Prenatal Care

2Amid the tumult of the delivery room, Rohit and Geeta Jain were calm about one thing: Their new baby was sure to be a boy. Six months earlier, the Jains had spent more than $300 for a test that screened a minute quantity of Geeta's blood for traces of male DNA. The testing company said it was 95% accurate in determining the sex of a baby, even as early as the eighth week of pregnancy. After six hours in the delivery room, Rohit gaped as his wife gave birth to a daughter.

The Maya women sit patiently in the lobby of Clinica Oscar Romero, playing with their children and speaking in their native dialects of Kanjobal and Quiche. Idalia Xuncax knows all of the women. She is their guide, translator and advocate in a healthcare world so foreign from their villages in Guatemala, where many relied on herbal medicines and faith healers.

America used to be the tallest country in the world. From the days of the founding fathers right on through the industrial revolution and two world wars, Americans literally towered over other nations. In a land of boundless open spaces and limitless natural abundance, the young nation transformed its increasing wealth into human growth. But just as it has in so many other arenas, America's preeminence in height has faded.

HIV testing will soon become part of routine prenatal care and be required for some newborns under a new law that supporters say is putting the state in the forefront of the national fight against HIV transmission to babies. Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey signed the measure into law at University Hospital in Newark. The law will take effect in six months. "We can significantly reduce the number of infections to newborns and help break down the stigma associated with the disease," Codey said.

Taking multivitamins around the time of conception dramatically reduces a woman's risk of preeclampsia, a complication during pregnancy that can be lethal to a woman and her fetus, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh report. Women who took multivitamins at least once a week three months before the start of pregnancy and three months after were 45% less likely to develop preeclampsia compared with women who did not take supplements, the study found.

Sandra Andrade lay in her hospital bed, overcome with anxiety about her newborn son. All through her pregnancy, she had worried. The placenta was blocking her birth canal and growing into other organs. She knew she needed a Cesarean: If she went into labor, she might bleed to death. Now her boy was in intensive care at Women's and Children's Hospital at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center.

A former USC architecture student who placed the body of her newborn son in a trash bin was sentenced Friday to five years of probation and ordered to receive monthly pregnancy tests during that period. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy also sentenced Holly Ashcraft to 30 days in jail, which she has already served. If Ashcraft is found to be pregnant in the monthly tests, she will be ordered to undergo prenatal care, Ashcraft's attorney, Mark Geragos, said. Prosecutors tried twice to charge Ashcraft with murder, alleging that the 23-year-old dumped the newborn while he was still alive.

The infant mortality rate in the Antelope Valley is twice that of the rest of Los Angeles County, mainly because of a lack of prenatal care and the limited transportation options, authorities said Wednesday. The statistic was part of a report being released today by the county's Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, which provides an annual analysis of childhood deaths by accident, suicide, abuse and other causes. The infant death rate was 10.

In a cramped Palmdale apartment, Andrea Williams wakes at 6 a.m. for a 10 a.m. doctor's appointment. Her destination is Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, 40 miles and a bus and shuttle ride away. It is an all-day ordeal for Williams, who is eight months pregnant and who lost part of her leg to cancer as a child. Because her pregnancy is high risk, she couldn't find a doctor in the Antelope Valley willing to take her as a patient.

Pregnant women can agonize for weeks or months over whether their child carries the genetic disorder responsible for Down syndrome. Some want to know so they can prepare for the lifetime of care such children will need, others so they can terminate the pregnancy. Such screening typically isn't done until the second trimester, however, and the more reliable tests can, in rare cases, cause a miscarriage. The options are about to improve.