It's a debate as old as...well, the 1960s. And in recent decades, the father's place in the delivery room has become sacrosanct - indeed, Iran just lifted a ban on men in the delivery room in the hopes that women would become more comfortable and natural birth would become more common. But now there are new voices challenging the status quo, including the rather inflammatory French obstetrician Michel Odent, who feels men actually harm the process. The good doctor will be debating the issue at the Royal College of Midwives.

Pros: Teamwork, solidarity, comfort, and the little fact that some fathers might want to see their children born, too. "With husbands coaching, we have more than 90% totally unmedicated births. No other approach comes near to that figure," says Robert Bradley, who was an early advocate of present fathers.

Cons: As Dr. Odent would have it, "the masculinisation of the birth environment". His argument?

Having been involved for more than 50 years in childbirths in homes and hospitals in France, England and Africa, the best environment I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody around the woman in labour apart from a silent, low-profile and experienced midwife...Oxytocin is the love drug which helps the woman give birth and bond with her baby. But it is also a shy hormone and it does not come out when she is surrounded by people and technology. This is what we need to start understanding.

However, is barring men from the delivery room, 1950s-style, really the solution? Surely it's an individual choice, right? And while nothing should be automatic - it's a conversation that bears having - is a convent-like level of silence the alternative? If we're going to bar anything, maybe it's video cameras that should be on the table - they're notoriously unsupportive. And the strongest argument? Moms don't seem that grateful for Dr. Odent's concern.

A Top Obstetrician On Why Men Should NEVER Be At The Birth Of Their Child [Daily Mail]

Should Dads Be In The Delivery Room? [BBC]
No Dads In the Delivery Room? [BlogHer]

Top OB: Keep Men Out Of Delivery Room [StrollerDerby]

In the Daily Beast, Danielle Friedman shares the story of Joy Szabo, a woman so frustrated with her recent hospital experience, she took to scrawling a message on her car:

In bright-yellow paint, Joy Szabo wrote: "Page Hospital, enter my body without permission... Sounds like rape to me." She began driving that minivan around her small, rural town as often as possible-attracting the attention of her local paper, and this week, the country. [...]

To make a long, complicated story short: In June, Szabo's hospital adopted a policy prohibiting women who had prior C-sections from delivering vaginally-from having what's technically known as a VBAC, for "vaginal birth after Caesarean." While two of Szabo's kids were born vaginally, her second child was delivered via emergency C-section.

At one time, vaginal delivery was deemed too risky for women who'd had C-sections. Today, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists officially supports VBACs, but stipulates that an OB and an anesthesiologist must be in the hospital during the entire procedure. As a result, many financially strapped or small hospitals-like Szabo's-can't offer VBACs. And that has many moms and natural-birth advocates up in arms.

Much of the controversy revolves around a mother's right to choose what happens to her body in the process of giving birth to child. However, as doctors and hospital administration face tough decisions trying to balance budget constraints with the needs of patients.

For many women, having a C-section "feels out of their control-like there's nothing they can do, and it doesn't matter if they say no," says Desirre Andrews, president of the International Caesarean Awareness Network, known as ICAN, an advocacy group that helps moms have VBACs. Over the past six years, the number of ICAN support groups has ballooned from fewer than 30 to 112 chapters, in 43 states. "I think that's why, to them, it feels like an extreme physical assault."

And these women do have a point - the article goes on to point out c-section rates have skyrockets, and estimates about half of the procedures are medically unnecessary. And while there have been reports of women scheduling C-sections due to busy lifestyles (though that idea has been disputed), the fight for reproductive choice extends far past abortion rights and into the treatment of mothers. After all, as Michelle Demont, the creator of BirthCut.com notes:

"Healthy babies matter, of course, but mothers matter, too," Demont says. "We're not just vessels for babies to be born."

