Pregnancy Articles by Kathy Summers

Say Yes to Yoga
You & Your Family (Endorsed by the AMWA)
Want to stay fit during pregnancy and get back into pre-pregnancy shape afterward? Then practice yoga: It’s not only safe and effective, it comes with surprising benefits, such as improving labor and delivery.

The Green Pregnancy: 5 Steps to Going Green
Fit Pregnancy (cover story)
When you’re pregnant, living a green lifestyle takes on a new importance. It’s not about following trends to ease eco-guilt. It’s about creating a world your baby can grow and thrive in. Your body is your child’s first environment. Here’s how to make it safe …

It’s Easy Being Green
Fit Pregnancy (cover story)
During pregnancy, making simple lifestyle changes can lessen your exposure to toxic chemicals. And while the most environmentally correct options may not always seem like the most practical, baby steps add up. Here’s how to reduce, reuse, and recycle your way through all three trimesters and beyond …

Nope to Soap?
ePregnancy
What could a little soap and water hurt, you ask? When it comes to keeping newborns’ umbilical stumps clean, doctors believed in switching from potentially carcinogenic dyes to soap, once infants were home with their mothers. But scientists found soap causes a higher risk of infection …

Turn, Turn, Turn
ePregnancy
Most babies are born head first, but if your baby plans to land like a paratrooper, your doctor may be able to gently persuade him to tuck and roll. Doctors can externally rotate the fetus from a breech to a vertex presentation in a procedure called external cephalic version …

Cesarean Light
ePregnancy
If you have to have a cesarean, how about ordering it … light. A new technique called the “cesarean light” takes about 20 minutes and leaves out several traditional steps that are now thought to be unnecessary …

Swaddle Me, Coddle Me
ePregnancy
Infants sleep better and wake less when they’re swaddled and placed on their backs, a new study from Washington University School of Medicine confirms. Swaddled newborns startle less and feel more secure, like they’re still in the womb, so they sleep longer …