More evidence that your mom's illnesses can affect your mental health —

You've probably heard before that people with schizophrenia are more likely to have been born in winter than other seasons — and that this weird fact could be linked to their mothers coming down with the flu, or suffering from Vitamin D deficiency. A new study has now found that people with bipolar disorder had a greater likelihood of being born to women who had had the flu while pregnant. It's a strange connection, and might just be correlation. So far, doctor's don't really understand why a virus-infected mama would lead to her child developing mental illness later in life. — Maggie •

Baby humans are premature, fetal apes —

My dad calls the first few months of a baby's life "the necessary larval stage". I've heard other people refer to it as "the fourth trimester". Basically, newborn human babies are pretty useless, as far as baby animals go. This is especially true in comparison to baby apes, who come out of the womb at a much higher level of development. Scientific American has an excerpt from an upcoming book by Chip Walter that talks about this fact and its connection to two key moments in human evolution — the development of bigger brains (and thus, bigger heads) and walking upright (which has the side effect of creating a narrower birth canal). — Maggie •

Evolution, pregnancy, and food —

The populations at lowest risk for developing gestational diabetes — namely, ladies of European decent — come from cultures that eat (and have eaten, for thousands of years) dairy and wheat-heavy diets that would, normally, increase your risk. Meanwhile, writes Carl Zimmer at The Loom, Bangladeshi women, who have one of the highest risks for gestational diabetes, come from a culture that traditionally ate a low-carb, low-sugar diet. What's going on here? The answer might lie in evolution. It's a particularly interesting read given the ongoing pop-culture debate about whether 10,000 years is enough time for humans to adapt to eating certain foods. This data on pregnant ladies would suggest the answer is, at least in some respects, yes. — Maggie •

Can you influence the sex of your baby by eating cereal? —

This article by Monique Robinson is interesting — not because it tells you anything particularly useful about what you can do before conception to influence the sex of your child, but because it provides a rundown of the many random correlations studies have linked to fetal sex determination over the years. From eating cereal to being a billionaire's kid, it's an intriguing look at how easy it is to find patterns, even when those patterns may (or may not) be totally meaningless. — Maggie •

Some context, in case you spent the better part of last night googling eclampsia —

For no particular reason, here is a graph of maternal mortality rates in England and Wales between 1850 and 1970. The Daily Beast also has an informative article on eclampsia, specifically, though you should be aware that it contains many television spoilers. Particularly interesting to me: We still don't actually know what causes eclampsia — and the treatments still revolve around preventing the seizures. (Thanks to Ms. Rosenberg for the graph!) — Maggie •

Moms, booze, and why social science is so damn hard —

In the past year, I've had multiple social scientists tell me that people are the hardest thing to study. Sure, you don't need a Large Hadron Collider. And the chances of suddenly requiring a HAZMAT suit are pretty slim. But people almost never give you the kind of solidly reliable data you can get out of subatomic particles or viruses. The hard part isn't doing the research. The hard part is getting trustworthy, universal answers for anything. If you want to see a good example of those problems in action, check out this great piece on drinking during pregnancy, written by Melinda Moyer. — Maggie •

If you are a lady, and you think you might be pregnant, you can take an at-home test to find out. You simply pee on a stick. Whether the results are measured in pink lines, blue lines, plus and minus symbols, or a "pregnant"/"not pregnant" digital readout, all the home pregnancy tests on the market are really looking for the same thing — Human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG).

HCG is a pregnancy hormone. It's produced by the placenta, a temporary organ that only forms in female bodies when an embryo has attached to the uterine lining. And so it was kind of weird when a male friend of a Reddit user known as CappnPoopDeck peed on a home pregnancy test and it came back positive.

Turns out, HCG can show up in men, too. And when it does, bad things are happening. You might have seen this story on Gawker earlier this week, but the science behind it is so crazy that I wanted to discuss it in a little more depth.

