Moms, Motherhood | featured news

Erin Carroll planned to breast-feed both her newborn sons. But like many women with the best intentions, it didn't work out. A new government study finds only a third of new moms achieve their goal of exclusively breast-feeding for three months.

If most new moms would breastfeed their babies for the first six months of life, it would save nearly 1,000 lives and billions of dollars each year, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

As more women are starting their families in their late 30, 40s and even into their 50s, it's not a given they'll live long enough to meet their grandchildren or see all of their kids' big milestones. Some are making big changes to add years to their life spans.

Motherhood is a wonderful responsibility -- but it can also be exhausting, confusing, infuriating and downright funny. "I always say moms have the toughest job in the world if you're doing it right," Oprah Winfrey says. "Today, [women] are spilling the beans about a side of motherhood that hardly anybody ever talks about."