[caption id="attachment_71975" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Photo by Garon Piceli[/caption]
Pregnancy has a strange way of making time feel elastic. Your body is working harder than it ever has, your emotions are doing things you didn't expect, and your days have this new density to them. And right in the middle of all that, someone inevitably tells you to "make sure you're taking care of yourself."
As if it's that simple.
The advice is well-meaning, but it starts to pile up like homework. And honestly? The last thing most pregnant women need is another checklist.
Here's what I think: self-care doesn't have to be effortful. It doesn't need to look good on Instagram or take up half your afternoon. The version that actually nourishes you during pregnancy is usually quieter than that. It slips in between other things, settles your nervous system, and helps you feel like yourself even when everything is shifting.
This isn't another productivity guide. It's an invitation to rethink what self-care can be when you're growing a human.
Photo by Garon Piceli[/caption]
Pregnancy has a strange way of making time feel elastic. Your body is working harder than it ever has, your emotions are doing things you didn't expect, and your days have this new density to them. And right in the middle of all that, someone inevitably tells you to "make sure you're taking care of yourself."
As if it's that simple.
The advice is well-meaning, but it starts to pile up like homework. And honestly? The last thing most pregnant women need is another checklist.
Here's what I think: self-care doesn't have to be effortful. It doesn't need to look good on Instagram or take up half your afternoon. The version that actually nourishes you during pregnancy is usually quieter than that. It slips in between other things, settles your nervous system, and helps you feel like yourself even when everything is shifting.
This isn't another productivity guide. It's an invitation to rethink what self-care can be when you're growing a human.
Dr. Bradshaw[/caption]
Catriona Bradshaw MMBS(Hons), PhD, FAChSHM, FAHMS
Professor (Research), Head of Research Translation and Mentorship
and of The Genital Microbiota and Mycoplasma Group Melbourne
School of Translational Medicine, Monash University and Alfred Hospital
Principal Research Fellow at the Burnet Institute
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: One in three women globally have bacterial vaginosis (BV), a condition that causes a malodourous discharge, and associated with serious gynaecologic and obstetric sequelae (including miscarriage and preterm birth) and increases the risk sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV. Women with symptoms are treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics, however, over 50% of women experience BV recurrence within 3-6 months. The recurrence rate is even higher at 60-80% among women with an ongoing regular partner. Current practice is to simply retreat women experiencing BV recurrence with the same antibiotics, which leaves them (and clinicians) frustrated and distressed.
We and others have accumulated a body of evidence to show that BV has the profile of an STI. BV-associated bacteria are detected in men in the distal urethra and on penile-skin, and couples share these organisms. However, to date, has not been recommended for BV as it is for other STIs. This is largely because men do not usually have any symptoms, and past partner-treatment trials in the 1980s and 1990s, which only used oral antibiotics for men, failed to prevent BV recurrence, which was taken as conclusive evidence against sexual transmission. Reviews of these trials have since identified their limitations.
Given the evidence of male carriage of BV-associated bacteria at two genital sites, we hypothesised that both sites needed to be targeted with antimicrobial therapy to prevent re-infection post-treatment. The aim of our study was to assess if male partner-treatment concurrently with female treatment using a combination of oral and topical antibiotics for the first time, would decrease BV recurrence over 12 weeks compared to the current standard practice of treating women only.
John W. Ayers, PhD, MA
Altman Clinical Translational Research Institute
University of California
San Diego, La Jolla
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are frequently at the center of news
and policy debates, yet little data exists about where they operate or
what they actually do. To address this gap, we developed 
Dr. Fink[/caption]
Dorothy A. Fink, MD
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women's Health
Director, Office on Women's Health
US Department of Health & Human Services
Rockville, MD
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Delivery-related mortality in U.S. hospitals has decreased for all racial and ethnic groups, age groups, and modes of delivery while the prevalence of severe maternal mortality (SMM) increased for all patients, with higher rates for racial and ethnic minority patients of any age.
This study specifically looked at inpatient delivery-related outcomes and found a 57% decrease from 2008-2021. The decreasing mortality rates within the inpatient delivery setting demonstrated as statistically significant and a welcome finding for all women.
This study also looked with greater granularity at the impact of race, ethnicity, and age. Mortality for American Indian women decreased 92%, Asian women decreased 73%, Black women decreased 76%, Hispanic women decreased 60%, Pacific Islander women decreased 79%, and White women decreased 40% during the study period.
