Want to Make Girl Babies? Get Stressed!

Study shows breastfeeding women slim faster

(NEWSER) - It's not the most PC thing to admit, but more and more moms are jumping on the breast-feeding wagon for the love of their...waist, reports Catherine Saint Louis for the New York Times. "For those incredibly shrinking women, the time they nurse is precious not only for its skin-on-skin cuddling, but also for the Get Out of Dieting Jail Free card that comes with it," she found. “Nobody wants to admit ‘I’m doing it to help myself look hot again,’" said one new mom. "It’s tough to admit to other people that everything isn’t about the baby." More»

(NEWSER) - It's too late for the decision to limit the size of her family, but the octuplets mom has sworn off sex for 18 years, she tells the Sun. "I cannot maintain a social life and be a mother," said single mom Nadya Suleman, 33. "To even take one percent of every night and devote it to someone else would be wrong. I have to wait for that until my youngest has left school." The once-married mom says she hasn't had sex for eight years. More»

'I like to snuggle,' says Arkansas woman

(NEWSER) - And you thought Angelina Jolie had a lot of kids. An Arkansas mom has just given birth to her 18th. The baby, Jordyn-Grace Makiya, joins a crowd of sibs with names that start with the letter J and star in the TLC series 17 Kids & Counting. The spree began when the Baptist couple, married as teens, ditched their birth control pills. "What really works for me is swaddling a baby and snuggling up," the mom told People. "This time goes by so quickly." More»

Health problems may stem from mom's junk food diet, study says

(NEWSER) - Long-term health problems such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease may begin in the womb with mothers who eat junk food during pregnancy, the Guardian reports. A new study suggests expectant mothers who eat unhealthy diets not only risk the health of their newborns, but may set the child up for a lifetime of health problems. More»

Babies' immune systems respond to pressures on moms

(NEWSER) - Stress an expectant mother experiences can increase her child’s predisposition to allergies and asthma, Reuters reports. Mothers-to-be with high stress levels gave birth to babies with high levels of an immune compound involved in the allergenic response, Harvard researchers found—even when their environmental exposure to allergens was low. More»