SMFM | MomsRising

The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) is a non-profit, membership organization based in Washington, DC. With more than 5,000 physicians, scientists and pregnancy experts around the world, the Society supports the clinical practice of maternal-fetal medicine by providing education, promoting research, and engaging in advocacy to optimize the health of high-risk pregnant people and their families. For more information, visit SMFM.org.

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Health Care

January 25, 2022

Navigating the vast world of advice offered to pregnant individuals can be daunting, but there is at least one thing experts agree on: making sure you get the vaccines recommended during the course of pregnancy, including the COVID-19 vaccine, is one of the best ways pregnant people can help protect their health and the health of their baby. Recommended maternal vaccines for influenza, Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), and COVID-19 provide critical protection to both mother and baby. Pregnant individuals are more susceptible to serious complications from infectious disease, so getting...

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Health Care Maternal Justice

December 20, 2021

“Please don’t let me die. Please save my baby.” She was gasping between labored breaths on the operating room table, squeezing my hand, and begging me to save her life as we prepared to emergently intubate and deliver her. She had COVID-19.

MomsRising Education Fund

Breastfeeding Health Care Maternal Justice Politics & Policy

December 10, 2020

Women have spent decades fighting for equal rights. We have made significant strides in many arenas, enacting a variety of social, political, and economic reforms. But one notable exception is the receipt of evidence-based care during pregnancy, when women and their providers are often left in the dark about what medications and therapeutics are safe and effective. This knowledge gap, which has persisted for decades, will be on display this week as federal agencies make decisions about the use of COVID-19 vaccines. Each year, about four million women in the United States give birth. These...

MomsRising Education Fund

Health Care Maternal Justice Paid Family Leave

May 15, 2019

B y: Laura Vricella, MD I sat on the edge of her hospital bed. Mary had arrived just 48 hours ago, tears streaming, and with agonized screams delivered her 24-week infant son on the ambulance gurney. There was not even time for her to change into a hospital gown. She was in shock that she was no longer pregnant, and the reality of becoming the mother of an extremely premature infant was setting in. It was Friday afternoon, and time for Mary’s hospital discharge. We were discussing the importance of waiting until she recovers to get pregnant again . Her guilt that she had not been able to...

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Health Care Maternal Justice

July 23, 2018

By: Dr. Mary Pell Abernathy It all started out innocent enough. She was being induced because she had been treated for breast cancer during her pregnancy. The goal was to get her delivered early (37 weeks) so that she could continue her treatment for breast cancer and improve her chance of surviving. She was fortuitously in a room right across from the nurse’s station. I’m a maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) physician and was working on labor and delivery, finishing up paperwork and charting in the computer. She was 6 cm dilated and I had wanted to break her water earlier, but the fetal head was...

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Health Care Maternal Justice Politics & Policy

February 7, 2018

By: Alexandria Hill, MD Increasingly, women with cardiac disease are getting pregnant. We typically associate cardiac disease with people who have had a heart attack or open-heart surgery. But, as a physician and a cardiac patient myself, I think about the people born with heart abnormalities or those with abnormal heart rhythms that cause interference with day-to-day life. Moreover, I know how difficult it can be to be taken seriously when the symptoms you may feel are vague or poorly defined. Heart disease is a common killer, but when you’re walking down the street you can’t identify this...

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Health Care Maternal Justice

August 15, 2017

By: Dr. Christina Han As a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist and a mother of two young children, I have experienced pregnancy from both sides of the examination table. In my clinical work, I diagnose and manage complications of pregnancy every day, and frequently hear mothers exclaim, “I just want a healthy baby,” while bravely setting their own health aside. To many new mothers, the concern about complications ends as soon as the baby is delivered. In my own pregnancies, like many of my own patients, I remember experiencing the nervousness and anticipation during those final weeks before...

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Health Care Maternal Justice

July 19, 2017

By: Erika Werner, MD On average, two to three women die each day in the United States during childbirth or shortly thereafter. As Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM) physicians, we often cannot speak openly about individual tragedies because we want to respect confidentiality and privacy, but do not mistake this silence for a desire for these stories to be hidden. The loss of a mother is devastating. As an expert in high-risk pregnancy, I want to commend Nina Martin, Emma Cillekens, and Alessandra Freitas for so eloquently sharing the stories of women who died as a result of pregnancy or childbirth...

MomsRising Together

Health Care Maternal Justice

May 17, 2017

By Alison Stuebe, MD Last week, Americans spent more than $23 billion on Mother’s Day gifts. On Sunday morning, moms woke up to jewelry, bouquets of flowers, and scattered crumbs between the sheets after so many breakfasts in bed. How was this different from any other second Sunday in May? This Mother's Day, we celebrated motherhood amid a burgeoning threat to maternal health and wellbeing: the American Health Care Act (AHCA). If this bill becomes law, millions of women will lose their health insurance coverage, undoing progress in access to health care for women before, during, and after...

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Protect Yourself. Protect Your Baby. Get Vaccinated.

Holding Gratitude and Grief

COVID Vaccines Should Not be Withheld from Pregnant Women

Born Too Soon, Redux: We Need to Help Moms Optimize their Birth Spacing

We Must Pay More Attention to Pregnant Women

Heart Disease Disproportionately Affects Black Women

When a Healthy Baby Isn't Enough

The Loss of a Mother is Devastating

Moms Need Health Care Before, During, and After Pregnancy