Caesareans rising to alarming rates in US

Bad news: The caesarean rate has risen for the 11th year in a row in the US. With the caesar rate hovering at nearly 32% of births, Pam Udy, president of the International Caesarean Awareness Network advocacy group, has said, "Every pregnant woman in the US should be alarmed by this rate".

Bad news: The teen birth rate has risen for the second straight year thanks to crucial cuts in sex education funding in American schools. Basically, this is a case of too much sex and not enough contraception.

The most recent statistics have revealed that the US birth rate skyrocketed in 2007 to 4.3 million babies and nearly 40% of those births were out-of-wedlock and to mostly Hispanic and African-American women.

Good news: Premature and low-birth weight babies are decreasing after a long upward trend.

Source: Caesareans soar in the new US baby boom

Conjoined twins die after one month

It wasn't long ago that I wrote about the conjoined twins born to a UK couple who caused a stir for choosing to keep their babies un-ironically named Hope and Faith, in spite of the fact that they were only given a 20% chance to live:

http://babybumpproject.blogspot.com/2009/01/two-twins-or-no-twins.html

Well, there are lots of people saying I told you so because tragically, the babies have died one month after being born, unable to survive separation surgery.

"When Hope was in the operating theatre and we got rushed down to see them and they were trying to keep her alive, I just thought it was time for her to go because it wasn't fair on her.

"Her lungs weren't big enough to take the oxygen in so everybody had done what they could.

"With Faith, she had been through so much in four weeks, we just didn't expect her little body to go through that. The time we spent with her was the most precious to all of us."

The parents say they don't regret their decision to have the babies. Would you?

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/shropshire/7899061.stm