Among North America’s coastal elites, midwifery has become associated with finicky preferences, rigid orthodoxy, and a commitment to doing things right. Regular folks have hospital births. Folks who want to “win” at childbirth by forgoing the epidural, or who turn up their noses at chemicals that course through one’s…

Early in my third trimester of pregnancy, I had a few episodes of itching at night. It was winter in New York, with cold winds and radiators on overdrive, plus I was massively pregnant, so I didn’t think much about it—discomfort came with the territory.

While processing the files devoted to Time Inc. as part of my job as an Assistant Archivist at the New-York Historical Society, I came across a mysterious object buried among the papers. Sitting in an envelope next to the other papers in a file was a quarter. The envelope said that Mr. Roy Larsen, the editor of Life,…

By the time you read this, I will be on maternity leave. A little quick math will reveal that I have therefore laid off the liquor for nearly a year. A year with several occasions where—to put it mildly—I could have used a drink.

Caroline Malatesta was looking for a facility where she could have some control over her birth plan for her fourth child. She saw the advertising of Birmingham’s Brookwood Baptist Medical Center, which touted birth tubs and wireless fetal monitoring, and decided they offered everything she was looking for.

Childbirth is an incredibly common medical event for which, barring some I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant situation, you have plenty of warning. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be simple estimating your final bill.

As much as you might prepare for the birth of your child, chances are something unexpected will happen. Some moms have had glorious orgasms giving birth, while others’ experiences were more torturous. From uncontrollable poops to the need for new shoes, here are the gritty “secrets” about childbirth you might not have…

Over at the New York Times, Amanda Hess has written an ode to the surprising sweetness of the “promposal”—the popular teen trend of asking someone to prom in an elaborate, often goofy, and always grand way. But hidden in the piece is something far more confusing to me, a bona fide adult, than the already confusing…

There’s a new thing in birth planning called vaginal seeding, which refers to the apparently trendy practice of rubbing your newborn in your vaginal juices after they’re born to make sure they absorb your je ne sais quoi. Are you into this practice, which sounds more like a vintage Dan Savage sex advice column…

It was at my six-weeks-postpartum appointment that someone in the birth world finally admitted what we all fear to be true: vaginal birth can ruin your vagina, even might ruin it—and, in my case, did. The doc inserted the type of speculum she’d always used on me in the past, then took it back out, turned to the nurse,…

Annegret Raunigk may not be the oldest woman to give birth—that title goes to the late Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara, who was 66 at the time her twins were born—but she may be the oldest woman to ever give birth to quadruplets. And the four babies, delivered prematurely in May, are now ready to go home.

Once known primarily for her talk show and her role as Tracy Turnblad, Ricki Lake has become a flashpoint in the world of women’s health.

When I was pregnant for the first time, I insisted on a male obstetrician. I believed that men had better reflexes, performed better under pressure, and were more technically competent than women. I thought that for the same reason I used to think God made Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve, the same reason I thought…

I was never attracted to pregnant women—until I got pregnant myself.

Any woman who has ever spent ten minutes in an OB’s waiting room flipping through free pregnancy magazines is likely familiar with the trend of ingesting placenta. Usually dried and turned into pill form, advocates of “placental consumption” have long argued that eating the placenta helps women make a speedier…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is disputing two particularly bizarre quotes in the new biography of him written by business journalist Ashlee Vance: that he once referred to himself as a “samurai,” and that he chided an employee for missing work due to the birth of his child. Musk called the childbirth quote “total BS” on…

This most recent episode of Outlander was all about family bonding. You know, like when you shoot the shit with your new in-law while sorting through Christmas ornaments, as your significant others make a grocery run for milk and Cheez-Whiz.