In a screen grab recently posted to X, a maternity model for the fast-fashion giant poses in blue compression tights and a matching long sleeve workout top.  Now, Shein is apologizing for it.

“I love this. This is exactly how a pregnant woman looks,” X user @jbfan911 joked.

“Do they know that the uterus expanding pushes all the other organs up and out of the way? her torso would not be ‘snatched’ like this. those organs have to go somewhere,” one person replied.

Other hilarious reactions included:

• “What a blessing when you and your ass are pregnant at the same time. Your babies already have a built in best friend.”
• “My favorite feature of these leggings is the built-in no-show bowling ball fanny pack.”

• “As someone who works at an OBGYN office can confirm every pregnant patient looks like this.”
• “Chatgpt is involved somehow I’m convinced.”
• “ooh looks like she’s having twins, one in the front and one in the back.”
• “This made me laugh way harder than it should have.”
• “help why is the baby in her vagina.”
• “Lol they forgot the part where being pregnant squishes all of your fat and organs up towards your rib cage meaning having a thin waist like that is highly unlikely. -signed, a pregnant lady.”

Shein has since removed the image from its website and is issuing an apology.

“We sincerely apologize for the recent product image from our supplier that was shared on our social media channels,” a Shein spokesperson told TODAY.com in an email. “Representing pregnancy in such a manner does not reflect our values, and when we learned about the images, we immediately removed them. We are committed to updating our product review process to help prevent issues like this from happening in the future.”

In 2019, British model Louise Boyce went viral on Instagram after she called out the fashion industry for using fake bumps. Boyce was pregnant at the time and couldn’t get work.

“I was absolutely shocked by how many women have no idea they are looking at models who aren’t really pregnant,” Boyce previously told TODAY. “They are comparing their bellies and their bodies and feeling bad. Some are driven to start dieting, which to me is just heartbreaking.” 

“There needs to be more honesty in maternity advertising,” she continued. “Retailers have to recognize that bumps come in all different shapes and sizes and we gain weight in other places than just our tummies. Your boobs, bum and ankles get bigger, too.”

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• Married, divorced, reunited: Why ex-spouses fall back in love
• Nikki Haley says ‘diminished’ ‘unhinged’ Trump is ‘not the same person’ she backed in 2016
• Video shows fight breaking out on Southwest flight headed to Hawaii

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

The author and journalist revealed that she’d welcomed her second child, a boy, with her husband, Christopher Robinson. During a Nov. 29 conversation on her podcast called “Younglings” — which she shares with Robinson and co-hosts Kylie Pentelow and Brady Haran — Knox shared that she welcomed her son on Sept. 23. The couple shared that they named their son Echo.

“The birth was really, really ideal as far as births go,” she said during the podcast.

“It was just me and Chris this time again,” she explained, adding that she had a great nurse and the entire event felt like she and her husband were “hanging out.”

“Amanda pushed like three times. She pushed nine times in three contractions … and the third contraction, baby popped out,” Robinson said before adding, “Nothing went wrong.”

Knox and Robinson, who got engaged in 2018 and married in 2020, are already parents to daughter Eureka. During the podcast, Knox revealed that their first daughter is adjusting well to having a sibling, sharing that she has been “such a champ.”

“She wants to help when I change diapers like she wants to put the cream on as well,” Knox explained. “She’s been so sweet.”

As Knox and Robinson celebrate their baby news, here is everything we know about her pregnancy journey and two children.

Knox confirmed her second pregnancy back in August

In August, TODAY.com confirmed that the 36-year-old was pregnant with her second child.

The news came after she posted a photo of herself showing off her growing baby bump in an Instagram photo on Aug. 21. In the snap, Knox sat on an outdoor bench in a polka dot jumpsuit with her belly on full display.

“Pregspreading,” Knox captioned the photo and tagged the Oxford English Dictionary.

Many people in the comments section congratulated Knox on her pregnancy news.

How many children does Amanda Knox have?

The activist, who gained notoriety after being wrongly convicted for the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, has two children with her husband, Christopher Robinson. Their son Echo was born in September 2023, and their daughter Eureka was born in 2021.

Echo

In the Nov. 29 episode of ‘Younglings,” Knox and Robinson confirmed that they’d named their second child Echo.

“He was perfect,” Knox said during the episode of his birth before adding that he received a perfect Apgar score, which medical professionals use to assess the health of newborns.

The newborn was so perfect in fact, he was born on Sept. 23, 2023, at 9:23 p.m.

The couple did not share Echo’s middle or last name but did open up about their thought process behind the name.

“When we were thinking of a name for baby number two, we wanted to keep going. We thought we had a really good method we thought Eureka was an awesome name,” she explained. “We started thinking of what are other exclamations that could potentially be names… So when we’re thinking of like a name for a boy, Echo comes to mind in two ways, because ‘ecco’ in Italian means like ‘behold’ … and you say echo to say “echo, echo, echo.”

Eureka Muse Knox-Robinson

In an October 2021 New York Times article, Knox revealed that she and Robinson welcomed their first child together months prior. At the time, she said she was worried about the “paparazzi bounty” on her daughter’s head if she announced the news earlier.

She shared additional details about the birth of their daughter, including her name, on an episode of Labyrinths podcast hosted by the couple.