Read the rest

"Baby's First Baby," by Darren Cullen (2012). via BB Flickr Pool.

Going medieval on the female reproductive system —

Speaking of Todd Akin, Cory posted yesterday about the history of the bogus idea that women who were raped (excuse me, "legitimately" raped) can't get pregnant from it, citing a medical/legal text from 1785. In a story at The Week, we learn that this particular bit of misinformation is, in fact, even older than that, dating back to 1290. So Akin is propagating a belief that has been spread—despite a complete lack of evidence to support it—since the 13th century. Good times. — Maggie •

Kate Clancy is one of my favorite bloggers. An anthropology professor at the University of Illinois, she studies the evolution of female reproductive anatomy. Her blog covers science I don't see anywhere else—the human evolution, cultural anthropology, and behavioral science behind ladybusiness.

So Clancy's blog was one of the first places I looked yesterday after reading about Missouri Rep. Todd Akin thoughtful commentary on female biology. In a long, well-written, and (fair warning) rather graphic post, Clancy talks about what we know about rape—think of it this way, you know way more people who have been raped than who have a gluten intolerance—and the way that emotional trauma affects conception and pregnancy.

First off, there is absolutely no difference in the rate of conception between women who have been raped and those who had consensual sex. Clancy breaks this down nicely in her blog post, and even offers a surprising tidbit from the research literature that all people should consider—at any given day in a woman's cycle (even days when she is supposedly "infertile") there's about a 3% chance of unprotected sex leading to a pregnancy.

The impact of stress on miscarriage is a lot messier. I've mentioned here before that we know very, very little about miscarriage, relative to a lot of other medical issues. To paraphrase my family practice doc, when you start talking about conception and miscarriage you very quickly wander past the small amount of hard evidence and straight into voodoo. And also into the counter-intuitive nature of reality. For instance, from reading Jon Cohen's excellent book on miscarriage science, Coming to Term, I know that one of the very few miscarriage interventions that's ever performed better than placebo in multiple trials is something called "Tender Loving Care". The idea: For whatever reason, women who have had recurrent miscarriages have a greater chance of carrying the next pregnancy to term if they have regular access to mental health services, stress-relieving practices like meditation, and doctors who listen and respond to their fears. But that's not the same thing as saying that stress, or a scare, or a severe mental trauma will, inevitably, cause a miscarriage. Here's Kate Clancy:

Yes, psychosocial stress is associated with fetal loss in some samples. That is not the same thing as saying that stress causes fetal loss. Some women are more reactive to stress than others, and this seems to be based on genes and early childhood experiences. As I pointed out in my post, it certainly isn’t something women have conscious control over. And so it is irrational to link the stress of rape, while awful and severe, to fetal loss, when we understand the mechanism of the stress response and its relationship to pregnancy so poorly, and when we know next to nothing regarding how variation in stress reactivity is produced.

Basically, while stress (and the associated hormones) are correlated with a higher risk of miscarriage in some (but not all) studies, that seems to have more to do with an individual's biological makeup than it does with the source of the stress. And, frankly, we barely know enough to even say that.

• Read the rest of Kate Clancy's post on the rape and pregnancy

• Read Clancy's earlier (excellent) post on miscarriage

• Read Jon Cohen's book, Coming to Term. (I keep recommending this, but, seriously, it's wonderful. And a hugely sane-making force in my life.)

Image: Uterus Embroidery Hoop Art, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from hey__paul's photostream

Photo: lunar caustic

Is it any solace to sentimental mothers that their babies will always be part of them?

I’m not talking about emotional bonds, which we can only hope will endure. I mean that for any woman that has ever been pregnant, some of her baby’s cells may circulate in her bloodstream for as long as she lives. Those cells often take residence in her lungs, spinal cord, skin, thyroid gland, liver, intestine, cervix, gallbladder, spleen, lymph nodes, and blood vessels. And, yes, the baby’s cells can also live a lifetime in her heart and mind.

Here’s what happens.

Read the rest