Child Birth | featured news

As their due date creeps closer, many pregnant women pack a go bag for the hospital: toothbrush, iPod, cute bringing-baby-home outfit. But in recent months, savvy mothers-to-be have started tucking in one more important item: a kit to collect and donate the blood in their babies' umbilical cord.

Doctors could one day use a blood test to predict decades in advance when women will go into menopause, scientists say. In research to be presented on Monday at a European fertility conference in Rome, Iranian experts say their preliminary study could be a first step toward developing a tool to help women decide when they want to have children.

When Armin Brott of Oakland became a dad, he stopped running yellow lights. Other new dads "will lose weight or stop smoking," he says.

For most pregnant women, exercise is the last thing on their minds. After all, keeping slim while you're expecting isn't exactly the top priority — rather, it's making sure your baby gets enough nutrients to grow. But in a small new study, researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand report that a mother's regular aerobic exercise may be good for a growing fetus' health — and may even help a baby get a healthier start in life.

LaShonda Durden had just given birth to her second child. She was two weeks back from maternity leave when her supervisor called her into her office.

Nearly one in three children in the United States is born by Caesarean section.

More than 30 years after the world greeted its first "test-tube" baby with a mixture of awe, elation and concern, researchers say they are finding only a few medical differences between these children and kids conceived in the traditional way....

How a Virginia family got permission to get out-of-network treatment for one son's heart defect, and still ended up drowning in debt.

Normally twins are born only minutes apart, but on New Year's Eve a Florida set was born with a decade between them. Marcello was delivered at 11:59:37 pm, the last baby born at the hospital in 2009. Brother Stephano was delivered ...

A Colorado woman says a Christmas miracle brought her and her newborn son back from the brink of death after her heart stopped ...