While at the time she said she wouldn’t post photos of her daughter, she’s shared peeks at Eureka on her Instagram over the years.

Knox suffered a miscarriage

Prior to welcoming her daughter, Knox revealed she experienced a miscarriage. On her podcast, she shared how she and Robinson conceived quickly after they started trying and began designing a nursery.

However, at their six-week ultrasound appointment, the technician was unable to find a heartbeat. While she was told to return for a second scan, she said, she “knew something was wrong.”

“I did feel incredibly disappointed that that was the first story of my first-ever pregnancy…. I thought, like, I knew exactly what I want to do with my first pregnancy and to have it not come to fruition, not through choice felt like a betrayal,” Knox said.

By August of 2021, she would go on to announce that she was pregnant with baby Eureka.

This article first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• Exclusive: 70-year-old who says she just gave birth to twins speaks out: ‘I feel great’
• Kathie Lee Gifford posts pics of her meeting her newest grandbaby: ‘Bubbe already loves you so much’
• Shop TODAY’s Holiday Hot List: Our ultimate picks for the season

In a TikTok video, Sethi, 24, joked that it was as if she was becoming a real-life Avatar.

The strange symptom came on when Sethi, a fitness coach in London, was in her second trimester.

“My partner came over to me and he was like, ‘Did you wear anything blue today?’ And I said, ‘No,’” Sethi tells TODAY.com. “Then he brought me into our bathroom and pointed at the toilet seat, and it was bright blue.”

Sethi didn’t think much of it. But then it happened again.

“I was staining clothing, my sheets, everything was the color of denim,” she says. “It made me feel quite anxious.”

Sethi called her OB/GYN, and also posted on Instagram about the bizarre phenomenon.

“Mamas has anyone experienced this? Does it affect baby in any way?” she asked in the caption.

Sethi was later diagnosed by a professional with chromhidrosis, a condition that causes a person to produce colored sweat, most commonly on the face, underarms and breasts, according to Dr. Abigail Waldman, a dermatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

In chromhidrosis, sweat becomes pigmented before secretion from the gland. Sweat may be yellow, green, blue, brown, or black. 

“It’s thought to be present in 10% of the population but usually is not clinically apparent,” Waldman, who does not treat Sethi, tells TODAY.com. “Yellow is the most common color and results in the yellow staining of the clothes.”

Though Sethi’s symptoms cleared up on their own in a week, chromhidrosis generally lasts, as there is no cure, says Waldman. She notes that it is important to be evaluated by a physician to rule out bacterial or fungal infections.

Waldman notes that chromhidrosis is not more common in pregnant people, although it could become more prominent at this time due to increased sweating during pregnancy.

Sethi welcomed a healthy baby girl named Aahana-Rae on Sept. 20, but comments continue to pour in on her TikTok.

“Omg this happened to my white clothes and I was convinced it was dye from my jeans but it never made sense,” one person wrote.

Added another, “Yup that happened when I was pregnant. I turned my toilet and sheets blue.”

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• TODAY’s Jill Martin gives in-depth look at life during chemo after breast cancer diagnosis
• How Geri Halliwell went from Ginger Spice to children’s book author
• Today is National Taco Day: 20 deals that shell out the savings

“We don’t feel safe being so far away from a birthing center,” said Alderson, noting her advanced maternal age of 45. “I was sitting in a hair salon a few days ago and some people started joking about me giving birth on the side of the road. And in that moment, I just pictured all the things that could go wrong with my baby and broke down in tears in front of strangers.”

A growing number of rural hospitals have been shuttering their labor and delivery units, forcing pregnant women to travel longer distances for care or face giving birth in an emergency room. Fewer than half of rural hospitals now have maternity units, prompting government officials and families to scramble for answers. One solution gaining ground across the U.S. is freestanding midwife-led birth centers, but those also often rely on nearby hospitals when serious complications arise.

The closures have worsened so-called “maternity care deserts” — counties with no hospitals or birth centers that offer obstetric care and no OB providers. More than two million women of childbearing age live in such areas, the majority of which are rural.

Ultimately, doctors and researchers say, having fewer hospital maternity units makes having babies less safe. One study showed rural residents have a 9% greater probability of facing life-threatening complications or even death from pregnancy and birth compared to those in urban areas — and having less access to care plays a part.

“Moms have complications everywhere. Babies have complications everywhere,” said Dr. Eric Scott Palmer, a neonatologist who practiced at Henry County Medical Center in rural Tennessee before it ended obstetric services this month. “There will be people hurt. It’s not a question of if — simply when.”

The issue has been building for years: The American Hospital Association says at least 89 obstetric units closed in rural hospitals between 2015 and 2019. More have shuttered since.

The main reasons for closures are decreasing numbers of births; staffing issues; low reimbursement from Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people; and financial distress, said Peiyin Hung, deputy director of the University of South Carolina’s Rural and Minority Health Research Center and co-author of research based on a survey of hospitals.

Officials at Saint Alphonsus, the hospital in Baker City where Alderson wanted to give birth, cited a shortage of OB nurses and declining deliveries.

“The results are devastating when safe staffing is not provided. And we will not sacrifice patient safety,” according to an emailed statement from Odette Bolano and Dina Ellwanger, two leaders from the hospital and the health system that owns it.

