pregnancy loss, early menopause, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and other disorders that make it harder to get or stay pregnant.” Read more here.
This is important for you because this type of personalized medicine can help women figure out what their issue might be before suffering through needless traumatic miscarriages or rounds of IVF, which is currently how these things are identified.
The most popular article on The Pulse this week was First Birthday Coming Up? Here’s a Pediatricians Wish List. Read it here.