The C-Section Backlash [The Daily Beast]
The Risks of Early C-Sections [Time]
Can We Please Stop Blaming Women for C-Sections? [RH Reality Check]
Official Site [BirthCut]

Earlier:

Mad Men: Blood, Sweat, And Tears

It should, because almost the exact same thing happened in February, 2008. Last year, a woman gave birth on a train, passed out, and her baby fell through the chute and onto the tracks, where she lay for almost two hours. The mother and her husband got off at the next station, alerted the guards, and went back to retrieve her miraculously alive child.

This time, the story is a little different. Rinku Rai was on her way with her husband and 4-year-old daughter to stay with relatives. She went into the train bathroom and reports feeling "mild pain," before "the baby came out, chord, placenta and all," she said. "But before I could realize what had happened, it slipped through the hole. I became hysterical, came out of the toilet and jumped from the train." Another passenger on the train assumed that Rai was trying to commit suicide, and she pulled the emergency brake. The train came to a halt a mile from where Rai had lost her baby. When passengers finally found her, Rai was sitting on the tracks, unharmed, cradling her newborn child.

The Independent notes that this is "not the first such incident on an Indian train." Which leaves us with some questions: How can a thing like this happen twice? Do these women not have the proper access to prenatal care? Is it pure coincidence, or a symptom of a larger problem? It's obviously a wonderful, amazing thing that these infants survived such an ordeal, but perhaps the bigger question is how do mothers end up in this position in the first place?

Baby Arrives By Train, Falls Down the Toilet - And Lives [Independent]

Related: Major Miracles

According to David Brown of the Washington Post, "about 12.9 million babies are born too early each year, representing 9.6 percent of births. Of 4 million deaths that occur soon after birth, 28 percent are attributable to prematurity. Some of the data provided by WHO is only for women bearing one baby. Women carrying multiple fetuses have a much greater risk of delivering early."

Africa has the greatest percentage of premature births (11.9%), but as the Los Angeles Times notes, the United States isn't far behind, with 10.6%. Lauran Neergaard of the Associated Press notes that "different factors fuel prematurity in rich countries and poor ones," and that these factors need to be focused on in order to reduce premature births and infant deaths.

Neergaard describes a "kangaroo care" program in Malawi wherein mothers are urged to tie their premature babies to their stomachs, as opposed to carrying them on their backs, as the "skin-to-skin contact keeps the infants' body temperature more stable, a key to survival, and they can nurse at will, promoting weight gain."

In the United States, however, Brown writes, the "increase in the number of older women having babies and reproductive techniques that make multiple gestations more likely are probably contributing to the trend. Black women also have a 50 percent higher rate of preterm delivery than white women," though Neergaard notes that "scientists don't even know all the triggers for preterm birth or how to stop early labor once it starts." In any case, the shocking numbers gathered by the WHO call for a better understanding of premature births, the factors that lead to them, and what can be done to ensure a safer, healthier pregnancy and delivery for both mothers and babies in the future.

13 Million Premature Births Worldwide, 1 Million Deaths [LATimes]
Report: 13 Million Babies Worldwide Born Premature [AP]
Study Finds 1 In 10 Babies Born Prematurely [WashingtonPost]

We've talked about the Duggar-esque Quiverfull movement, in which Christian families have legions of kids to strengthen God's numbers. (Check out this great photo gallery of one Colorado family.) It seems these same folks are equally hipped on unassisted childbirth. (That's just mother, father, God, by the way: no midwife, no dula, no doctor.) Hmm. Lots of babies + no medical supervision equals...well, you guessed it, some correspondingly archaic medical problems. Most recently, Carri Chmielewski, mother of eight, ended up in intensive care and lost a baby due to an amniotic fluid embolism during an unassisted at-home birth.

While not all Quiverfulls scorn supervised birth, some hard-liners see the unassisted varietal as a natural extension of the submission to God's will that characterizes their lives. As Chmielewski herself wrote, "God never meant for man (Pregnant Women) to surrender himself (herself) to the total control of man (dr./technology, etc.) God considers that idolatry. We are to surrender ourselves to GOD." (In fact, her decision to seek out the advice of a midwife - which turned out to be bad - actually went against the strictest interpretetation of the creed.)