While they said financial concerns didn’t factor into the decision, they underlined that the unit had operated in the red over the last 10 years.

A lack of money was the major reason why Henry County Medical Center in Paris, Tennessee, closed its OB unit. CEO John Tucker told The Associated Press that it was a necessary financial step to save the hospital, which has been struggling for a decade.

The percentage of births there covered by Medicaid — 70% — far exceeded the national average of 42%. Tennessee’s Medicaid program paid the hospital about $1,700 per delivery for each mom, a fraction of what the hospital needed, Tucker said.

Private insurance pays hospitals more — the median topped $16,000 for cesarean sections in Oregon in 2021. State data shows that’s more than five times what Medicaid doles out.

Tucker also said the number of deliveries had dropped in recent years.

“When volumes go down, losses actually get bigger because so much of that cost is really fixed,” he said. “Whether we’ve got one baby on the floor or three, we still staff at the same level because you kind of have to be prepared for whatever comes in.”

Six days before the Tennessee unit closed, just one woman was there to deliver. All of the other rooms contained empty beds and bassinets. The special care nursery was silent — no beeping machines or infants’ cries. Art had been removed from the walls.

Lacy Kee, who was visiting the ward, said she’ll have to drive 45 minutes and cross the state line into Kentucky to give birth to her third child in early October. She’s especially concerned because she has gestational diabetes and recently had a scare with her fetus’ heart rate.

Kee also had to switch from the Henry County obstetrician she trusted for her other pregnancies, Dr. Pamela Evans, who will stay at the hospital as a gynecologist.

Evans fears that things like preterm deliveries, infant mortality and low-birthweight babies — a measure in which the county already ranks poorly — are bound to get worse. Prenatal care suffers when people must travel long distances or take lots of time off work for appointments, she said. Not all insurance covers deliveries out of state, and some alternative in-state hospitals families are looking at are an hour or more away.

Evans’ office and exam rooms contain bulletin boards covered with photos of infants she’s brought into the world. During a recent visit, Katie O’Brien of Paris handed her a new photo of her son Bennett — the third of her children Evans delivered. The two women cradled the baby and hugged.

The closure “makes me absolutely want to cry,” said O’Brien, 31. “It’s a horrible thing for our community. Any young person looking to move here won’t want to come. Why would you want to come somewhere where you can’t have a baby safely?”

About two hours away, inside a house in the woods, a handful of women sat in a circle on pillows for a prenatal group meeting at The Farm Midwifery Center, a storied place in Summertown, Tennessee, that’s more than a half-century old.

Led by midwife Corina Fitch, the women shared thoughts and concerns, and at one point tied on scarves and danced together. One by one, Fitch pulled them into a bedroom to measure bellies, take blood, listen to fetal heartbeats and ask about things like nutrition.

Betsy Baarspul of Nashville said she had an emergency C-section in a hospital for her first child. She’s now pregnant with her third, and described the difference between hospital care and birth center care as “night and day.”

“This is the perfect place for me,” she said. “It feels like you’re held in a way.”

Some states and communities are taking steps to create more freestanding birth centers. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont recently signed legislation that will license such centers and allow them to operate as an alternative for low-risk pregnancies.

Alecia McGregor, who studies health policy and politics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, called midwife-led birth centers “a major sort of contender among the possible solutions” to the maternity care crisis.

“The kinds of lifesaving procedures that can only be conducted in a hospital are important for those very high-risk cases,” McGregor said. “But for the majority of pregnancies, which are low-risk, birth centers can be a very important solution to lowering costs within the U.S. health care system and improving outcomes.”

A lack of data and the small number of births in freestanding centers or homes prevents researchers from fully understanding the relationship between birth settings and maternal deaths or severe injuries and complications, according to a 2020 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The Farm said fewer than 2% of clients end up having C-sections, and a report on deliveries in its first 40 years showed 5% of clients were transported to the hospital — which Fitch said can happen because of things like water breaking early or exhaustion during labor. Clients usually give birth at The Farm or in their own homes.

“We always have a backup plan,” she said, “because we know birth is unpredictable and things can come up.”

Rural hospitals will need to be part of the equation, doctors told the AP, and they believe governments must do more to solve the maternal care crisis.

Oregon politicians mobilized when the Baker City hospital announced in June that it was shutting down its birth center — including Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and Baker County Commissioner Shane Alderson, Alisha’s husband. As a temporary fix, they suggested using OB nurses from the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a branch of the country’s uniformed services that largely responds to natural disasters and disease outbreaks.

It was a novel and “innovative” idea to request federal nurses to boost staffing at a rural maternity unit, Wyden’s office said. While it didn’t end up panning out, the public health service sent experts to Baker City to assess the situation and recommend solutions — including looking into establishing a freestanding birth center.

Shane Alderson wants to help people who are facing the same tough decisions his family had to make. He said rural communities shouldn’t be stripped of health care options because of their smaller size or because of the number of low-income people with public insurance.

“That’s not equitable,” he said. “People can’t survive like that.”

___

Rush reported from Baker City, Oregon, and Kuna, Idaho. Ungar reported from Paris, Tennessee, and Summertown, Tennessee.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Soon, she and others who live or work in D.C. will have more options. Congress just approved a new D.C. law that will require health insurers to cover in vitro fertilization treatment.

