This is Jessica's story, but also in some strange way, it became mine as well because I can honestly say it changed my views. As I type this, I'm assuming Jessica is cuddling her sweet baby boy – who she brought home a little over a week ago. Read on.

Britain's fertility regulator says it has found broad public support for in vitro fertilization techniques that allow babies to be created with DNA from three people for couples at risk of passing on potentially fatal genetic diseases. Read on.

Each of the three main treatments for ectopic pregnancy — a condition in which a fetus develops outside the uterus, often in the fallopian tube — appears to be equally effective in preserving a women's ability to become pregnant in the future, a new study found. Read on.

MOTHERHOOD begins as a tempestuously physical experience but quickly becomes a political one. Once a woman’s pregnancy goes public, the storm moves outside. Don’t pile on the pounds! Your child will be obese. Don’t eat too little, or your baby will be born too small. For heaven’s sake, don’t drink alcohol. Oh, please: you can sip some wine now and again. And no matter how many contradictory things the experts say, don’t panic. Stress hormones wreak havoc on a baby’s budding nervous system. Read on here.

Women who become pregnant with previously frozen IVF embryos tend to have healthier babies and fewer complications than those who have fresh embryos implanted, research suggests. Read on here.

MAMMALS are named after their defining characteristic, the glands capable of sustaining a life for years after birth — glands that are functional only in the female. And yet while the term “mammal” is based on an objective analysis of shared traits, the genus name for human beings, Homo, reflects an 18th-century masculine bias in science. Read on here.

Step aside, condom machine. That dusty, crank-lever dispenser in bar bathrooms reminding you to make safe choices while drinking has met its challenger. An upscale bar in southern Minnesota has installed a pregnancy test dispenser in its woman’s bathroom. Read more.

It is an uncomfortable question that, in today’s world, is often asked by expectant mothers who had more than one male partner at the time they became pregnant. Who is the father? Read on here.

Women in their early 40s are getting pregnant more often.

A government report released on Wednesday shows pregnancy rates among women in their early 20s falling nearly 18 percent from 1990 to 2008. But pregnancies among older women rose far more dramatically: rates for women ages 40 to 44 went up nearly 65 percent. There were just 11.4 pregnancies per 1,000 women in that age group in 1990, compared with 18.8 in 2008.

Women in their 20s may be delaying pregnancy, but older women seem to be picking up the slack. Rates for women ages 35 to 39 rose, too, to 78.5 births per 1,000 women in 2008 from 67.5 in 2000, and a similar increase (from 2000 to 2008) can be seen among women 30 to 34.

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By The New York Times, 06/20/2012

As a young woman in my 20s I pondered whether or not to have children. Is there a way, I wondered, to decide thoughtfully rather than carelessly about this most momentous of human choices?

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By The New York Times, 06/17/2012

Tina and James Nessl adore their 7-month-old daughter, Victoria Giselle. She's outgoing like her parents and they rush home from work to see her every day.

Their bubbly baby is very different from how they first met their child: a cluster of cells, an embryo about to be implanted in Tina's body. In 2009, Tina was 35 and having difficulty getting pregnant when she sought infertility help.

About one-third of couples in which the woman is older than 35 years have fertility problems, and are turning to infertility treatments, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The treatments vary in cost, invasiveness and success in becoming pregnant and having a child.

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By The Miami Herald, 06/11/2012

At the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine, a popular destination for women hoping to preserve their fertility by freezing their eggs, Dr. William Schoolcraft, the founder and medical director, has started to notice something different: more of the women are arriving with company. "I see these patients come in, and they're with two elderly people, and I'm like, 'What the hey?' " Dr. Schoolcraft said. The gray-haired entourages, it turns out, are the parents, tagging along to lend support — emotional and often financial — as their daughters turn to the fledgling field of egg freezing to improve their chances of having children later on, when they are ready to start a family.

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By The New York Times, 05/13/2012

Fertility treatment increases the risk of birth defects in babies, according to the largest scientific study of its kind. Babies conceived by assisted techniques are at least one-third more likely to suffer from congenital problems than those conceived naturally, the new research has found.

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By The Independent, 05/06/2012

Swiss scientists who compared 64 children born using IVF techniques and 57 children conceived naturally found that among the former group, 30% of the participants showed high pulmonary arterial pressure and greater blood vessel rigidity at high altitude. The findings are published this week in the journal Circulation. David Celermajer, the Scandrett professor of cardiology at the University of Sydney Medical School, wrote an accompanying editorial in the same journal. "When all things are considered, IVF parents shouldn't be concerned," Professor Celemajer said. "I think that to put it in perspective, IVF has given them by and large very healthy children, and if this is going to signal a problem, it's going to signal that those children are going to perhaps have premature heart disease maybe in their 50s or 60s rather than in their 70s or 80s. "So if you stack that up against the gift of life in the first place, I don't think that parents should be overly concerned at the moment." Read the full article here

By MedicalXPress, 04/19/2012

 A mother's health during pregnancy has measurable effects on her baby's well-being, but a new study shows that her fitness before pregnancy matters too. Researchers say that cognitive deficits found in premature babies can be traced to a number of mom-related factors, and one of them is a woman's pre-pregnancy weight. Read the full article here.

By TIME, 03/12/2012