While some have called for actionable child neglect charges against parents like these, the Majikthise blog takes this view:

Criminalizing stupid birthing decisions is doing the Quiverfulls work for them. It's saying that women can't be trusted to make their own medical decisions. If you let people make their own decisions, a certain percentage of them will make spectacularly bad choices. Grown women have the right to refuse lifesaving treatment for stupid religious reasons, whether they are Jehovah's Witnesses foregoing blood transfusions, Christian scientists rejecting antibiotics, or Quiverfulls turning their backs on modern obstetrics. That's what it means to be an adult. Pregnant adults are still adults...Besides which, trying to prosecute unassisted birthers will just feed the persecution complex that makes the Quiverfull lifestyle seem alluring to its adherents. Worst of all, if unassisted birth is a crime, laboring women in trouble might refuse to seek lifesaving help.

That last point is particularly well-taken. And, especially with the New Jersey "C-section" case fresh in my mind, my instinct is to lean more towards free choice than paternalism. But at the same time, there's an element of the artificial to blithely letting people go their own way: these same people might home-school their kids, for instance (and do!) but the state still feels an obligation to see that the children meet certain basic government standards. However much certain sects may fight it, we do live in a nation governed by laws and rules. And while it becomes dicey - at the end of the day, it's great that a mother should have free choice over her body and her baby - I'd have no problem with a similar level of mandatory birthing education.

The other issue is the one that's harder for us to wrap our brains around. Quite simply, anyone voluntarily putting herself in this position is most likely better spiritually equipped to deal with the consequences than any pundit can understand. If you're living by the dictates of what the blogger calls "stupid religious reasons" then it stands to reason you believe in them pretty powerfully. What we call an avoidable tragedy, Cari's husband probably considers "God's will" (and indeed, he's thanked Him for only taking his son.) The bigger concern, for me, is that someone might be placed in this position against her will: a culture that demands total submission to the husband surely gives him jurisdiction in matters of birthing, too. And it's hard to know whether a woman on the brink of losing her life and her baby might not want, in that moment of clarity, at least the option of medical intervention.

My Womb for His Purposes: The Perils of Unassisted Childbirth in the Quiverfull Movement [Religion Dispatches]

God Is My OB-GYN: Unassisted Childbirth For Christ [Majikthise]
Life With A "Quiverfull" Family - The Story Behind The Story [Reuters]
Is God A Narcissist? [The Skptical OB]
Realted: Like Big Families? Meet The Quiverfulls
Not Wanting A Cesarean Qualifies As Mental Illness?

Several studies show small differences among siblings based on birth order. First-borns tend to have slightly higher IQ than second-borns, who score slightly higher than third-borns. First-borns are also slightly taller at the age of 10 than their siblings, meaning they may be better nourished. And parents may have higher expectations for their oldest children: one survey found that 35% of moms thought their oldest would do the best in school,while only 15% thought the youngest would.

Findings like these have led some scientists (including, creepily, eugenicist Francis Galton) to conclude that first-borns are predisposed to run the world. Galton and others have found a high percentage of first-borns in influential political and scientific positions. However, some say younger siblings are the real stars. In his book Born to Rebel, Frank Sulloway uses Darwin and Copernicus as examples of later-borns whose birth order allowed them to take risks and be creative, rather than pleasing parents and other authority figures. The idea that first-borns are high-achieving but law-abiding, while their younger siblings are less conventionally successful but more adventurous, has at this point reached the status of conventional wisdom.

But is it true? Psychology professor Ginger Moore says no. She tells the Times,

There is no doubt that parents treat children differently, and some of that difference may be related to birth order. [...] However, the way that parents interact with their children, the expectations they have of them and the opportunities they give them, most likely have less to do with birth order and more to do with many other factors, such as the child's personality, gender, the number of children in the family, the spacing between siblings and parental age.

The average IQ differences among siblings may be too small to mean much (and IQ test are suspect anyway), and according to Moore, the reason birth order is such a popular explanation for variation among families may be that it's easy to measure. It's also easy to amass anecdotal evidence about. Neil Bush and the famously coked-out Roger Clinton are popular examples of underachieving younger sibs, although to call George W. Bush "more successful" than his brothers is to use an interesting definition of success. But it's just as easy to find examples of later-borns who outshone their siblings. And perhaps most common of all is the family where differences between children transcend birth order.