D.C. Council Member Christina Henderson cosponsored the DC Expanding Access to Fertility Treatment Amendment Act.

Henderson said she hopes the law will help families.

“When folks learn that it could cost upwards of $100,000, $150,000 in order for you to even be able to begin the process to try to start a family, it’s just out of reach for a lot of people,” she said.

Here’s what DC’s new IVF law will provide

Starting in 2024, people who use DC Healthcare Alliance and Medicaid can have their infertility diagnosis covered, along with three cycles of ovulation-enhancing drugs.

Then, in 2025, people who get insurance through D.C. employers or DC Health Link become eligible too. Their benefits include diagnosis, three rounds of IVF, and if needed, an embryo transfer to a surrogate.

People with private insurance could see a slight increase in their premiums. For Medicaid and District insurance, the funding comes from the government.

Nationally, 22 states have some type of infertility insurance law, with varying levels of coverage. Maryland requires infertility coverage; Virginia does not.

Thomas said the new law will help her to do IVF and, hopefully, have a baby.

“When I heard this news, it was a glimmer of hope that I needed. This is no easy walk for anyone. And so if this can help lessen the burden financially, then I’m all for it,” she said.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

Porcha Woodruff, 32, was getting her two children ready for school on the morning of Feb. 16 when six police officers showed up at her doorstep and presented her with an arrest warrant alleging robbery and carjacking.

Woodruff initially believed the officers were joking given her visibly pregnant state. She was arrested.

“Ms. Woodruff later discovered that she was implicated as a suspect through a photo lineup shown to the victim of the robbery and carjacking, following an unreliable facial recognition match,” court documents say.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted approval of the drug, Zurzuvae, for adults experiencing severe depression related to childbirth or pregnancy. The pill is taken once a day for 14 days.

“Having access to an oral medication will be a beneficial option for many of these women coping with extreme, and sometimes life-threatening, feelings,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, FDA’s director of psychiatric drugs, in a statement.

Postpartum depression affects an estimated 400,000 people a year, and while it often ends on its own within a couple weeks, it can continue for months or even years. Standard treatment includes counseling or antidepressants, which can take weeks to work and don’t help everyone.

The new pill is from Sage Therapeutics, which has a similar infused drug that’s given intravenously over three days in a medical facility. The FDA approved that drug in 2019, though it isn’t widely used because of its $34,000 price tag and the logistics of administering it.

The FDA’s pill approval is based on two company studies that showed women who took Zurzuvae had fewer signs of depression over a four- to six-week period when compared with those who received a dummy pill. The benefits, measured using a psychiatric test, appeared within three days for many patients.

Sahar McMahon, 39, had never experienced depression until after the birth of her second daughter in late 2021. She agreed to enroll in a study of the drug, known chemically as zuranolone, after realizing she no longer wanted to spend time with her children.

“I planned my pregnancies, I knew I wanted those kids but I didn’t want to interact with them,” said McMahon, who lives in New York City. She says her mood and outlook started improving within days of taking the first pills.

“It was a quick transition for me just waking up and starting to feel like myself again,” she said.

Dr. Kimberly Yonkers of Yale University said the Zurzuvae effect is “strong” and the drug likely will be prescribed for women who haven’t responded to antidepressants. She wasn’t involved in testing the drug.

Still, she said, the FDA should have required Sage to submit more follow-up data on how women fared after additional months.

“The problem is we don’t know what happens after 45 days,” said Yonkers, a psychiatrist who specializes in postpartum depression. “It could be that people are well or it could be that they relapse.”

Sage did not immediately announce how it would price the pill, and Yonkers said that’ll be a key factor in how widely its prescribed.

Side effects with the new drug are milder than the IV version, and include drowsiness and dizziness. The drug was co-developed with fellow Massachusetts pharmaceutical company Biogen.

Both the pill and IV forms mimic a derivative of progesterone, the naturally occurring female hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. Levels of the hormone can plunge after childbirth.

Sage’s drugs are part of an emerging class of medications dubbed neurosteroids. These stimulate a different brain pathway than older antidepressants that target serotonin, the chemical linked to mood and emotions.

On May 6, at 37 weeks gestation and after experiencing food poisoning symptoms, Andres was told her daughter no longer had a heartbeat.

United States Oct 27, 2021

Pittsburgh, Portland First in U.S. to Provide Workers Bereavement Leave for Pregnancy Loss

Pregnancy Feb 10, 2020

Many Miscarriages Are a Mystery. A New Test Could Give Answers Faster

On May 7, after an induction and 15 hours of intense labor, Andres gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. The baby weighed 8 pounds and 13 ounces.

Her name was Maxine.

“It was very traumatic,” Andres tells TODAY.com through tears. “Immediately when they held her up you could just tell — she was gray. She was gone.”

Andres works for the City of Austin in the Austin Public Health Department. After returning home from the hospital, Andres says she informed her HR department that she’d “be taking maternity leave a little bit early” because she had lost her child.

“They said: ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, but you don’t qualify for (leave) anymore,'” Andres says.

Andres was told that maternity leave does not apply to people in her situation, but instead is used for people who “give birth and care for a healthy newborn baby.”

