Tag: pregnancy

👓 The Truth About Pregnancy Over 40 | NYT Parenting

Read The Truth About Pregnancy Over 40 (NYT Parenting)
More than 100,000 Americans give birth in their 40s each year, but what does that mean for the health of their pregnancies and their babies?

How this phenomenon translates into absolute, rather than relative, risk, however, is a bit thorny. A large study published in 2018, for instance, found that among women who had children between 34 and 47, 2.2 percent developed breast cancer within three to seven years after they gave birth (among women who never had children, the rate was 1.9 percent). Over all, according to the American Cancer Society, women between 40 and 49 have a 1.5 percent chance of developing breast cancer.

The rates here are so low as to be nearly negligible on their face. Why bother reporting it?
November 14, 2019 at 06:49PM

Originally bookmarked this article on November 12, 2019 at 06:53PM

👓 Stress From Racism May Be Causing African-American Babies To Die More Often | NPR

Read How Racism May Cause Black Mothers To Suffer The Death Of Their Infants (NPR.org)
African-American women are more likely to lose a baby in the first year of life than women of any other race. Scientists think that stress from racism makes their bodies and babies more vulnerable.

👓 I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman | Time

Read I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Time)
At every step of a fairly typical pregnancy for a black woman in the U.S., I was rendered an incompetent subject with exceptional needs.
I just don’t have words.

If you’re feeling depressed and angry though, I invite you to continue on with some stories I can’t help but collect: 

🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Rampant Problem of Pregnancy Discrimination | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The Rampant Problem of Pregnancy Discrimination by Michael Barbaro from New York Times

A New York Times investigation finds that many pregnant women are systematically sidelined at work, passed over for promotions and fired when they complain.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: A Life-or-Death Crisis for Black Mothers | New York TImes

Listened to ‘The Daily’: A Life-or-Death Crisis for Black Mothers by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

Black mothers and infants in the United States are far more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts. The disparity is tied intrinsically to the lived experience of being a black woman in America.

On today’s episode:

  • Linda Villarosa, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.
  • Simone Landrum, a young mother in New Orleans.

Background reading:

The story in this episode is a superb and emotional follow-on of an excellent NPR/ProPublica story I read back in December. We need more stories like this.

I nearly had a panic attack while listening to this. The disparities in parts of America are so painful and distressing and we can, could, and should be doing more to improve them.