I'm five years older than my brother, and I remember discovering that most of my friends in college were older or only children. Growing up, I cared a lot about my parents' approval and always did my homework — my brother had to be nagged. I was nerdy while my brother was well-adjusted and popular — supposedly common traits of later-borns. As we get older, however, the picture gets more complicated. I'm probably more of a risk-taker than my brother; he cares more about traditions. He's become more academic than he ever was as a kid; I gave up computer science to pursue creative writing. And some of the closest friends I've made in the last few years have been later-borns. There's pretty much only one way my brother and I currently fulfill birth order stereotypes. We're both at our parents' house right now, and while I'm working, he's sleeping.

Are Eldest Children Really A Cut Above? [TimesOnline]

Unlike the earth-mother types who cook their own afterbirth, hoping to combat postpartum depression and increase milk flow, Stein's wife hires a pro. "To my surprise, Sara did not look unkempt, frumpy, heavy or in any way like a Wiccan," writes Stein with typical charm. For $275, the full-time placenta cook will prepare and dry it and turn it into pills - much more palatable, as she explains to the aghast new dad, than the "placenta smoothies" some new moms slurp.

Here's how Stein describes the placenta, which he carries home in a cooler:

Though I am exceedingly squeamish, when my son was born, I was shocked that I saw only the beauty of childbirth. Until the placenta came out. There are many normal human reactions to seeing a placenta, ranging from screaming to vomiting to warding it off with a cross. For those of you who have never seen one, the placenta is to the baby what Stephen Baldwin is to Alec Baldwin. It's what your liver would look like if it got into an accident on the autobahn with one of those aliens from Mars Attacks! and their bloody carcasses threw jellyfish at each other.

Sara, required by law to cook the placenta in the home, steams it with herbs, dehydrates it, and delivers the pills "in a pretty glass jar, [with] a card, a CD of lullabies and a satin pouch. In which was part of my son's umbilical cord, fashioned into a heart." Now, as I told Anna, Joel Stein and placenta-cookery are a combination fairly guaranteed to make my stomach roil. And I was not "disappointed," if that's the word for having one's worst fears confirmed. Nudge-nudge old-school wife-indulging with a dollop of VH1-level snark is hard to take in the best of circumstances. And when it's combined with placentophagy - "the kitchen got that ironlike smell of cooked organ meat, with vague undertones of a consciousness-raising group and a Betty Friedan rally" - the results call for, in my case, a piece of dry toast and some Canada Dry.

Afterbirth For Dinner [Time]

Earlier: Is Sharing Placenta The Recipe For Sisterly Bonding?

Save Some Womb For Dessert

Originally titled The True Story of How Babies are Made, the book was first published in 1973.


This is a baby.


This is the baby's parents, both of whom are fond of horizontal stripes.


Mom's carpet matches the curtains.


The father's definition of "large" seems relative, if not completely inaccurate, but the mother is OK with that, because the large ones kind of hurt anyway.


Danish kissing is just like French kissing, minus the tongues.


Shrinkage can be a problem for some men, but Danish kissing can take the focus away from the crotch. Magicians refer to this as "redirection."


When parents are very much in love, they hang out together in the nude.


Like all the time.


And the vagina in the middle of the father's chest doesn't even freak out the mother.


The father, however, is sometimes freaked out by the mother's see-thru belly.


But that's no reason to put on clothes.


After all, passionless nudity is natural.


But when it's time to go to the hospital, the parents have to put on the clothes they removed nine months earlier.


Because it would've been weird to drive around naked, even if they do own a hippie love van, and people in town expect that kind of thing from them.


The mother appears unperturbed by labor pains, or the fact that her doctor has blood-drenched shoes.


The doctor nervously grips the candlestick holder that he bought at Ikea, and prepares himself for the worst, in case the baby is evil and needs to be clubbed.


