#maternal death

[coochiequeens]

This is why I can’t stand those stories about celebrities having kids through surrogates. They downplay the risks to the mother who goes through pregnancy and childbirth.

Fake or not, I mean I really hate to think of four kids dealing with an aunt/mom so oblivious to how those boys lost their mom so young and unwilling to modify plans but surrogacy does pose increased risks to the mothers and children they carry

“At the recent United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Family and Human Rights drew attention to surrogacy and the dangers it poses to women at an event  that highlighted several instances of women who had been trafficked, rendered infertile, or even died as a result of surrogacy. Michelle Reaves was one such surrogate mother from California. She lost her life last year while delivering a baby for someone else, leaving her own son and daughter motherless and her husband a widower.

By its very nature, surrogacy commodifies both a woman’s body as well as that of the child. The women targeted to become a surrogate by the multi-billion-dollar fertility industry are often wooed by the opportunity to make tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for renting their body. In some cases, a surrogate arrangement is altruistic—perhaps the surrogate mother may want to help a friend or family member who desperately wants a baby, and she does not profit financially from the exchange. Nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances or motivation, in a surrogacy arrangement a woman’s body is used as a conduit for a transaction that provides a baby for someone else—and the risks for both her, and the baby, are significant.

Whether a surrogate mother is compensated or not, serious concerns involving health risks to mothers and babies remain, and the rights of children must not be ignored.

Children who are born as the result of a surrogacy arrangement are more likely to have low birth weights and are at an increased risk for stillbirth. When a woman carries a child conceived from an egg that is not her own—a traditional gestational surrogate arrangement—she is at a three-fold risk of developing hypertension and pre-eclampsia. Egg donors have spoken up about experiencing conditions such as loss of fertility, blood clots, kidney disease, premature menopause, and cancer, and the lack of data and studies on both short and long term health outcomes for egg donors makes true informed consent unattainable. While scientists do not fully understand the scope of these health considerations, it is clear that for both short and long-term outcomes, surrogacy is a frontier of unknowns; children, egg donors, and surrogate mothers may pay a physical or psychological price nobody yet fully knows or understands.”

[odinsblog]

Krystal Anderson, a former cheerleader for the Kansas City Chiefs, died of sepsis last week following a stillbirth, according to her family. She was 40 years old.

Anderson, known to her friends as “Krissy,” was hospitalized at five months pregnant and delivered her daughter, Charlotte Willow, after doctors were unable to locate a heartbeat, friends told FOX4 News. She developed a fever a day after the birth. Her condition worsened and she battled sepsis, which eventually led to organ failure. Despite being placed on life support and undergoing three surgeries, she died early Wednesday morning.

“I feel lost,” her husband, Clayton Anderson, told the station. “There’s a lot of people in this house and it feels empty.”

In her post-NFL career, Anderson taught yoga and worked as a software engineer at Oracle Health. She “fiercely advocated” for both Black women in STEM and women’s health, according to an obituary. She also had a philanthropic streak, and worked with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of KC, the perinatal bereavement nonprofit Gabriella’s Little Library, and the Oracle Health Foundation.

“She was an absolute force for good. She made every room just light up,” her husband said.

While overall maternal deaths in the U.S. have steadily ticked up over the past two decades, Black women remain two to three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the risks to Black mothers exacerbated by implicit bias and medical racism, they are also more likely to experience life-threatening complications like preeclampsia, postpartum hemorrhage, and blood clots.

“It’s, you know, we say, the best country in the world, right?” Anderson’s husband told FOX4 News. “Not if you’re a Black pregnant woman, it’s not—and that needs to change.”

(continue reading)

[bumblepony]

So everyone who loves a Joel centric story should absolutely positively read this one. It's Joel's first day with Sarah. And it's heartbreaking and just glorious in its sadness and it's stunning storytelling.

Be prepared for the feels because they are definitely there. This is a story where Joel was very much in love with the mother of Sarah. It is a must read, quintessential The Last of Us extra storytelling.

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for creating a vessel to bring my mother back to life?

I (1000+F) unfortunately lost my mother many years ago, and her remains were desecrated by her killer. I was able to retrieve her heart, which for our species is more of a stone containing the being's essence. I began to do experiments to try to bring her back to life, which included building flesh vessels to try to contain her essence, powered by my mother's heart. Unfortunately, many of these vessels were weak and died. One (20F) survived; but as this vessel grew to adulthood it became clear that, instead of becoming my mother, she had developed her own consciousness and personality. She fell in love with a friend of mine (300+M) and they had a child together; however, the pregnancy was difficult, and it became clear that either mother or child was going to die. The failed vessel begged me to save the child, and I did it the only way I knew how — I removed the heart stone from her body and implanted it into the child. She died and the child survived; however, the child has turned out distinctly... odd. It does not cry, or show any emotional response to the world around it, and though it has a pulse, it has no heartbeat. Though this was a natural born child who by all rights should have been a person in their own right, I cannot help hoping that perhaps this child will in time become my mother's true vessel and means of returning to me. AITA?

