http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080416/hl_nm/newborns_prematurity_dc_1

BOSTON (Reuters) - Four factors beyond gestational age influence whether an extremely premature baby will survive and grow up healthy, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Girls, babies that weigh more and babies that do not have a twin all survived premature birth better, as did babies whose mothers were treated with steroids to hasten the development of the lungs, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

These factors also lowered the risk of neurodevelopmental problems such as blindness, hearing loss, thinking problems and cerebral palsy.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/SacredMother/ - This groups is for Pagans who are trying to conceive (whether it be through medical intervention, adoption, alternative medicine, etc.) and have had issues with infertility. We are here as an information and support group for each other.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/magickformotherhood/ - This group is very specialized, for those Pagan women who are trying to conceive a child and who may have been experiencing problems conceiving. Fertility problems can include, but are not restricted to, PCOs, endometriosis and male factor. The focus of the group is utilizing magick, energy work and meditation/visualization, preferably in conjunction with natural methods including herbs and nutrition, to achieve a healthy, happy and safe pregnancy, birth and baby. Group members MUST be willing to commit to spending a certain amount of time per day doing various workings, as well as praying/petitioning for all members of the group, to achieve our goal.

We are Doug and Vikki (newly married in April) and Vikki's 11 yr old Weslee. We are a pagan family, living in a suburb of Denver, CO, and wanting to expand our family. We've been trying to get pregnant since Thanksgiving 2006 but so far no luck. We'll keep trying but meanwhile, feel we have a lot to offer a young child.... love, spirituality, freedom, and a future. We school Weslee at home, and often get together with other like-minded families. Vikki is somewhat physically disabled (which in no way limits her capacity to parent), and stays at home to help Doug run an online business. Doug is a computer nerd in an outside business and besides the at-home business, takes care to spend quality time with Weslee on a regular basis. Weslee very much wants a brother or sister - or more! He has a few developmental issues which the family works with, and good at sharing his toys. He has a lot to offer and loves playing with younger kids.

We did some updates to the site last night to close some security holes. If you find any problems, please let me know.

A surprising study suggests that women who eat low fat dairy are more likely to suffer infertility.

Frome the article:

They found that women who ate two or more servings of low-fat dairy foods a day had an 85 percent higher risk of a certain type of infertility than women who ate less than one serving of low-fat dairy food a week.

Women who ate one serving of high-fat dairy food a day were 27 percent less likely to be infertile than women who avoided full-fat dairy foods.

It was not the finding that nutritionist Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston had expected.

How to answer tricky questions on adoption applications

Statistics on Adoption

Some interesting bits from a study conducted by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. The study looks at contemporary infant adoption.

These two pages from RESOLVE (the National Infertility Association) are ones we've found helpful in dealing with other people:

Things We Wish You Knew About Infertility"

Advice to Friends and Family About Infertility

Well, we started our journey to adoption in september 2004 with Ohio Pre-service training. Well, after all that we had our first caseworker totally screw us over. She gave us incorrect info on how to report my husbands tips as a cab driver, she told us not to... we found out almost a year later we should have becasue we were denied. But that was a good thing... how you may ask.. because in telling her about our religious preferences we both told her we didnt follow any organized form of religion and after being raised in the Chruch we developed a Loathing for organized religions for various reasons... she actually put in the homestudy that we think that Pentecostals and other Christian religons were bad... thank Goddess it was denied because that would have gone to every caseworker of every child we inquiered about.