In a statement to TODAY.com, a spokesperson for the City of Austin said that “the loss of a child is an unthinkable tragedy for any parent” and that they “will ensure any city employee experiencing such a devastating loss receives the support and time they need.”

“While the death of a child is not covered under FMLA, there are several other leave options available in the City, such as accrued leave, emergency leave and the City’s leave bank that fellow employees contribute to,” the spokesperson said. “We care for and value our staff members and are continuously looking for ways to provide needed support and will update policies to do so when those needs become evident. Our Human Resources Department is currently developing a leave program for when an employee loses a child for consideration and approval by City leadership.”

In order to take the time off, Andres says she used up all her sick time, vacation time and received short-term disability coverage for an additional six weeks off with a note from a doctor.

After The Texas Tribune, which first reported on Andres’ story, inquired about the city’s policy, Andres says HR offered her four more weeks of paid time off.

She returned to work on July 18.

“The anger that I have at the policies of the city — I’m never going to forget,” Andres says. “It’s so unnecessarily and unbelievably cruel.

‘It was just out of the blue’

Andres was thrilled to learn she was pregnant.

“I’m 38, so I didn’t think I’d be able to have more kids,” she says. “We were really excited about it.”

Andres’ pregnancy was relatively uneventful — every ultrasound was normal.

Then, shortly after her 37 week doctor’s appointment, Andres and her husband got sick.

Doctors monitored the baby while Andres was treated for dehydration. Assured her baby was OK, Andres was sent home. The next day, Andres felt better but could no longer feel her baby move. She called her doctor again, who told her to return to the emergency room.

“When we got there, the nurses took vital signs and couldn’t find a heartbeat,” she says. “They called for doctor and again, no heartbeat.

“And that was that,” she adds. “It was just out of the blue.”

After giving birth, Andres says she was able to hold her baby girl for a few moments.

“The nurses who took care of us were so kind,” she says, sobbing. “They cleaned her, wrapped her up and put a little hat on her. They took pictures. They brought us a keepsake box before we left with a clipping from her hair … one of the nurses made little bracelets with her name on it.”

‘It was a big kick in the face’

Andres says her postpartum experience was excruciating.

“I couldn’t walk normally for a week,” she says. “My pelvic pain made it impossible to sleep. I had the normal bleeding that occurs after a pregnancy for two months straight.

“My milk came in — that was horrible,” she adds, crying. ” I had to put cabbage and ice (on my breasts) to help with the swelling. It was miserable — a constant reminder of what happened. The body doesn’t just go back to normal.”

Andres also still had to parent her 2-year-old son, Adrian.

“I was devastated. I lost 40 pounds. It was hard to get out of bed. I just cried all the time, but life doesn’t stop — I have a toddler,” she says. “I love him so much, so he made things easier at times, but a 2-year-old is going to make everything also way harder.

Andres recalls the moment she had to tell her son that his sister wasn’t coming home.

“He was excited to help with the baby,” she says. “When we came home he asked: ‘Where’s the baby?’ We had to tell him: ‘I’m sorry, the baby can’t come home. The baby is gone.'”

Andres’ difficult postpartum period was made worse, she says, by being denied maternity leave and having to hobble together paid days off work.

“You’re thinking about how you’re going to wake up and feed your other kid and how you’re not going to walk into traffic,” she says, “but I also had to think about am I going to code my time sheet for the next six weeks and still get paid.”

“It doesn’t sound like much … but it was so hurtful,” Andres says. “It was a big kick in the face, but when you’ve already broken both your legs.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• Husband speaks out after negative reaction to wife’s unplanned pregnancy goes viral
• Before dying of pregnancy complications, Olympic sprinter Tori Bowie talked about how excited she was to become a mom
• What is pregnancy ambivalence? It’s a lot more common than people know

The new law mandates that employers with at least 15 employees provide “reasonable accommodations” to workers who need them due to pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is tasked with enforcing the law. However, employers will be able to opt out of providing accommodations to pregnant workers if they can show that doing so presents an “undue hardship” on their business operations.

While the EEOC has yet to publish a list of the types of accommodations that will be required under the law, examples could include more flexible hours, the option to sit in jobs that require long periods of standing, a parking spot closer to the workplace, access to uniforms and safety apparel that fit a pregnant person’s changing body, and excusal from heavy lifting or working around chemicals that could be dangerous during pregnancy, according to the EEOC.

By the end of this year, the commission is required to publish guidance on how employers should implement the law, including a list of examples of reasonable accommodations, which the public will have a chance to weigh in on.

President Biden signed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act into law in December, following a yearslong push to bring it to a vote in the Senate. Earlier versions of the bill passed in the House with bipartisan support in 2019 and 2021, but didn’t pass in the Senate until it became part of the $1.7 trillion government funding bill.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

The dozen employees at Riverside Regional Medical Center — one nurse practitioner, 10 registered nurses, and one unit secretary — are welcoming babies, or have given birth, this year. The women are expecting a combined six girls, three boys and three bundles of joy whose sex is unknown to the moms.

Two of the women gave birth to daughters in March and May, and there’s more to go: Four babies are due in July, three in August, one in September, one in October and one in November.

