November 15th, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in News, Opinion
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OMG, Michelle Duggar is pregnant again. Is she competing with the wife of Feodor Vassilyev? Vassilyev was pregnant 27 times between 1725 and 1765 and gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. 67 children survived infancy making her the woman who had the most documented number of children in the world. Vassilyev had a history of multiple births. What’s Duggar’s excuse?
I’ve written about Duggar before out of genuine concern and received over 2,000 comments on the Basil and Spice website. Many were unkind. People like Duggar because of her affable personality but want to ignore the facts: with each subsequent pregnancy, her life becomes fraught with danger. Her last pregnancy was extremely high-risk, complicated by pre-eclampsia and the emergency premature delivery of her daughter who only weighed 1.3 pounds at birth. It was a very close call. According to Answers.com, the Duggar family gets paid an estimated $25,000 to $75,000 per episode on the reality television show on Channel TLC. So, is it perhaps the show’s ratings that have prompted this 45 year old mother of 19 children to have yet another child? Is it the Baby-Doll syndrome where women have multiple children because they like the baby doll effect of having a newborn? I’m still scratching my head. However, I would be remiss if I did not, as an obstetrician offer some advice (albeit unsolicited) regarding the dangers of extreme parity (aka a great number of pregnancies). It was the same advice I offered almost 2 years ago: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
October 16th, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in True Stories
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The story of Tanya* is compelling. She was 24 weeks pregnant with her third child and the hospital was threatening to send her home. Two years ago, she faced similar circumstances and delivered a baby at 23 weeks. Luckily, the baby is now two years old but the one before that was not so lucky. Tanya presented to a local hospital during her first pregnancy because of complaints of abdominal pain. She was sent home because her contractions “weren’t regular.” Ten hours later, Tanya returned to the hospital because of a “nagging feeling that something was wrong” although her contractions were still not regular. Unfortunately, her cervix was dilated and the contractions could not be stopped. Her son was born alive but died one hour later because the hospital was not equipped to deal with premature newborns. Tanya’s second pregnancy was similar to her first because she developed premature contractions again, at 23 weeks. As with the first pregnancy, her contractions were not strong and regular so she was discharged home from the hospital with a monitor that was supposed to help. It didn’t. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
September 18th, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in True Stories
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There are some patients that keep you humbled. Barbara Tate was one of those patients. With a shopping list of chronic conditions a mile long, she was told she could never carry a baby because she had miscarried two during her early 20’s. She suffered the hammer blows of diabetes, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure and asthma. And it doesn’t stop there. Tate also had a history of two slipped disks, a cellulitis infection and a non-cancerous tumor on her adrenal gland. In fact she was scheduled to have surgery until she discovered she was pregnant at the age of 43. She was strongly encouraged to terminate the pregnancy because of her multiple medical conditions but she didn’t. Tate viewed her pregnancy as a miracle and for all intent purposes, it was. After age 37, there is a rapid decline in the ability to conceive although not impossible.
Her baby was born three months early and it appears that she was unaware of the classic signs of premature labor. On the day of her child’s birth, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
OMG, Michelle Duggar is pregnant again. Is she competing with the wife of Feodor Vassilyev? Vassilyev was pregnant 27 times between 1725 and 1765 and gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. 67 children survived infancy making her the woman who had the most documented number of children in the world. Vassilyev had a history of multiple births. What’s Duggar’s excuse?