The baby exits the vagina kind of drunk. Luckily he isn't a violent drunk, but one of those happy drunks who just wants to hug everyone in the room. The doctor feels relieved about this.


The father, a known nudist, would like to remove his clothing like the rest of his family, but the doctor, whose behavior has been odd, won't leave the room.


The family is happy to be at home, and the father is happy to see a breast, even though he isn't the one who gets to suck on it.


Their friends and relatives, although happy about the baby, are not pictured here because they don't want their names or faces to be associated with any of this.


Real talk.


If you view this sideways, it looks like a tampon exiting a vagina, which is kind of the opposite of a sperm going into an egg. So this is like one of those optical illusion illustrations on display at the Franklin Institute.


YOU GETTIN' THIS? [12 oz. Prophet]

So now post-partum depression is not just a mom issue. There's even a site called SadDaddy.com, run by Dr. Will Courtenay, who says that whether a man will become depressed depends on whether his partner is depressed: "Half of all men whose partners have postpartum depression are depressed themselves," he says. He also counts stress, economic concerns, anxiety and hormone changes as factors in male postpartum depression. Yes, hormones. "Men's hormones change. too, both during pregnancy and early in the postpartum period," he explains. "Our testosterone levels go down, and our estrogen levels go up.Our testosterone levels go down, and our estrogen levels go up."

But even more unnerving is what Dr. Courtenay calls the "signs of depression" in men:

When we think of a depressed person, we usually picture someone who's sad and crying. But if we picture instead a guy who's working 60 hours a week, is a little short-tempered, drinks a couple of beers at lunch, slips out of the office to have an affair, then speeds home to his wife, that's not what we picture when we think of depression, but those are some of the signs of men's depression, which can often look different.

Yes. An affair. Additionally, Dr. Courtenay says:

One of the things we hear from men is that they have difficulty hearing a child crying uncontrollably. It's one of the things that seems to stand out the most. There's a kind of helplessness that men are not used to experiencing. We like to feel confident, so when we can't make this helpless infant feel better it creates a lot of difficulty.

Really? Really? Look, of course we should take depressed new dads seriously. But is it supposed to be easy to hear a crying child? Newsweek's Christina Gillham asks, "Surely there are many who might think, "Hey, wait a minute-I went through the nine months of pregnancy, I went through the grueling labor, I'm staying up all night doing all the breastfeeding-and you're depressed?'" Dr. Courteney's answer is that it speaks to "our cultural denial of men's depression in general." But is this about denial? Or expectations? Because even though having a child is a life-changing event for both a mother and father, don't women expect men to put emotions aside and "man up," as it were? And if drinking at lunch, affairs and avoiding a crying baby are sympotms, what's the difference between a man with postpartum depression and a total jerk?

Understanding Male Post-Partum Depression [Newsweek]

The New York Times reports that a recent study of 66,000 births by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that male babies had a greater chance of problems like premature birth and the need to be delivered by Cesarean. The results are similar to a 2002 study that examined 90,000 births in 1988 and 1999 and found that women pregnant with boys were 1.5 times more likely than women pregnant with girls to experience arrest of descent, in which the fetus stops descending during the pushing stage of labor.

Scientists believe the larger head size of males or their higher levels of androgens may play a role, but they add that the risks are so small that we shouldn't start worrying that male births are "high risk." Nor should the new findings give credence to the old myth about determining a baby's gender.

But, we've seen new research used to back up ridiculous urban legends in the past. Last year, two studies found that women with a high sodium intake and high potassium intake were more likely to conceive boys, and women who skip breakfast and have a lower calorie intake in general were more likely to conceive girls. Some interpreted this as proof that the old advice to eat bananas for breakfast if you want boys is true.

Though newspapers ran with headlines saying women who wanted boys should load up on Cheerios and French fries, "The F-Word" blog pointed out that there were several problems with the research. Only 56% of the women with high-calorie diets had boys. Often research on how a woman's habits increase her chances of having a boy or girl seems less significant when you consider that there is a 50/50 chance the baby will have the desired gender anyway. Pregnancy-info.net has a rundown of the many old wives tales believed to reveal whether a woman is carrying a boy or girl, from mixing urine with Drano to checking which breast is bigger. Most have been debunked by researchers and even in those with some medical credibility, the differences are so slight that they won't really help determine the child's sex. Aside from an ultrasound or genetic testing, they only way to be 100% sure of the baby's gender is to wait until it's born or adopt.

