According to a study found in Diabetes Care, women who drink more than five ounces of sugar-sweetened cola a week before becoming pregnant significantly increase their risk of developing the disease during a pregnancy.

The study found that women who consumed five soda servings a week were likely to develop gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), or a glucose intolerance that begins during pregnancy.

“Compared with women who consumed less than 1 serving per month, those who consumed more than 5 servings per week of sugar-sweetened cola had a 22% greater GDM risk,” noted lead author Dr. Liwei Chen.

GDM is one of the most common pregnancy complications that could create a problematic delivery or bring on illnesses such as type 2 diabetes.

It was also found that mothers experiencing GDM are also putting their children at risk for obesity, glucose intolerance and early onset diabetes.

Some nutritionists feel that by cutting out soda and taking natural diabetes supplements such as magnesium may help curb the risk factor.

At the same time, many women said they were skimping on birth control, switching to a cheaper method or even going without as a way of saving money, according to the survey by researchers at the not-for-profit Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies sexual and reproductive health.

“The recession has put many women — including middle-class women who are having trouble making ends meet — in an untenable situation,” Dr. Sharon Camp, Guttmacher’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.

Avoid pregnancy? Afford contraception?
“They want to avoid unintended pregnancy more than ever, but at the same time are having difficulty affording the out-of-pocket costs of prescription contraception,” she said.

The nationally representative sample of nearly 1,000 low and middle-income sexually active women done in July and August found as many as one in four women had put off a visit to the gynecologist in the past year to save money.

And the same number said they were having a harder time paying for birth control than in the past.

Camp said that while delaying a prescription refill or skipping pills may save women money in the short term, it increases the risk of an unintended pregnancy, and possibly an unplanned birth or abortion later on.

Sources: msnbc.msn.com

German researchers said neither the length of time the pill was taken nor the type of hormones used had a bearing on pregnancy rates after contraceptive use.

The results, published in the US journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, form part of the European Active Surveillance Study on Oral Contraceptives, which followed almost 60,000 European women for five years, with the starting point between 2001 and 2004. Of these, 2064 women explicitly stated that they stopped using the pill because they wanted to fall pregnant.

Overall, 21 per cent were pregnant one cycle after stopping contraceptive use. After three cycles, the rate of pregnancy had increased to 45.7 per cent, and at one year (13 cycles) 79.4 per cent were pregnant.

Of the one in five women who did not fall pregnant in the first 12 months, 45 per cent did so in the second year (26 cycles) after stopping the pill, giving an overall success rate of 88.3 per cent.

Those hoping to change that are meeting on September 9, the ninth day of the ninth month, for a forum dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers of drinking while pregnant and the plight of children and families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD).

State legislators, health care professionals, parents, social workers and drug prevention and treatment specialists are coming together at Prairie State College in Chicago to mark international FASD Awareness Day.

A new brochure titled “It’s Only Nine Months” is also being released by Prevention First, a nonprofit drug prevention organization participating in the forum, addressing some of the common questions and misperceptions women have about drinking while pregnant.

“Our research found that women are getting conflicting information about drinking while pregnant,” explained Karel Ares, executive director of Prevention First. One focus group participant said she had heard that wine or Champagne were good for a woman’s blood while pregnant, Ares said. Others thought drinking was safe in the first few months of pregnancy.

“There is no research that proves that any amount of alcohol is safe at any time for unborn babies,” Ares pointed out. “But there is a great deal of research about the many lifelong problems caused by permanent brain damage from drinking alcohol while pregnant.”

Ares said that one of the most important groups of people she wants to get this message are doctors. “FASD is preventable, yet some obstetricians are still telling their patients they can have a glass of alcohol now and then. It’s like playing Russian Roulette with babies’ lives, and we are working to educate them about the risks.”

Dr. Todd Ochs, a clinical instructor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, one of the scheduled speakers at the forum, said that part of the problem is that doctor training hasn’t changed to reflect new research about pre-natal alcohol exposure. “We used to worry about women using heroin or other illegal drugs while pregnant, but there are too many variables with alcohol that we don’t yet understand, so the best advice a doctor can give is that they shouldn’t drink at all,” Ochs noted.

Dr. Ochs has diagnosed and treated many children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and points out, “We know that drinking will cause damage, we just don’t know how much damage will occur or what amount of alcohol will cause the damage, so why would anyone do something that’s known to be harmful to a baby?”

Among the speakers at the FASD Day forum are State Rep. Al Riley (D-Hazel Crest), State Sen. Maggie Crotty (D-Oak Forest) and psychologist Dr. Jacquelyn Bertrand from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr Margo Whiteford, Chair of the Scottish Spina Bifida Association, who is also a consultant geneticist, told BBC News Scotland that the organization has received as many contacts from families in the first half of 2009 as they would expect for the whole year.

She said they couldn’t tell if this was because of folic acid, but there is evidence that most women don’t take enough folic acid and they don’t take it at the right time.

While many women know about folic acid preventing spina bifida, they don’t start taking it until they’ve missed a period, which is too late for the developing fetus.

“The spinal cord develops within the first four weeks of pregnancy so by that stage it’s too late – if the baby’s going to have spina bifida it will already have developed it,” explained Whiteford.

Because so many pregnancies are unplanned, to significantly reduce the number of children being born with spina bifida, all sexually active women of childbearing age should take folic acid supplements, says the Scottish Spina Bifida Association.

Spina bifida is Latin for “split spine”. It’s a condition where the bones in the spine that surround the spinal cord don’t fuse together properly, allowing the bundle of nerves to protrude out of the spine. It starts during the early stages of fetal development and often before a woman even realizes she is pregnant.

The result is often that a sac of fluid comes through the opening in the baby’s back, and in most cases part of the spinal cord is in this sac and is damaged.

With the right support, most children born with spina bifida go on to live full lives, but they often need surgeries and have lifelong disabilities, including being paralysed from the waist down and having problems with bowel and bladder functions. Sometimes there is also brain damage.

The Scottish Spina Bifida Association (SSBA) says about three quarters of cases could be prevented if women of childbearing age started taking folic acid regularly about 3 months before conception and continued while pregnant.

According to the BBC report, Scotland has the highest proportion of children born with spina bifida in the UK because pregnant women in Scotland are less likely to have an abortion when they discover their unborn baby has the condition.

There are no reports yet of a similar rise in spina bifida cases in the rest of the UK.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) recommends that pregnant women take a 400 mg daily supplement of folic acid for the first trimester. There was a recommendation to add folic acid to bread flour as a way to protect unborn children, but it is now under review because new research suggests this might lead to more cases of colorectal cancer.

The FSA said that apart from pregnant women, people should get all the folic acid they need from eating a balanced diet.

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