“This is the most we have had historically in one year in our unit. Five are first-time moms,” a spokesperson from Riverside Regional Medical Center tells TODAY.com in an email.

According to Haley Bradshaw, who is 35 weeks pregnant with her second child, a boy, the women share camaraderie.

“We all feel extremely supported and we don’t have to worry about much if anyone needs anything,” she tells TODAY.com. “We’re all here to step in and help if someone takes a break or has a doctor’s appointment. We have each other’s backs.”

“We work better as a team because we know what we’re in for,” Jackie Cox, who is 36 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, a girl, tells TODAY.com.

With 52 nurses employed in the NICU, only a few pregnant employees overlap during any given 12-hour day or night shift.

Cox says being pregnant together has deepened their friendships, whether through discussing pregnancy problems or baby names.

Cox and Bradshaw say they plan to work until the end of their pregnancies — and it’ll save a trip to the hospital. Bradshaw will be a returning patient, as she delivered her first child at the hospital.

In the meantime, seeing patients’ reactions to their bellies is always fun.

“They laugh it off with us,” says Bradshaw. 

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• Identical twins go into labor at the same time and welcome babies hours apart
• 200 baby names that start with ‘L’
• 200 baby names that start with ‘K’

James experienced “severe brain bleeding” and was put in a medically-induced coma where she remained as of May 31, according to a GoFundMe page created by James’ two sisters. (TODAY.com verified the validity of the GoFundMe page with a spokesperson for the fundraising platform.)

She is expected to be kept in the intensive care unit for weeks and in the hospital for months, her family wrote on the page.

James had a baby girl, who was hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit for 12 days due to the “traumatic” nature of her birth, the family said. On the fundraising page, the family shared a photo of James comatose with her newborn daughter on her chest.

Aneurysms occur when a blood vessel bulges or expands due to a weakened artery wall, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Many times, people do not know they have one unless it bursts, a medical emergency that requires immediate treatment. Unruptured aneurysms occur in about 2% to 5% of healthy people.

According to the GoFundMe listing, James was found by her husband and rushed to the hospital immediately.

“If Jackie and the baby arrived a few minutes later at the hospital, we likely would have lost both of them,” her sisters wrote.

The family is “optimistic” that James can “beat the odds.”

“While the road will be long, we are committed to bringing Jackie home to her daughter and husband,” the sisters wrote. TODAY.com has reached out to James’ family for further comment on her condition.

At the time of publication, the online fundraiser has received more than $146,000 towards it goal of $250,000, which is intended to cover healthcare costs outside of insurance, including for speech therapy, physical therapy and home modifications.

James has about 30,000 Instagram followers, including Sofia Richie and Adrienne Bailon-Houghton, and is known for posting beauty and relationship content. According to her page, she married in 2022 and announced her pregnancy on social media four months ago.

James posted updates about her pregnancy throughout, from the symptoms she didn’t expect to candid reflections on motherhood.

To mark 33 weeks on April 5, James penned a caption about feeling simultaneous anxiety and excitement.

“How strange to be so excited and feel so ready but at the same time feel so nervous and unsure of yourself. But how special are the moments when I get out of the shower and actually take time to stare in the mirror in awe of what my body is capable of and laugh in absolute shock of the reality that our baby girl is inside my tummy,” she wrote in the caption.

James’ latest post was on May 18, a carousel of pictures of her holding her baby bump.

“39 Weeks,” she wrote in the caption, with a pink bow emoji.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• Taylor Swift celebrates Pride Month with heartfelt message at Chicago concert
• Cody and Erika Gifford are expecting their second baby!
• Jill Duggar Dillard says she felt pressured to help her family after her molestation was made public

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

The “Selling Sunset” star has welcomed a daughter with husband David Miller, she announced on May 11. The baby girl—named Emma Reign—joins the couple’s son Aiden, 4, and daughter Elle, 3.

“My rainbow baby!” Vander captioned a photo of herself holding the newborn at the hospital. “This was a long 9 months as I kept my pregnancy as quiet as possible from social media. I gave birth a few days ago and words can not express my sense of relief and happiness!”

Vander noted that she had a cold during the delivery, though, she “made it to push a baby with full stuffy nose.”

Thanking the doctors and nurses who helped her throughout the pregnancy, the mom also wrote in her post, “I will forever be grateful.”

News of the baby’s arrival comes more than a year after Vander suffered a late-term pregnancy loss. Calling the experience “the hardest day of my life,” the real estate agent shared in a December 2021 Instagram post, “I had a stillbirth at 38 weeks. I always heard of it but never imagined I’ll be part of the statistics.”

Celebs Who Welcomed Rainbow Babies After Pregnancy Loss

“Instead of delivering a baby, I get to go home with a memory box,” she continued. “What was a regular weekly checkup turned into a nightmare that I never imagine will happen to me. Given I share my pregnancies in the show I knew I’ll have to post about this and avoid the ‘when is your due date’ question. You will always be in our heart Mason Miller.”

According to Vander, her baby boy had died from a “freak accident” in the womb. She shared his autopsy results during Selling Sunset’s season five reunion episode in May 2022, explaining that “it was just a bad accident with the [umbilical] cord mixed with some swallowed placenta.”

“I think part of healing is getting pregnant again,” she said at the time. “I hope I will. We’ll see.”