[Image via stock.xchng.]

The Claim: Birth Complications Are More Likely With Boy [The New York Times]
Boy Or Girl? Fact Or Fiction? [Pregnancy-Info.net]

Earlier: Want A Baby Boy? Eat A Burger For Breakfast

Last week, Sarah Reinfelder, 21, gave birth to Kaylin Joy and Valerie Marie seven weeks premature. Reinfelder has a condition known as uterus didelphys, and such twin births are rare. The uteri are different sizes, and Valerie Marie, who was in the larger uterus, weighed 4 pounds, 15 ounces, one pound more than her sister. The babies don't have fully developed lung function and doctors expect they will be hospitalized for three to four weeks. [MSNBC]

[Image via Mullerian Anomalies.]

According to the patent, when inflated in the vagina, the balloon tapers conically toward the waist, which "causes the orifice of the birth canal to dilate in a manner similar to that caused by the emerging head of a baby." Pregnant women can then "exercise by pushing the balloon out of the vagina in preparation for giving birth." Supposedly repeatedly birthing the balloon will make the real thing easier and less painful, but is better to just do it once and get it over with? [Inventor Spot]

A preview of Suleman's interview with Ann Curry aired this morning on Today (clip at left). (The full interview will air next Monday and Tuesday on Today and Dateline. Suleman was not paid for the interview according to NBC.)

Suleman tells Curry her desire to have a huge family stemmed from a dysfunctional childhood. "I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that ... I really lacked, I believe, growing up," says Suleman, adding that she felt she lacked a "feeling of self and identity," according to the Associated Press.

More of Suleman's backstory has been revealed in the interview, and in 300 pages of public documents obtained today by the AP. Suleman became pregnant with her first child in 1999 via in vitro fertilization after she was injured during a riot in a state mental hospital where she worked. She suffered spinal cord injury when a patient threw a desk. She filed for workman's compensation and according to a psychological evaluation she sunk into an intense depression because she was afraid she'd lose her baby. "When you have a history of miscarriages, you think it will take a miracle," she told her doctor. "I just wanted to die. I suspected I was pregnant but I thought, 'That's ridiculous.'"

Suleman collected $165,000 in disability payments for the injury, which she said left her in constant pain and helped end her marriage. In a December 2001 hearing, Suleman said pregnancy aggravated her back condition, forcing her to spend most the day in bed and leaving her unable to care for her first child. In the same year her car was rear-ended when she was leaving a doctor's office and she filed for workman's compensation again, saying she wouldn't have been at the doctor if not for the original injury.

Though Suleman is currently unemployed, she tells Ann Curry that she doesn't think she's being irresponsible by having more children because she plans to go back to college in the fall to get her Masters in counseling with the help of student loans and the school's day care program. "I know I'll be able to afford them when I finish my schooling," says Suleman. "If I was just sitting down, watching TV and not being as determined as I am to succeed and provide a better future for my children I believe that would be considered to a certain degree selfish." Though it's good to know Suleman has some kind of plan for providing for her children, she doesn't address why she thought having even one more baby was a responsible decision when she already had six at home and was planning to enter a demanding master's program.

But, she says she's providing the most important thing to her children - herself. "I'm loving them unconditionally, accepting them unconditionally," she says. "I'll stop my life for them and be present for them and hold them and be with them and how many parents do that? I'm sure there are many that do, but many don't, and that's unfortunate, and that is selfish."

Suleman says she was implanted with six embryos, as she was in each previous IVF procedure, which led to the birth of her six other children. Her fertility doctor, who performed each of the procedures, implanted six because her unnamed medical conditions makes it difficult for her to get pregnant, and then two embryos divided. She says she didn't want just one or two embryos transferred because, "those are my children and that's what was available and I used them. I took a risk."