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Texas health officials have missed a key window to complete the state's first major updated count of pregnancy related deaths in nearly a decade, saying the findings will now be released next summer, most likely after the Legislature's biennial session.

The delay, disclosed earlier this month by the Department of State Health Services, means lawmakers won't likely be able to use the analysis, covering deaths from 2019, until the 2025 legislative cycle. The most recent state-level data available is nine years old.

In a hearing this month with the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, DSHS commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said the agency wanted to better align its methodology with that of other states, and that there hadn’t been enough staff and money to finish the review for a scheduled Sept. 1 release.

“The information we provide is not easily understood, and not easily and readily comparable to what goes on in other states,” Hellerstedt told the committee. “And the fact it isn’t easily understood or easily comparable in my mind leaves room for a great deal of misunderstanding about what the data really means.”

In a statement, DSHS spokesman Chris Van Deusen said the agency is reviewing its “internal processes” to try to develop more timely data.

“I expect we’ll be having conversations with legislators about what could be done to speed up the lengthy review process,” he said.

The setback comes four months before the start of the legislative session and two months before the midterm election, which has been dominated in part by the state’s new Republican-led abortion ban. Those restrictions have placed more scrutiny on the state’s maternal mortality rate, which is among the 10 highest in the country, according to national estimates that track pregnancy-related complications while pregnant or within a year of giving birth.

“There are a lot of us that want to know whether or not pregnancy in Texas is a death sentence,” said state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat and member of the Texas Women’s Health Caucus. “If we’ve got a higher rate of maternal mortality, we sure want to figure it out. You can’t figure it out if somebody’s sitting on the numbers, and that’s my worry.”

Like in other states, maternal outcomes in Texas are worse for Black women, who have died at about three times the rate of non-black women. This year’s findings were expected to drill further into the causes behind those disparities.

Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Houston Democrat who has described going through her own dangerous birthing experience, said the data is critical for understanding the role cesarean sections play in maternal deaths and whether implicit bias is playing a factor in the quality of maternal care for Black women.

“There is so much to unpack from the data,” Thierry said, adding that “no woman who chooses life should have to do so in exchange for their own.”

Members of the state’s maternal mortality committee, which compiles the official report, said they were disappointed by the decision to hold the preliminary findings.

“(We) do the work to honor the lives of women who lost their lives, and families that are forever impacted by the loss of a mother,” said Dr. Carla Ortique, the committee chair. “So there’s disappointment on both fronts: that we’re not honoring those women and families, and that we may be negatively impacting efforts to improve maternal health outcomes in our state.”

Ortique said the state has already identified 149 potential maternal deaths in 2019, of which 118 have been analyzed by the committee to see if they were pregnancy-related. Six newly identified deaths may be added to that group, she said. The numbers cover deaths during the pregnancy through one year after giving birth.

The state has published a maternal death report every other year since 2014, often based on preliminary data updated later. For example, the maternal death report in 2018 identified 29 deaths in 2012 that were not included in the previous report. The committee also released updating findings from its most recent report, studying deaths from 2013, at the Sept. 2 meeting.

Out of 175 potential maternal deaths in 2013, 70 have since been determined to be pregnancy-related.

The state has been collecting the updated numbers as part of the requirements of a new CDC grant, awarded to the DSHS in 2019. The balance, according to advocates, is in making sure data is as accurate as possible, but also released quickly enough to be of use to researchers and policymakers.

The reports usually come with wide-ranging recommendations to improve maternal health in the state, including expanding Medicaid to one year postpartum, proactively treating chronic conditions and addressing the disproportionately high number of maternal deaths among Black women.

Texas has extended Medicaid coverage for pregnant women until six months after they give birth or miscarry, but the state has declined to expand coverage to the recommended 12 months.

The unexpected delay has frustrated advocates, who are gearing up to push Republicans in the Senate and the Governor to back the full 12-month extension, as many other states have done.

“State leaders will be able to make better policy decisions for Texas moms if they have more recent data on maternal deaths as well as health challenges like infections or postpartum depression that new moms are facing in Texas,” said Diana Forrester, director of health care policy at Texans Care for Children.

Republican leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who is running for re-election, have celebrated the overturning of federal abortion protections this summer by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many have committed to boosting resources for pregnant women and new mothers. A spokesman for Abbott did not respond to a request for comment. Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan, who supports the 12-month extension, was critical of the delay, saying it “comes at a time when Texas must support moms and families.”

“Our work will start with passing legislation that further extends postpartum health coverage for new Texas mothers to a full year, which our chamber approved overwhelmingly in 2021 and I expect will do so again next year,” Phelan said in a statement.

In addition to providing updated recommendations for lawmakers, the report also helps nonprofits compete for grants that support new or expectant mothers, said Nakeenya Wilson, an Austin-based maternal health advocate and member of the state’s maternal mortality committee.

Her group, the Maternal Health Equity Collaborative, used data from past reports to earn a $1 million grant that provides childcare for new mothers in Central Texas.