However, Vander experienced another heartache in June 2022, when she suffered another pregnancy loss. “I had a very crazy week,” she wrote on her Instagram Story. “Miscarriage after 10 weeks …following my stillbirth..but my kids and my husband are absolutely my blessing and I am so lucky to be their mother!”

Maya did not announce her latest pregnancy ahead of time, though she did tease throughout the holiday season that “we are celebrating.”

“Last year, I remember going to New Year’s Eve dinner and basically crying .. as it was only 3 weeks post stillbirth,” she wrote in a Dec. 31 post. “This year I wanted to celebrate and be excited about 2023! This message is for all of you, celebrate when you can and I hope that when you are going through hard times, you will find a way to enjoy the little things in life.”

The decision follows repeated efforts by Swiss drugmaker Covis Pharma to keep Makena on the U.S. market while it conducted additional studies. The medication was the only drug approved in the U.S. to help reduce the risk of early births in women with a history of preterm deliveries.

In recent months, Covis finally bowed to FDA pressure, proposing a “winding down” period of several months so that women taking the drug could complete their treatment. The FDA rejected that and said Thursday that the action against Makena and several generic versions should take effect immediately.

“Makena and its generics are no longer approved and cannot lawfully be distributed in interstate commerce,” the agency said in a statement.

The injectable drug is a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone, which helps the uterus sustain pregnancy. It can cause side effects, including blood clots, depression and allergic reactions. Given those risks, FDA staffers previously concluded there was no upside to keeping the drug available, given its lack of confirmed benefit.

The final decision by FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and the agency’s chief scientist marks the first time the agency formally forced the removal of a drug that it initially approved based on promising early data. In all prior cases, drugmakers voluntarily pulled medications after the FDA made clear it intended to order removal.

The FDA expedited Makena’s approval in 2011 based on a small study suggesting it reduced rates of premature birth in women who had previously had trouble bringing a pregnancy to term. But results from a 1,700-participant study completed in late 2018 showed the drug neither reduced premature births — as originally thought — nor resulted in healthier outcomes for babies.

The FDA has been working to get the drug off the market since then, though Covis repeatedly appealed for more time to conduct further research.

In October, the company failed to convince a panel of outside FDA advisers that the drug should stay on the market for women who face higher risks of early deliveries, including Black women.

About 10% of U.S. births come too early — before 37 weeks, raising the risk of serious health problems and even death in infants.

“It is tragic that the scientific research and medical communities have not yet found a treatment shown to be effective in preventing preterm birth and improving neonatal outcomes,” Califf said in a statement Thursday. Women who have a current prescription for the drug should direct any questions to their doctor, the agency said.

The FDA has faced pressure to crack down on unproven drugs cleared under its accelerated approval program, which since the early 1990s has allowed dozens of drugs to launch based on early results.

The flipside of the program means removing drugs if their initial promise isn’t confirmed by later studies. Researchers and government watchdogs have chronicled problems with FDA’s oversight, including delays in quickly removing drugs with failed or missing confirmatory studies. In the last two years the FDA has stepped up efforts to remove unproven approvals, mainly from cancer therapies.

Jen Jackson Quintano, 43, had planned to give birth at her home in Sandpoint, Idaho, a northern town with a population of just over 9,000 people, a few years ago.

When she started to experience complications, she was rushed to Bonner General Health, the only hospital in the area with labor and delivery services. After an emergency C-section, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

“I can’t imagine how the circumstances might have been different if I had to travel all the way to Coeur d’Alene or if I had to go into the emergency room,” Jackson Quintano tells TODAY.com.

Now, that’s a new reality for the pregnant people in her community.

“People in this town are feeling this sadness, this shock and this sense of outrage,” Jackson Quintano says. “Who is going to be serving mothers and their children and what are we going to see in the way of maternal mortality?”

In a news release, the hospital’s board of directors and senior leadership team said they “made every effort to avoid eliminating” labor and delivery services.

“We hoped to be the exception, but our challenges are impossible to overcome now,” Ford Elsaesser, Bonner General Health’s Board President, said in the written statement.

As a result, Sandpoint residents will have to drive at least 46 miles to find the nearest hospital providing prenatal, birth and postpartum care.

According to the news release, the “emotional and difficult decision” was made due to the loss of pediatric coverage “to manage neonatal resuscitations and perinatal care,” a decrease in the number of babies born at the hospital and “Idaho’s legal and political climate.”

Currently, Idaho has three separate near-total abortion bans: One that prohibits abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy, one that bans all abortions with exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the pregnant person and one that allows family members to sue doctors who they believe provided abortion care in civil court.

Relevant Content:

ROE V. WADE Mar 18, 2023

Wyoming Signs Law Prohibiting Use of Abortion Pills

abortion Mar 16, 2023

Here Is What's at Stake in the Federal Abortion Medication Case

“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving,” the news release stated. “Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho Physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines.”

TODAY.com reached out to Bonner General Health for comment but did not hear back at the time of publication.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), less than half of all rural women live within a 30-minute drive to the nearest hospital offering perinatal care. One 2011 study found that when pregnant people have to travel farther for maternity services, their health suffered.

