Topic
Maternal health research, explained
10 open-access maternal health studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- Do babies grow the same way in the womb around the world?
Even in carefully selected healthy pregnancies, fetal growth differed markedly between ten countries, so a single global growth chart can misclassify babies as too small or too large.
- What stops Nigerian women from using maternity care?
Whether Nigerian women used maternity care depended not only on their own education and wealth but also on their community and the state they lived in.
- Does a mother's weight change the risks of a first pregnancy?
The heavier a first-time mother was early in pregnancy, the more likely she was to develop high blood pressure disorders and need induction or an emergency caesarean, while underweight women had fewer of these complications but more small babies.
- Does having a caesarean make breastfeeding harder or shorter?
Women who had a caesarean had more trouble breastfeeding, and after accounting for other factors those with a planned caesarean were more likely to stop breastfeeding by about three months.
- Does being overweight in pregnancy raise the risk of complications?
First-time mothers who were obese in early pregnancy had roughly triple the risk of pre-eclampsia and high blood pressure, and were more likely to need a caesarean or have a very large baby.
- Who uses pregnancy and birth care in Ethiopia, and who doesn't?
Very few Ethiopian women used skilled pregnancy, birth or after-birth care, and those who did were mostly more educated, wealthier, urban women who had attended antenatal visits.
- Can a questionnaire capture how women experience childbirth?
A new 22-item questionnaire captured four distinct parts of the birth experience and scored lower, as expected, for women with long, augmented or operative births.
- Why don't young Kenyan women use modern contraception?
Young women in Kenya knew about modern contraceptives, but myths about infertility and side effects spread by friends, family and partners kept many from using them.
- Is any prenatal smoking safe for preterm birth?
Among 25.6 million US births, even 1–2 cigarettes/day in the first or second trimester raised preterm-birth odds; quitting before pregnancy matched nonsmoker risk.
- Does a 3-day malaria combination pill work well in pregnancy?
In pregnant women on the Thai-Burmese border, the standard 3-day artemether-lumefantrine course was safe but cured fewer malaria infections than 7 days of artesunate, probably because pregnancy lowers drug levels.