Suleman points out that many couples undergo IVF, but "it's not as controversial because they're couples so its more acceptable." While it's true that the fact that she is a single mother may be fueling the outrage against her, it's clear from this statement that she doesn't fully understand why her decision to have so many children is so controversial. Maybe, as anthropologist Helen Fisher says in this MSNBC article, part of the reasons is that "[Society is] in a contraction mode, not an expansion one. And here is a woman who has absolutely disregarded that zeitgeist."

Octuplets' Mom: I Always Wanted A Huge Family [MSNBC]
Octuplets Mom Once Feared She Could Not Give Birth [AP]
Octuplets Backlash: Are We Just Jealous? [MSNBC]

In only the second live birth of octuplets in U.S. history, a woman delivered six boys and two girls on Monday at Kaiser Permanente Bellflour Medical Center by Caesarean section, according to USA Today. Doctors thought the woman was carrying seven babies, and were surprised when they found there was an eighth baby (a boy). The parent's names have not yet been released, but doctors say the babies weighed between 1 pound, 8 ounces, and 3 pounds, 4 ounces and were born nine weeks premature. Two were placed on ventilators that have now been removed, and a third needed oxygen, but they are all in stable condition.

"It's a risky decision to try to have all eight babies," said Dr. Richard Paulson, director of the fertility program at the University of Southern California, who doesn't treat the octuplets. "I would not recommend it under any circumstances, but I respect a parent's decision." The first set of octuplets born in the United States were born three months premature in 1998. The smallest died a week after birth and the surviving children turned 10 in December.

Dr. Mandhir Gupta, a neo-natologist caring for the new octuplets says the next week will be critical for the infants, who may be in incubators for six to eight weeks, and in the hospital for the next 10 weeks. "She's a very strong woman, so she probably will be able to handle all eight babies," said Dr. Gupta. But caring for eight children isn't simply a matter of a woman being strong or weak. The uterus is only capable of taking care of a certain amount of foetuses and multiples have a much higher risk of developing health problems or dying. Plus, taking care of eight babies is incredibly difficult for the parents, especially when trying to breastfeed all the babies, like the California mother says she intends to do.

Doctors usually try to get mothers who have had several embryos implanted during in vitro fertilization to reduce the number of embryos, but the number of multiple births is still high. While of course, multiples rarely do occur naturally, The Times of London reports that in 2004 alone 19,049 babies were born in multiple births of two or more, amounting to one in every 67 births.

The number of multiples born as a result of IVF may start to decline however, as doctors have developed a way to test the viability of eggs fertilization and implantation begin. Time reports that in two months, a previously childless 41-year-old British woman will give birth to the first baby who underwent the test. The main reason so many embryos are not viable during IVF procedures is that especially in older women, some eggs carry chromosomal abnormalities that make a full-term pregnancy impossible. Chromosomal testing damages the egg, but doctors have discovered that after eggs begin developing, half of the 46 chromosomes are shed and ticked into a genetic bundle called the polar body, which is safe to test.

While as with other procedures that genetically test embryos babies in the womb, the procedure could theoretically allow parents to test for genetic diseases or more trivial things. While some people are concerned the test could lead to people aborting babies with a certain hair or eye color, the test also holds the promise that a woman undergoing a costly and painful IVF procedure will be able to implant the number of embryos that she wants, rather than having to undergo several unsuccessful procedures, or implant multiple embryos and decide whether to reduce the number of embryos or deliver multiples in a risky pregnancy.

8 Babies Born To California Parents Who Expected Only 7 [USA Today]
Rising Multiple Births Carry Health Risks [The Times of London]
Building a Better Baby: A New In-Vitro Test [Time]

A University College London spokesman told CNN that the girl was screened through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, which tests a group of embryos created through in vitro fertilization when each contains eight cells. The cells are tested, and only ones free of the BRCA-1 gene are returned to the womb.