Jackson Quintano, who has lived in Sandpoint for 11 years, says that the OBGYN who delivered her daughter, Dr. Amelia Huntsberger, is now leaving the state, which Huntsberger also confirmed in an email to the Idaho Capital Sun newspaper.

As some OBGYNs leave the state, some future doctors are also reconsidering their employment options.

Nicolette Jessen, 27, just graduated from medical school and had hoped to return home to Sandpoint to serve as an OBGYN.

Now, she says she has to change her plans.

“When I found out about all of this, I was in mourning,” Jessen tells TODAY.com. “Sandpoint was my plan A, B, C and D, but what do you put first? Do you put your desire to have a family in a safe area first, or your desire to be a full-scope provider who can provide abortion care? It’s painful.”

“Things can change, and hopefully they do,” she adds. “I can’t even imagine what the current OBGYNs are feeling.”

A 27-year-old labor and delivery nurse, who spoke to TODAY.com on the condition of anonymity because she is now looking for work, had worked at Bonner Health for nearly six years before she says hospital leadership announced at a mandatory meeting on March 16 that “our unit would be closing and we’d all be losing our jobs.”

While she says she’s “happy that light is being shed nationally” on the impact of the state’s abortion bans, she says she believes the decision to shutter the labor and delivery ward is due to “money and the greed of our health care and hospital system in this country.”

“Yes, these laws and legislation need to get out — they’re not OK,” the nurse tells TODAY.com. “But … most obstetrical units don’t make money for a hospital.”

According to one 2017 study published in the journal Health Affairs, 9% of rural counties lost their hospital labor and delivery services between 2004 and 2014, many citing financial issues. As a result, more than half of rural counties do not have access to hospital-based perinatal care.

Bonner General Health representatives did not respond to TODAY.com’s request for comment.

The nurse is now applying for another job. And, she says, she’s rethinking her plans to start a family.

“I planned on having a baby next year in that hospital with the doctors I trust and the nurses that I love,” she says. “I guess that’s out the window because now I have no access to prenatal care outside of driving to a big city.

“I’m not even pregnant or close to pregnant, but it was in the cards,” she adds. “Now I don’t know.”

Jennifer Prandato contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• CDC warns not to use these eye drops after 3 deaths, 4 people had eyeballs removed
• 4 friends were eating pizza on a boat. Then they hit a whale and began sinking
• Gisele Bündchen speaks out for first time since divorce: ‘It’s not so black and white’

A reassuring new study finds they can take a two-year break from these drugs to get pregnant without raising their short-term risk of cancer coming back.

“This is really good news for young women and their doctors and their families,” said Dr. Ann Partridge of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who led the study. Results were being discussed Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Though more common in older women, breast cancer is increasingly diagnosed during childbearing years for reasons that aren’t clear.

For patients whose cancers are fueled by hormones, treatment involves surgery, then spending five to 10 years taking either a hormone-blocking drug that can cause birth defects or newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors and a monthly shot to shut down the ovaries.

Partridge estimates 6,000 U.S. women a year want to get pregnant but must take hormone-blocking drugs.

“They don’t want to hear from breast cancer again, but they also don’t want to put their lives on hold,” she said.

The study followed 516 women after surgery for early-stage cancer. All of them spent at least 18 months taking hormone-blocking drugs. The women stopped hormone-blockers for up to two years to get pregnant, deliver and breastfeed. Then they restarted cancer therapy.

After three years, about 9% saw cancer come back, similar to the rate seen in a set of similar women in a separate study who stayed on hormone-blocking therapy. There were nine deaths, “below expected rates for this population,” Partridge said.

More than 300 babies were born to women in the study. Among them was Brayden, now 4, the son of Amy Bianchi.

“He’s perfect in every way,” Bianchi said. “I couldn’t imagine my life without him. We couldn’t imagine our family without him.”

Bianchi felt a lump, which turned out to be breast cancer, when her firstborn, Mia, was 18 months old. Doctors advised against another pregnancy, but she learned of the research and signed up.

“If I had listened to the first few doctors or oncologists that I spoke with, I would have lost all my hope,” said Bianchi, 42, of Niskayuna, New York. “I would have very quickly accepted that I would never have the family that I had envisioned.”

She was able to breastfeed her son for six months before resuming hormone-blocking therapy, which she’ll continue until 2026.

Researchers will follow Bianchi and the other study participants and report on the longer term safety.

“Will we see a difference at 10 years?” asked Dr. Hope Rugo of University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the study. “For the moment, this is incredibly encouraging data. It should give practitioners and patients confidence” as they discuss ways to benefit from cancer therapy while starting a family.

The “Nope” actress addressed her social media fans with an unveiling of her pregnant belly on the famous Studio 8H stage, saying, “I’m especially glad to be here though, because, there’s some rumors going around.

“People have been in my comments, saying ‘Keke’s having a baby, Keke’s pregnant,'” Palmer continued. “And, I want to set the record straight. I am.”

Palmer then opened her coat to reveal her baby bump.

This is the first time the once child star is pregnant, and the sex of the baby has yet to be revealed.

Her pregnancy was addressed again later in the show, during a sketch with ‘SNL’ star Kenan Thomspon, where Palmer tries to tell Thompson he is the father. And again later, during a sketch that joked that Palmer had twins who were doing things like smoking cigarettes in her belly.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.