Pregnancy

Candace Parker spoke with a non-stop giggle in her voice. She is in Chicago, staying with her family as she prepares for the birth of her first child with her new husband, Sacramento Kings basketball player Shelden Williams. Parker on Friday talked publicly for the first time since announcing she and Williams, who eloped last November, are expecting and that she probably will miss a part of the Sparks season, which begins in May.

Gov. Sarah Palin announced in Juneau that she and her husband, Todd, were expecting their fifth child sometime in mid-May. The Republican governor said she did not believe the pregnancy would affect her ability to run the state.

The Supreme Court on Monday dealt a setback to women who took pregnancy leaves from work before 1979. The year before, Congress changed the law and said pregnancy must be treated like other temporary disabilities. In a 7-2 decision, the court agreed with AT&T Corp. and refused to award pension credits to those who took a pregnancy leave before the change. The ruling in AT&T vs. Hulteen reversed a decision of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Last February, a former college student was sentenced to six years and four months in prison for fleeing after drunkenly plowing into a psychiatrist out walking his dog. But this month, Heather Hulsey, 22, was released on probation by a Santa Barbara County judge who ordered her into a residential substance abuse program.

Pregnant women who are HIV-positive and take the drug nevirapine during labor to prevent infecting their babies should wait until six months after delivery to resume taking the drug to avoid developing resistance, researchers reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The drug is increasingly used in the developing world to prevent HIV transmission to infants, but 42% of women who resume taking it within six months rapidly develop resistance.

Each year since 1998, a campaign to boost young women's intake of a B-vitamin called folate has saved an estimated 1,000 American babies from early death or lifelong disability. But the drive to prevent neural-tube defects in newborns is stalled, sliding backward down the road to public health victory.

Within a few years, a pregnant woman may be able to have a simple blood test to determine whether the child she is carrying is afflicted with a number of serious genetic disorders -- Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease among them. Three studies published or presented this month demonstrate how fetal DNA can be isolated from the mother's blood and checked for genetic abnormalities.

Children of mothers who ate more fish and other seafood while pregnant are smarter and have better developmental skills than kids of women who ate less or none, researchers said Thursday in findings they called surprising. The study, published in the Lancet medical journal, sought to assess whether it is wise, as some experts and the U.S. government have recommended, for pregnant women to limit their seafood intake.

Honey, barley, beer, dates, toads, rabbit ears, rats and mice: No, it's not a list of ingredients for a witches brew but a short-list of the many items that have been employed through the ages to help women answer a burning question: Am I pregnant? \o7 \f7 The ancients devised endless creative ways to diagnose pregnancy. More than a thousand years ago in Greece, honey water and vaginal suppositories made of onions were used.

Extra vitamin supplements can reduce the risk of having an underweight or undersized baby, researchers reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The supplements did not, however, lower the likelihood of premature birth or losing the fetus before birth. The study, conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, involved 8,468 pregnant women who received iron and folic acid supplements, both proven prenatal treatments.