If you are pregnant, it’s important to consider who will be in the delivery room with you when the time comes. Some people hire a doula to support their birth experience—but how do you know if that’s the right choice for you? Rhonda Lanning, a certified nurse midwife and director of Birth Partners, the UNC…
Congratulations! You gave birth, and now your sweet bundle of joy is in your arms. Those nine months of pregnancy may be over, but your body hasn’t finished adjusting to motherhood. You’re now in the fourth trimester, the 12 weeks after birth when your body will work hard to heal from major physical and emotional…
Micah and Malachi Plumber just turned 1—a major milestone for any child. Watching the adorable twins crawl, giggle and play with their older sister, Kinsley, it’s hard to believe they had a medical condition that required surgery when they were still in their mother’s womb. The boys had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), a prenatal condition…
Babies, Maternal Health, OB-GYN, Pregnancy and Maternal Health
Angie Yawn, 49, is used to solving problems. She’s been setting up and fixing computers in the Henry County school district in Georgia for more than two decades. But when she started experiencing a mix of seemingly unrelated symptoms that lasted more than six years and stumped eight different doctors, she thought she had run…
If you’re pregnant, you have a lot to do to stay healthy for you and your unborn baby—take a daily prenatal vitamin, eat a healthy diet and attend routine checkups, to name a few. It’s also critical to stay up to date on your vaccinations, since being pregnant puts you at a higher risk of…
Whether you know it or not, you probably practice some form of emotion regulation almost every day. “Emotion regulation” is simply what a person does to manage their response to an emotional experience in their life, especially when the experience is negative. Positive emotion regulation is a skill that can be difficult at times no…
Editor’s note: This article originally ran December 3, 2021, and was updated January 10, 2022, to reflect updated public health guidance. Pregnancy is all about timing: when you ovulate, when you conceive, your first, second and third trimesters, your due date. So when should pregnant women or women trying to conceive receive their COVID-19 booster…
“You have a blood clot.” Hearing these words from your healthcare provider can be shocking—and scary. Blood clots can break loose and go straight to your lungs, causing sudden death, right? Can’t they cause strokes or heart attacks? Yes, but not always. In most cases, clots can be treated successfully without long-term problems. So before…
Monoclonal antibody therapies are very effective at reducing risk of severe disease and hospitalization from COVID-19, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has extended its emergency use authorization (EUA) to include all children under the age of 12 who test positive for COVID-19, experience mild to moderate symptoms, and are at high risk of…
If you’ve ever fibbed to your healthcare provider about how much you exercise or how many glasses of wine you have per week, you’re not alone. Between 60 to 80 percent of people have admitted to not being forthcoming with doctors about information that could be relevant to their health. “The No.1 reason patients may…
Pregnant and breastfeeding women have so many things to think about when it comes to what they put in their bodies, to protect their health and the health of their babies. But women carrying, birthing and nursing babies during the COVID-19 pandemic have had a new challenge to consider: Should they be vaccinated against COVID-19…
It’s unsettling but true: You can have gonorrhea without knowing it. This sexually transmitted infection often doesn’t cause any symptoms. And if symptoms do appear, they can easily be confused for another health issue. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, gonorrhea was on the rise; cases had increased 92 percent since 2009. While social distancing and stay-at-home…
