Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and co-chair of the Gates Foundation, has generously pledged $1.5 billion to help stop maternal death, or death after childbirth. Although rates are decreasing, Gates says it's time for the world to come together to save women's and children's lives.

“It’s not that the world doesn’t know how to save the 350,000 mothers and 3 million newborns that die every year,” she told The Seattle Times. “It is that we haven’t tried hard enough.”

These numbers have dropped by about 30 percent since 1980, but according to this year’s Countdown to 2015 report by the World Health Organization nearly 2 million deaths occur each year as a result of childbirth and labor complications alone. For many countries, maternal and infant mortality rates remain unchanged.

Hemorrhage and hypertension top the list of causes for maternal death, followed shortly by HIV/AIDS, malaria, and heart disease. Infection after childbirth also presents a threat to mothers, while pneumonia, malaria and diarrhea pose the greatest threats to newborns.

Women Deliver, the advocacy group that received the donation, has set goals to help increase maternal survival. Methods include greater access to family planning tools, prenatal care and access to better healthcare. They also hope to change attitudes about maternal death.

"In many countries the belief that death is inevitable, and therefore acceptable, hasn't yet changed," Gates told MSNBC. "We don't have to tolerate fatalism.”

Read more from MSNBC and The Seattle Times, or learn how you can help by visiting Women Deliver online.

Nearly one in three pregnant women are also obese, which can lead to serious health problems for both mother and child. Exercise during pregnancy can help cut that risk, and a new study says yoga is a safe and healthy option.

The amount of weight a woman should gain during pregnancy varies. However, excessive weight gain can lead to high blood pressure and gestational diabetes, an increased likelihood of c-section, and other pregnancy complications.

Yoga helps you stay fit by targeting, toning and tightening specific muscle groups. It can help relieve stress, build strength and sculpt muscles. Even recent new moms Halle Berry, Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna use yoga to stay slim.

Dr. Rachel Rohde, an orthopaedic surgeon and expecting mother herself, says yoga can be adapted to meet the needs of pregnant women.

“A pregnant woman's body goes through a lot of changes that will alter the way she practices yoga, whether she is a veteran or a beginner,” she said in an American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeon (AAOS) news release. "Women who are expecting can benefit greatly from exercise, especially yoga -- they just need to be aware of their limitations."

If not done correctly, however, yoga can lead to injuries like neck, shoulder, spine and leg strain, not to mention overstretching. Rohde says these types of injuries can be avoided by changing to a more comfortable position.

“One of the best aspects of yoga is being in control of your body and having the ability to do each movement at your own pace,” she said. ““If you are unable to move into a difficult position, you always have the option to get into a resting pose if experiencing pain.”

There are other safe exercise options for pregnant women, too. The American Pregnancy Association recommends swimming, walking and light aerobics. The best way to find out what’s best for you is to know your capabilities, and consult a doctor to find your safest options.

Visit the American Pregnancy Association to learn more about top recommended exercises for pregnant women, or see Rohde’s interview in The Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

Parents-to-be everywhere may have another reason to jump for joy. A new, highly accurate blood test may be able to tell you the sex of your baby earlier in your pregnancy.

Most couples have to wait until the second trimester of pregnancy (4-6 months), but the simple test could cut that time in half—as early as seven weeks. The test is highly accurate, too. Of the 201 women who were tested between 2003 and 2009, researchers were able to obtain sufficient samples from 189 and produce 100 percent accurate results.

When a woman is pregnant, her body will circulate her blood with blood from the fetus. For this test, a sample of the mother’s blood is screened for genes unique to the Y-chromosome of males. If these genes were present, researchers predicted a boy.

Early testing can also help doctors detect conditions such as Down’s syndrome and Rhesus-D disease (RhD). This method of testing has several advantages over invasive methods, such as fetal blood sampling (FBS), that can cause amniotic fluid leaking or miscarriage.

RhD sometimes results from a blood incompatibility between, for example, an Rh-positive mother and an Rh-negative child. If the mother’s body detects this difference, it may send antibodies against the baby. If it goes untreated, it can lead to jaundice, anemia, brain damage or stillbirth.

 “Noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of fetal Rhesus D genotype is sensitive and accurate and has been widely validated in Europe,” authors noted. “The United States should begin to undertake clinical trials to bring this technology to patient care as soon as possible.”

This test is currently not available to the general public, but continued success could mean it’s on the horizon. Its adoption into general health practices could help cut the risk of fetal complications of RhD.

The study was published in Obstetrics&Gynecology.

While some in the government expressed alarm after the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, released a document in March stating births to unwed mother reached an all-time high of nearly 40 percent, the rate of births out of wedlock remains low in many states. The National Vital Statistics Report entitled "Births: Preliminary data for 2007"  provides data on all births in United States in 2007 and includes information on the rate of births to unwed mothers in each state. Below is a list of the states with the lowest unwed mother birth rates; each state is followed in parentheses by the percentage of all live births in that state to unwed mothers.


The top 10 states with the lowest rate of births to unwed mothers are:

Utah (19.6%)
Colorado (25.4%)
Idaho (25.5%)
New Hampshire (31.4%)
North Dakota (32.6%)
Minnesota (32.7%)
Washington (33.2%)
Massachusetts (33.4%)
Nebraska (33.4%)
Iowa (34.3%)

For more information about birth, join the Healia Online Community for Pregnancy or the Healia Online Support Group for Childbirth. Find out more about pregnancy by reading the Healia Health Guide to Pregnancy.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, National vital statistics reports, Births: Preliminary data for 2007, Web release 03/09; vol 57 no 12. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_12.pdf

While the percentage of babies born prematurely has risen by one-third since the 1980s, the rate dropped by 1 percent in 2007 compared to the previous year to a rate of 12.7 percent. Premature or preterm babies are defined as those born before the 37th week of pregnancy. Babies born between the 37th and 40th week are considered full-term. This data comes from a recent national vital statistics report from the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the CDC, called Births: Preliminary data for 2007. The report contains data on all births in the U.S. during 2007, including information on the rates of premature in each state. Several states still have relatively high rate of premature births and the top 10 are listed below, with the percentage of all live births that were premature appearing in parentheses.

The top 10 states with the highest rates of preterm births are:

Mississippi (18.3%)
Alabama (16.6%)
Louisiana (16.5%)
South Carolina (15.5%)
Kentucky (15.2%)
Delaware (14.3%)
Nevada (14.3%)
Tennessee (14.2%)
Arkansas (13.9%)
West Virginia (13.9%)


For more information about birth, join the Healia Online Community for Pregnancy or the Healia Online Support Group for Childbirth. Find out more about pregnancy by reading the Healia Health Guide to Pregnancy.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, National vital statistics reports, Births: Preliminary data for 2007, Web release 03/09; vol 57 no 12. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_12.pdf

_{Photo: César Rincón, Flickr, Creative Commons}