Preemies' Problems May Last a Lifetime | Newsweek Health

FERTILITY
Why I Froze My Eggs
5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
I had just turned 35 when I started thinking about freezing my eggs. I'd always thought I'd have a husband and a kid or two by 35—that's the ominous year when doctors start stamping women's medical charts with the words "advanced maternal age" if they are pregnant, and some warn that fertility starts to drop off a cliff if they are not. But instead I was single, with an adventurous career, and concerned about my eggs. So in 2005, when I heard about a free seminar offered by a company called Extend Fertility, I thought this was exactly what I needed: a way to safeguard my eggs so I can relax until I meet Mr. Right. Extend had just begun marketing egg freezing as the newest choice among women's options: preserve your fertility and wait to have a child.
Not Always 'the Happiest Time'
HEALTH: LESS PAIN, ALL GAIN
Karen Springen
BABIES
An Intelligent Test

Two percent of pregnant women are thyroid-deficient, but sometimes the symptoms, like fatigue and weight gain, go undetected. This can harm their babies' brains, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors at the Foundation for Blood Research in Maine gave IQ tests to 48 children, 7 to 9 years old, whose mothers had untreated thyroid deficiencies while pregnant. The kids scored seven points lower than a control group. If all women got inexpensive blood tests and necessary treatments, it would benefit tens of thousands of babies every year.
Do Fertility Drugs Cause Cancer?

Liz Tilberis, British-born editor of Harper's Bazaar, didn't have the agony or the luxury of such a choice. Tilberis, now 47, took fertility drugs in her 30s; they didn't work, and she and her husband adopted two boys, now 13 and 9. Last year she learned she had ovarian cancer, diag-nosed at a moderately advanced stage. Now, after aggressive chemotherapy, Tilberis says her doctors have pronounced her cured. It was a narrow escape: the survival rate for ovarian cancer is just over 41 percent, primarily because no test reliably detects it at an early, curable stage. Tilberis, who wrote in Harper's Bazaar about a suspected link between the disease and fertility drugs a month before the NEJM study appeared, has received more than 200 heartfelt letters from readers.
Medicine: Do All Babies Need Sonograms?

The researchers, led by Dr. Bernard Ewigman of the University of Missouri Medical School, divided 15,000 healthy pregnant women into two groups. One group automatically received two sonograms (one at 15 to 22 weeks and another at 31 to 35 weeks), while the second group skipped the test unless problems arose. Routine sonography did a good job of spotting major congenital defects. But most of the defects came to light at least 24 weeks into a pregnancy--when abortion was no longer an option--and women who got earlier warning often chose to deliver their babies anyway. Some women did decide to abort unhealthy fetuses, but a sonogram was rarely the first sign of trouble. Because a standard maternal blood test known as AFP often detects fetal abnormalities, abortion rates were the same for both groups. And at birth, babies who got routine sonography were no healthier than those who didn't.