“If they don’t have the most up-to-date information, then we run the risk of disenfranchising some of the most vulnerable in our state,” she said.

Johnson said the delay was “unacceptable” given the high rate of maternal mortalities.

“It is a crisis that we claim on bipartisan grounds to want to investigate,” Johnson said. “And yet here we are told at the last minute on the date that the report was supposed to be due, ‘Sorry, we couldn’t get around to it.’”

[aowski]

When does Life?

Many are asking, when does life begin? Too few are asking, when does life end?

The answer is 2020 for 861 women in the US died as a result of pregnancy or postpartum.  

The answer is 2020 for nearly 20,000 infants in the US who died from the pathologies of poverty.

There is so much concern for those who have never taken a breath that we have lost sight of those who will breathe their last. 

How can you say you love that which you have not seen, when you can’t even love the people right in front of you?

[sy666th]

"She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom—that, like the Ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence."

Edgar Allan Poe (Eleonora)

Isabella Casati newsstand, sculptor Enrico Butti Known as "The Dying", the bronze sculpture was created between 1890 and 1891 by the famous Varese sculptor Enrico Butti on commission from Count Gian Luigi Casati Brioschi, widower of the late Isabella, who died in childbirth in 1889 at just twenty-four years of age . The young woman, descendant of the noble Airoldi family of Robbiate, is portrayed in the moment of her passing, lying lifeless on her deathbed, covered with a cloth that leaves her breast exposed, on which a crucifix is placed. Her face is turned to the side of her, her eyes squeezed shut and strands of hair scattered across her pillow. The expression is relaxed and serene, of that peace that mysteriously comes after death. In the panel behind her, made of Simona della Valcamonica stone, there is a bronze disc in which angelic hosts are depicted who ideally accompany the young woman into the afterlife. The delicate sensuality that the sculpture transmits is truly touching, so much so that it makes it one of the most poignant and admired works of the Monumentale in Milan. A work suspended between realism and symbolism, it provoked more than one criticism at the time of its inauguration, as bare breasts were considered inappropriate for a funeral context.

[mental-mona]

TL;DR: The CDC's methodology ends up counting all deaths of a pregnant person, or sometimes even one who was pregnant at some point in the past, regardless of the actual cause of death. These researchers point out that things like car accidents should NOT fall into that category, as they are unrelated to the pregnancy itself. When the researchers counted only deaths where pregnancy was listed among the causes on the death certificate, it turns out that maternal death rates have pretty much stayed steady since 2002, with just over 10 deaths per 100,000 live births. This is in line with other countries' maternal death rates.

[coochiequeens]

How many children will be abused because their families can’t heal from losing the mother during childbirth in a post roe USA? How many younger siblings will face resentment from fathers and older siblings for the loss of the mother?

[sohaibsmart]

The Gates Basis annual funds for 2024 is its largest but

The Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis authorised its largest annual funds ever, committing $8.6 billion to assist plug gaps in total support for well being applications on this planet’s poorest nations. The spending improve in 2024 will assist a variety of targets together with the eradication of polio, improvement of latest tuberculosis medicine, and supply of provides to stem little one and…

[gordicore]

A couple of months ago, my mom died. Yeah we did go through fights and stuff, but I still miss her. The image of my mom's deceased corpse lying on the hospital bed still haunts me. I cry almost every single night. I miss her so much and I wish I told her how much I loved her, even if she can be shitty sometimes

[govic17]

Sepsis, Vaginal Births and an Easy Fix

There’s a very important discussion affecting all patients regarding caregiver hygiene in this post. To explain this post, let’s review the terms: Sepsis in an extreme reaction to infection, basically an “overreaction” by the body’s immune system that damages healthy tissue and organs. It was one of the issues early in the Covid pandemic and it can lead to organ shutdown and death. It’s an…

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for saving one boy when I could have saved three others?

So I (17f) am a ghost. And since I can't get revenge on the person who killed me, I've decided to protect a boy, J (9). J got bullied all his life by his brother T and T's friends (all male, 14-15). Because J's mother dying during childbirth was J's fault??

I can barely interact with the physical world. It drains my ghost powers. But I have been trying to help him against them. Throwing all their clothes on the branches when they went swimming. That kinda thing.

But then these idiots decided it would be funny to go to this abandoned house with J. To scare him and all that. And one of them had the great idea to start a fire.

The fire spread pretty fast and I immediately got J out of there, told him to stay where he was and got back in to save the rest. It was already draining my powers, but I knew I could save them if I was quick.

But J wanted to help and got back into the fire, only to have burning wood fall on top of him. Getting him back out there would drain my remaining power, but so would saving the other 3.

I know some people would have saved the 3 boys because it saves more lives and all that, but I saved J. Those guys bullied him and decided to start a fire. He was an innocent victim in all this and got his face badly burnt because of them.

But I still feel guilty because I couldn't save all of them

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I saw @qourmet's young madam lan art, and knew what I had to do.