Every month we’ll round up the latest articles on motherhood-related news we don’t want you to miss. We know how busy you are, so let us help keep you in the know!
Better data is needed to support employee caregivers
Recent research by Harvard Business School professor Joseph Fuller indicates that 73 percent of all employees nationwide have some caregiving responsibility—like caring for children, a spouse, or elderly parents—but employers aren’t tracking this information. As a result, they aren’t offering the support necessary to engage and retain this large portion of the workforce. This adds to already rampant gender and caregiver bias that has a huge impact on mothers as well as other caregivers. This recent article in the Harvard Business Review outlines four things employers can do to better support caregiving employees: Employers can learn from other business leaders who are already tracking caregiving data; work together with caregiving employees to understand their needs; embrace transparency and share data publicly to build trust; and advocate for more businesses to track and share their caregiving data.
New research aims to change medical views on hyperemesis gravidarum
Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is extreme, persistent nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Thought to affect around 2 percent of pregnant women, it can lead to gastrointestinal bleeding, malnutrition, dangerous dehydration, and many other complications, yet many doctors claim the condition is more psychological than physical. In a recent article for The Guardian, Dr. Kate Womersley, who experienced HG during her own pregnancy, explained that women who have HG often state they feel like they are dying. New genetic research around the nausea and vomiting hormone GDF15 conducted by Dr. Marlena Fejzo indicates why: Levels of the GDF15 hormone can be three times higher in patients with HG than in patients with cancer cachexia, a condition that results in extreme weight loss and muscle wasting in cancer patients. Because of this groundbreaking research, Dr. Fejzo is hopeful that the same drugs being trialed to treat cancer cachexia might also someday be used to treat women experiencing HG and, at the same time, change many doctors’ outdated and harmful opinions on the condition, including that women who experience HG don’t want to be pregnant or don’t want to feel better or that their symptoms are psychologically rooted.
Normalizing the grief and loss of medical terminations
Losing a baby is traumatic under any circumstances, but many parents who end a pregnancy due to medical reasons often feel isolated and unable to talk about the loss in the same way they would be able to speak about a stillbirth or a miscarriage. The news of fetal abnormalities often comes at the second-trimester anatomy scan, when many parents are anxiously awaiting the revelation of whether they might be having a boy or a girl, not whether their child might live or die. Instead of joyous news, these parents are suddenly faced with what is often the most challenging medical decision they will ever have to make, and the experience is frequently accompanied by feelings of shame, guilt, and deep grief. As outlined in this article in The Guardian, many advocates are now trying to break the taboo around medical terminations in an effort to better support grieving families before, during, and after these losses.
Common genetic test may not provide accurate assessment of embryo viability
Over the last two decades, it has become standard practice for fertility clinics to encourage individuals undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) to test their embryos with the add-on (and very expensive) genetic test PGT-A. This genetic test, which looks at a small number of cells on an embryo, can show whether there may be chromosomal genetic abnormalities, and most fertility clinics will not transfer an “abnormal” embryo, leaving many women to believe they have no other options to carry biological children. As suspected by many experts, a recent study highlighted in The New York Times indicates that the PGT-A test may not be as accurate as initially believed, and abnormal embryos can still be viable. While more studies need to be conducted, this new information could provide hope for many IVF patients trying to conceive who would otherwise be told to discard their potentially viable embryos.