Tag Archives: Brand-Safe

The New Moms Of Twitter Are Calling Out Folks Who Won’t Wear A Mask

Pregnancy And You

amil/Twitter and DjelicS/Getty I gave birth during a scheduled C-section to my twin daughters in the middle of summer five years ago. I waddled my 36-week belly into labor and delivery at 6am on July 13th, 2015, eager to see the babies who’d kicked me and evaded all ultrasound wands for the entirety of my pregnancy. Would they look like their 3D ultrasound photos? I was skeptical. I could not imagine giving birth this year, in the throes of COVID-19, with the possibility of my partner not […]

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Climate Change Can (And Does) Negatively Impact Pregnant Moms And Babies

Pregnancy And You

Scary Mommy and LWA/Dann Tardif/Getty Climate change affects all aspects of our lives, whether we realize it or not. It permeates every facet of the Earth, which means it’s directly affecting us in our daily lives. A new review of studies on the subject shows that air pollution and high heat exposure have a staggering effect on births. Both can lead to premature birth, low birth weight and even stillbirth. After a team of researchers studied 32 million births in the US, it was also clear that […]

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Postpartum Psychosis Made Me Think Of Harming My Baby

Pregnancy And You

Artem_Furman / iStock What do you think when you see a vacant-looking mom of a new baby and a toddler? That she is probably tired? Exhausted? That’s what most people would think. But would you ever think this was the look of a mom who was about to experience postpartum psychosis? Maybe you’ve never heard of it. I certainly hadn’t. So what is postpartum psychosis? And why would it happen to someone who had everything she had ever wanted? My story begins in 2011. I had packed up […]

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COVID-19 Left Me To Deliver My Twins Alone

Pregnancy And You

Scary Mommy and Kemal Yildirim/Getty I’m a planner. I like to be efficient and over organized. It’s a defense mechanism to deter debilitating anxiety. But, see, there are just something things you can’t plan for. Like a global pandemic that changes your whole birthing plan. The whole country just shut down over night and our lives haven’t been the same ever since. We knew we needed to come up with different plans, and backup plans, and backup-backup plans. With this being our second set of twins, I […]

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I Want To Honor The Son We Lost, While Also Being Joyful About Our Rainbow Baby

Pregnancy And You

Scary Mommy and perinjo/Getty How incredibly slowly and quickly a year goes. I can hardly believe (oddly, I’m not sure if it feels less or more) that it’s been a year since meeting the little boy I’d never get the chance to know. A year since holding his little body and wishing so much that he would just wake up, that we would all just wake up, and realize it was just very, very literally, only a nightmare. And yet, it was one of those few moments […]

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A C-Section Is Major Surgery And Its Impact On Your Body Is Major, Too

Pregnancy And You

Jonathan Borba/Pexels I’m a c-section mama. Twice over. The first time I delivered via emergency c-section, my beautiful, well-thought out plan for a quiet delivery was thrown out the window when the baby went into distress for no reason anyone could discern. The second time, because…well, no one wanted a repeat of my first go around. After my first was born, I couldn’t stand straight to walk. I hunched, too in pain and too afraid to lengthen my abdominal muscles. I couldn’t get out of bed without […]

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From The Confessional: Pregnancy In The Time Of COVID-19

Pregnancy And You

Image credit: LSOphoto / Getty Being pregnant can be a scary experience for many women, even when we aren’t experiencing a worldwide pandemic. But now? It can be downright terrifying. Other women, however, are feeling the baby fever, as all this quarantined family time has them thinking they might be ready for another pair of tiny feet pitter-pattering around the house. And some pregnant people are neither really freaked out nor super excited, but are merely enjoying the excuse to lounge around in comfy clothes as their […]

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My C-Section Stole My Ability To Trust Myself

Pregnancy And You

Randy Faris/Getty The faded blue chair in my therapist’s office is not comfortable. And it’s not just because talking about my intense postpartum anxiety is uncomfortable. The actual chair kind of sucks — it swallows me every time I sit down. I sink so far into the seat that it’s hard to get back up again when we’re done. And right now, I want to be done. We’re talking about the vivid images that assault my mind anytime I take my two toddlers out by myself. That […]

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I Gave Up Birthing At A Hospital So I Wouldn’t Have To Be Alone

Pregnancy And You

Courtesy of Lo Photo Birthing alone was a fear I never knew I had. Flashbacks of my moments spent in the abortion clinic came to me with full force. Scared and alone in one of my most vulnerable moments. No one allowed to hold my hand or to comfort me during the procedure. Hot tears streaming down my face. Those hot tears returned in the second half of March 2020. Eight months pregnant and a pandemic filling our lives. Visitors were being removed one by one. No […]

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13 FAQs About Epidurals For Childbirth––Answered By An Anesthesiologist

Pregnancy And You

Courtesy of Dr. Stephen Freiberg Want to know how an anesthesiologist can make birthing another human more tolerable? Then allow me to address one of the areas where I receive the most questions, both from patients but also friends and families: epidurals. Courtesy of Dr. Stephen Freiberg Specifically, lumbar epidurals. More specifically, lumbar epidural catheters. Even more specifically, lumbar epidural catheters for labor. Why all the specifications? An epidural derives its name from the fact that the procedure involves accessing the epidural space. This is an area […]

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