Doctors around the world already test for genes that definitely cause illnesses like cystic fibrosis or Huntington's Disease, but this is the first time an infant is known to have been tested as an embryo for a gene that is only likely to cause disease. People with the BRCA-1 gene have a 50-80 percent chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer in their lifetimes. Though the British press is calling her the "cancer-free" girl, she could still develop a non-genetic form of the cancers.

Soon doctors will be able to test for other forms of cancer, including a forms of bowel cancer and cancer of the retina. Testing for diseases that may not be fatal and may not appear for decades has raised ethical questions that once seemed like science fiction. "This is simply a mechanism for eliminating the birth of anybody (prone to) the disease," said Josephine Quintavalle, co-founder of the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, who says the fact that disease carrying embryos are often discarded is essentially murder. "The message we are sending is: 'Better off dead than carrying (a gene linked to) breast cancer,'" she said.

Peter Braude, a top British expert on the genetic testing of embryos, says that he sees the procedure as a way to prevent abortions because it is performed on a three-day old embryo that hasn't been implanted. Rather than testing embryos, couples can conceive naturally and test the fetus weeks into pregnancy, at which point some couples choose to abort when the test finds a genetic defect.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority was established in 1990 in Britain to determine which conditions geneticists can test for, but a similar agency does not exist in the United States. Dr. Mark Hughes, who founded a genetics clinic in Detroit that performs about two tests per month for the breast cancer gene, says he likes the idea of a regulatory agency like Britain's. However, he thinks parents should be allowed to test for genetic abnormalities, especially in families that have been hit again and again by a disease. "You can get up on your high horse and say people are looking for perfect children, but let's give these families more credit," said Hughes. "They just want one that has a fighting chance of not having a disease."

'Cancer-Free' Baby Born In London [CNN]

"When the baby is coming down the birth canal its in all the same positions as the penis going in to cause an orgasm," claims Northrup. Of course! Clearly science tells us that a 7 lb. human coming out of a vagina will cause inspire the same instant orgasmic bliss as a penis going into it.

20/20 would also like to challenge the notion that once a child is in grammar school, it's time for him or her to stop breast feeding. In another segment on the joys of motherhood, Robyn Paul, a woman whose son 6-year-old son, Tiernan, is still breast-feeding, explains that, "We use breasts to sell everything from beer to motorcycles, then a toddler is in mom's arms nursing for what they're supposed to be used for and everybody freaks out." In the clip below, Tiernan describes what it's like to drink from mommies "nummies."

Labor Orgasms Called "Best-Kept Secret" [ABC News]
Breast-Feeding Past Infancy: "I'm Comforting Him"[ABC News]

She kept getting her period, and didn't gain much weight, and then suddenly she had stomach cramps and a baby popped out? In college, you probably told yourself this was an urban legend in order to keep yourself from lying awake at night wondering if that stomach gas was really a baby kicking. Well, urban legend, thy name is Tina Cook. Cook, 31, gave birth to full-term, 5 lb 8 oz. Alfie, three days after her period finished. Cook says, "'It is all still sinking in, but it is the most amazing Christmas present and although we were not planning a third child, we are overjoyed." [Daily Mail]

1. The asshole dad will agree to grace the delivery room with his presence, but not to help out in any way. He thinks of "videoing the whole thing, assisting the Caesarean (yes, it happens), cleaning the baby, birthing plans, keeping the placenta and that ghastly prospect, cutting the umbilical cord," rather oddly, as "the tasting menu," and he wants no part of it.

2. He does not want to talk to your doctor while you are, potentially, not in the mood for talking. Davis tells the cautionary tale of one poor schmo, "a meek sort" who "had been told by his wife to ensure that the hospital adhered to all her demands." The asshole dad thinks of the plans you have for the birth as unreasonable, harpyish "demands" — don't expect him to help you carry them out.

3. He will forget everything he learns in prenatal classes, if you can even get him to attend them. Because "men do not discuss births with each other," such classes are not manly.

4. His biggest worry about the whole thing is this: "Will I still fancy the mother of my child if I witness the birth?"

The real question is, if your baby-daddy behaved as Davis describes, would you still fancy him?

What Men Really Think About... Being Present At The Birth [Daily Mail]