Babies Health

Early prenatal care dramatically cuts the odds of having an ill or low-birth-weight baby, reduces the risk of newborn death, and study after study shows that it has the greatest impact on teens, unmarried and minority women--all at high risk for complications. In the last few decades, the message about prenatal care has been spread effectively. In 1992, 78% of pregnant U.S. women received medical attention beginning in the first trimester. But the numbers in California will drop once Gov.

Fido the dog and Ginger the cat need not worry about being replaced by a new baby - in fact, they could be helping parents raise healthier children. A new study finds that children who lived with dogs or cats during their first year of life got sick less frequently than kids from pet-free zones. The study, published in Monday's edition of the journal Pediatrics, provides fresh evidence for the counterintuitive notion that an overly clean environment may not be ideal for babies.

Taking prevention to the womb, Ventura County's Health Care Agency is working to beef up prenatal services for low-income women. A smoking-cessation program launched this week is seeking out expectant mothers to help them kick the habit. And the Women, Infants and Children program is expanding to provide food and nutrition education to more needy people.

About 40% of births in Los Angeles County each year are the result of unplanned pregnancies, which can endanger the health of babies, according to a study released by the county's Department of Public Health. The figure is based primarily on a county survey completed in 2006 of more than 5,200 women ages 13 to 56 who had recently given birth. The percentage of unplanned pregnancies was about the same among women who gave birth and those who experienced stillbirths and miscarriages, according to Dr. Susie Baldwin, chief of the department's health assessment unit, which produced the study.

The number of babies reported as being born addicted to drugs in Los Angeles County dropped by 10% during 1990, the first decrease since such statistics have been kept, according to a study to be released today. Experts called the finding encouraging, but also cautioned that the statistics may reflect, at least in part, a decline in reporting. As one county doctor said, "The battle is not won."

Cardiac care nurse Mary Krugler has seen plenty of patients loaded onto gurneys, heading into surgery. But Tuesday, doctors wheeled tiny, 3-week-old baby Matthew into the operating room for a heart transplant and there was one big difference: This was Krugler's only son. Len and Mary Krugler, who conceived after Mary had spent 12 years trying to get pregnant, spent the early morning hours Tuesday at the side of their baby, who was born with a fatal heart ailment.

Naaman Poingsett turns 8 today. He is a talkative second-grader with Disneyland on his mind. He bowls, has a B average in school and knows every aircraft at Los Angeles International Airport. His health is good. But his parents remain on guard. After all, they waited 13 years for Naaman. His mother, Katie, had four miscarriages before he was conceived. Then he arrived 12 weeks early, weighing 2 pounds, 11 ounces, and spent four months in a Los Angeles hospital.

Pediatricians aren't particularly known as aficionados of true crime books. But in this month's issue of the journal Pediatrics, Editor Dr. Jerold Lucey suggests his readers take a look at the genre. Lucey specifically recommends one of the newest, "Goodbye, My Little Ones" (Onyx Books, 1996), a paperback account of the life of Waneta Hoyt, a New York state mother whose five babies died between 1965 and 1971.

The parents of a Northridge infant who died from an undiagnosed birth defect have filed a lawsuit against the County of Los Angeles and a nursing service for allegedly withholding medical records that showed the baby was sick when it left the hospital.

Between 1965 and 1971, five healthy babies were born here to a poor woman who seemed to want them desperately and who mourned each of their deaths with a convulsive grief that quavered the soul. At one funeral, Waneta Hoyt fainted after the lowering of the tiny, pitiful coffin and at another, her body collapsed with the great force of her sobbing. She had to be helped away from the freshly turned soil at the graveside.

Something stinks about reproductive medicine in Southern California, and it doesn't involve eight dirty diapers. Recently, the Los Angeles-based Fertility Institutes announced that it would soon be offering patients at its clinics the chance to choose traits such as "eye color, hair color and complexion." The clinics already offer gender selection to patients undergoing in vitro fertilization.

Back in the 1990s, a public outcry over "drive-through deliveries" led 41 states and the federal government to pass laws mandating 48-hour minimum hospital stays for mothers after routine births. Proponents of the laws argued that sending mothers home from the hospital less than 24 hours after birth, as some health plans were doing, posed a health risk to infants. Now a Harvard study has found no evidence that sending mothers home faster harmed the health of newborns.

With seven new cases of HIV reported among children in January, Los Angeles County health officials issued a public alert Monday urging pregnant women to be tested and treated to forestall these largely preventable infections. By taking anti-AIDS drugs during pregnancy and avoiding breastfeeding after birth, HIV-positive women can cut the chances of passing the virus to newborns to less than 8%, said Dr. Toni Frederick, chief epidemiologist with the county's pediatric HIV project.

Jennifer Carroll knew she was part of a national trend when she faithfully put her newborn son, Brennan, to sleep on his back. What shocked her was that she also had become part of a resulting epidemic. When Brennan was 2 months old, Carroll, of North Branford, Conn., noticed that the back of his head looked a bit flat. The pediatrician said he would probably grow out of it. But after four months, Brennan's head was even more misshapen. And he was far from alone.

After nearly two months in the newborn intensive care unit, most of the septuplets born to a Saudi Arabian couple are gaining strength and weight, and some could leave the hospital this month, Georgetown University Hospital officials said Friday. Three of the seven have been upgraded to fair condition and moved to the unit's "step-down" ward, where the babies do not need as much monitoring.

After a three-year campaign to eradicate congenital syphilis, the rate of babies born with the disease has dropped by half, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. A mothers with syphilis will pass the infection to her fetus. The disease is otherwise spread by sexual contact. If not treated, up to 40% of infants with syphilis die, while others will face developmental problems and seizures. Found early enough, however, syphilis is easily treated.

In "The Death of Innocents," just published by Bantam Books, Richard Firstman and Jamie Talan reveal how the undetected murders of five children in one family in the late 1960s and early 1970s triggered a theory about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) that has misled the medical world for 25 years. The book tells the story of Waneta Hoyt, an upstate New York woman convicted in 1995 of murdering her five children, one after another between 1965 and 1971.

Monday, Jan. 12, unfolded for Dr. Eugene Turner as did most of his days. Between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., he saw a stream of patients at the Peninsula Children's Clinic here on the northern edge of Olympic National Park. All left feeling safe and cared for. So did their parents. Turner, a pediatrician who'd practiced in Port Angeles for 27 years, had that effect. With his tear-shaped eyes and white thinning hair and craggy features, the 62-year-old doctor conveyed boundless concern.

A prominent health care organization warned U.S. hospitals Wednesday to watch out for the return of a rare but preventable type of brain damage in newborns that has been on the rise with shorter hospital stays and increased breast-feeding. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, a health care accrediting group, issued an alert to 5,000 U.S. hospitals about kernicterus, a highly unusual condition that stems from severe jaundice.

The controversial idea that the dramatic upsurge in autism over the last two decades was caused by the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine--a concept embraced by many parents--is wrong, according to a new report released today by the California Department of Health Services. The new study, like two others recently conducted in England and Finland, found that the rate of autism has been rising dramatically as the number of children vaccinated has remained virtually constant.